Situated in a 1920s-era building that had a previous life as a garage, the brewery will boast an Old World-style tasting room and an authentic German-style biergarten shaded by chestnut trees. A dozen or so taps will pour the brewery’s wares, plus suds from other St. Louis outfits. Urban Chestnut also plans to bottle its beer for sale on shelves throughout the city.

Kupulent says his brewery aims to blend American beer innovation with European brewing tradition in a “revolution meets reverence” ethos. “I have a traditional European brewing background, but I also worked on the American craft side, so it’s a little bit of both,” Kupulent says. “We’re trying to bring traditional styles to our area and experiment with ingredients and styles—tweak some things, make them new.”

Kupulent’s keeping mum on the brews, but he told DRAFT, “We’ll start off with two, and one will be a Germanic lager. We’re still tweaking the recipe a bit.”

Raise a frosty pint, bottle or growler in celebration of International Beer Day. Established in 2007, this intoxicating holiday brings together beer enthusiasts for appreciating the breweries and bars that craft and pour the suds we’ve come to love. What better way to spend this most glorious of days then by spreading its basic tenets: Drink with friends, enjoy worldly beers and thank the hard-working brewers and bartenders that make it all possible.

[Image: Tatiana Jimenez]

SABmiller, makers of Miller Genuine Draft and one of the world’s largest brewers, dipped 1 percent in sales during the first quarter while Sapporo Ltd., owner of Sapporo Breweries and manufacturer of Sapporo, predicts a loss of 600 million yen during the first half of the year.

“We’re just taking beer one step further. Not only do we brew it, we bless it.”

The Oregon company aims to provide craft breweries with the hops they need to create their award-winning beers. The company developed a way to pelletize hops that makes them resemble whole flower hops.

“We want to change the form of the hops, not the characteristics,” CEO Jim Solberg said. “We took some pellets down to Stone Brewing recently (the San Diego craft brewer famous for Arrogant Bastard and other hoppy beers) and the brewers were comparing our pellets to a competitor’s … and, without any prompting, they said, ‘These are so much more like whole hops.’”

Sounds like the beginning of a great song.

Is this cause for concern? Knowing the genuinely laid-back Australian culture probably not, but you have to think at least a couple suits are nervous about their company’s positioning. The VB brand remained the biggest seller, but it saw its volume fall 8.4 percent during the three-month period.

Ugh, so many numbers. We need a beer. Anyone have a Foster’s lying around? We hear there might be extras.

In an American craft brew world filled with hops, porters, barleywine, and enough alcohol to kill you many times over, there’s something to be said for a brilliantly subtle pilsner. Yet very few people appreciate the dedication and craft required to succeed. Sure, there’s not as much to a pilsner, but doesn’t that make it harder to brew a great one?

We were glad to see the Milford Daily News’ Norman Miller and some of his buddies do a pilsner taste test. They ranked 12 on an 80-point scale and determined that Lagunitas won. (Hey, they have something in common with The Beer Trials.)

Well done, men, well done. There’s even video:

Well, that has to stop. Don’t these people know we are in a recession?!? The school’s solution: To sell beer but only to those people in the luxury suites.

Of course, the rest of the world is outraged… and rightly so. People are going to drink before the game if they can’t drink during the event. Shouldn’t the school and state reap some of the financial reward? It’s not hard to monitor consumption to keep fans in check. It happens all across this great land. Buck up, U of M.