Schlafly Beer/The Saint Louis Brewery

Schlafly Beer, formally The Saint Louis Brewery, calls itself the founder of St. Louis craft beer and Missouri’s first independent, locally owned craft brewery. The idea took hold in 1983, when attorney Tom Schlafly, studying law at Oxford, set out to bring traditional real ales home. He partnered with Dan Kopman, then a sales manager at Young’s Brewery in London, who convinced him a microbrewery could succeed in the shadow of Anheuser-Busch. The partners bought a fire-damaged Locust Street building in midtown, and after a change in state law, Schlafly received Missouri’s first microbrewery license and opened the Tap Room on December 26, 1991. The original logo’s ibex and mountains come from the crest of Steinhof, Switzerland, the birthplace of his great-grandfather. Its Kölsch uses yeast from Cologne’s Gaffel brewery, a gift tied to his 1995 marriage, and won gold at the World Beer Cup.