4/28/25 Update - Weather is looking perfect (70s and Sunny). I rode the route and made a few tweaks to the path.

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This year we will start and end in Francis Park at the Rockwell Beer Garden for this May 4th Ride.

This ride is 13 miles with 1.5 to 4 miles between stops. This will cover a mixture of new destinations, favorite spots, and points of interest - hopefully you will discover a new place, path and/or meet new friends.

May the Fourth be with you!

Here is a downloadable GPS version of the route.

This is a social, no drop ride. We will stop to regroup if we get separated (at the top of a hill, through a traffic light, etc.). For those not biking, you are welcome to join us at our stops along the way!

The itinerary for the Sunday, May 4th ride is below:

• 11:15a-11:45a Rockwell Beer Garden - You can park along Donavan Avenue which borders the west side of the park. Rockwell opens at 10am so feel free to arrive early if you want to get something to eat (or drink) before the ride begins. We will depart promptly at 11:45am and ride ~3 miles to our next stop.

• 12:15pm-12:45pm Civil Life Brewery - One of our favorite stops with a great patio to enjoy and recharge before continuing on. From here we will ride ~1.5 miles to the Turkish Pavilion at Tower Grove Park for a photo stop. We will then ride ~4 miles continuing across the park and through The Hill's green, white, and red decorated streets.

• 1:15pm-2p Heavy Riff Brewing - Heavy Riff has a great selection of beers featuring inspiration from a range of musical influences. We will ride just over 2 miles to our next stop past the four-leaf clover markings throughout dogtown.

• 2:15pm-3:15pm Side Project Pizza - This was formerly the Shared Brewing/Pizza Champ location right across from Side Project brewing. This stop will be a little longer to let people grab some pizza (monster slice & draft for $10 till 4pm) on their patio. We will ride just over 3 miles back to Francis Park leveraging the River Des Peres greenway for part of the route.

• 3:45pm-?? Rockwell Beer Garden - Stay as long as you want for beer, food, and good company.

We will post messages here during our stops if we are running ahead or behind schedule in case you want to meet up with us along the way.

Remember - bring a water bottle and we always recommend a lock even though we will be mostly stopping at places with patios that will be right next to our bikes.

Important Notice: The safest way to ride is to not consume alcohol before or during any bide ride. If you choose to sample alcoholic beverages at any time during the ride, we recommend you take advantage of ½ pours or 3 oz samples sizes. We also encourage you to share any samples you order with others in the group. This ride is intended for us to check out some of the venues in the area and meet new friends. This is not a pub crawl, no one should ride a bike or drive a vehicle after more than a drink or two.

This event is also available on these sites: Meetup | Facebook

Narrow Gauge has been one of our favorites for IPAs since they opened in 2016 (our first meetup there was in July 2016!). Their original location was in a 1,700 sq. ft space in the basement of Cugino's restaurant. Narrow Gauge beers are the most coveted IPAs from our region and being so close to the airport, the brewery is usually the first and/or last stop for craft beer fans flying into or out of St. Louis.

In 2021, they started construction of a new brewery at a 8,200 sq. ft. building just a couple of blocks away. They moved the brewery to the new location last year but lacked a tap room until a few weeks ago.

At the tap room grand opening, we asked brewer-owner Jeff Hardesty about hosting a meetup at the new location with a tour of the brewery. He graciously agreed. The meetup will start at 5:30pm and the tour will start at 7pm. We will hang around till the tasting room closes at 8pm.

Although Narrow Gauge doesn't have food, they welcome food brought in from neighboring restaurants (if you haven't tried the meatballs from Cuginos next door, you are missing out!) so feel free to bring in food.

Hope to see you there!

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Microfest was always a fun event and "back in the day" there were typically 3 sessions - Friday night, Saturday afternoon and Saturday Evening. Many of our members would volunteer to pour for one session and get a free ticket to another session.

For the 23rd Microfest, we attended the afternoon session from 1-5pm.

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Earthbound opened their new brewery location last the month before with a really neat tap room with a chain-suspended 2nd floor. The new brewery is a really remarkable restoration of part of the old Cherokee Brewing facility. They have dug out the underground lagering cellars and the first level of barrel vaults and our group was able to see what it looks like almost 50' below the ground floor.

We met at Earthbound by 2pm for drinks before/after the tour of the underground space.  

We were also able to go down to the next level that was excavated for event space. There is a 3rd level that is the same size as the event space level. However, it is still flooded and only accessible by boat.

See this article for more information about the history of this building and Earthbound's renovation.

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Since it is Halloween Season, we thought this would be a fun event - especially since there is a $20 Living Social deal right now that gets you access to the paintball hayride, walk through zombie hunt and 150 paintballs and some other extras. More information about the event can be found on their website http://hauntedpaintballpark.com/

The plan is to meetup at 4204 Brewing in Bellevue, Il at 6pm (which is only a 10-15 minute detour on the way from St. Louis) and then leave there by 7:15pm so we can be at the park by 7:45pm. Not sure how long of a line there will be, but that should give us plenty of time before they close at 10pm. After the hunt, we'll plan on stopping at the Flying Saucer downtown which is on the way back.

If you don't have time to meet before at 4204 brewing, we'll post a meetup spot when we get to the paintball field and you can join us at 7:45pm.

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Craft Beer Cellar (CBC) in Clayton was one of our favorite places to pick up beer, have a beer, share a beer, or host a meetup. 

On this night in 2014, we hosted our 11th meetup. CBC reserved space for us and offered our group $6 flights of beer and 10% of anything purchased from the store.

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