Naked Spirits Distilling and Hanging with Friends in Maplewood

Maplewood, MO

We met up with friends here! I look really grumpy but I was trying to look cool. It didn't work.

Naked Spirits Distillery Tour

When we were in Memphis we visited Old Dominick Distilling and enjoyed it so much that I wondered why I don't look for distilleries to tour wherever we are.  So in Memphis I looked for distillery tours in the St. Louis Area.  The one that came up that made it obvious that they offered tours was Naked Spirits.  The web site said to book the tour through Groupon so I hopped over to Groupon and saw that the tour was $15 for two people and it included tastings and 2 cocktails each and booked it immediately.  What a deal!  This was 2 weeks ago and today was the day of the tour so we hopped on a bus and then light rail and ended up at a distillery in an industrial area sharing space with a custom car shop called Classic Car Studio that had a 2 season run under the name Speed is the New Black.  Apparently you can watch it on The Roku Channel now so I will probably give it a go.  Okay so this post is about a distillery and I am talking about custom cars but it all connects.  The Distillery shares space with the car shop because the 2 owners are school friends.  The Distiller was making rum in his basement and gave a very early bottle of White Rum to the owner of Classic Car Studio to celebrate the premier of the show and this started a connection that lives on today.  

You can see both signs on the wall near the somewhat hidden entrance

We arrived right at 4pm when the tour started and were greeted by 2 other distillery tour folk.  

They make a Tiki mix to go along with their rum

We were able to sample 6 rums, well actually 8 because he had 2 more behind the counter that weren't part of the tour and another one behind the counter that wasn't part of the tour and wasn't even being sold there so 9 rums were tasted.  The pours were probably 1/4 oz so we didn't fall over at the end.

Here is the size of the pour

Oh yea, he also made us tiny White Russian style drinks with creamer and their coffee infused rum.  It was a hell of a Caucasian.  

For the cocktail part of the tour we got to pick 2 from the board.

They are pretty small so their distilling area is small too.

They use syrup flavoring for their Sticky Butter Cake Rum so they bought the whole set of flavors so they could experiment.  

I went with a mud slide inspired cocktail because why not.  It was like dessert.

It was a low key but fun tour.  Also, if you have $3,000 you can mix your own rum flavor and get like 150 bottles of it.  Seems like a cool company outing type of thing.

Back to Carl's Drive In

After the tour we said our goodbyes and took a Lyft back to Carl's Drive in.  It was about 5:30 so I was a little worried it would be packed.  The place is very popular.  We got there and no one was there.  I was worried it might be closed but it was open.  We sat down and 4 people were there to help just the 2 of us.  I thought it was odd.  At some point one of the ladies working there said, "Is this the last fish Friday?"  Another said, "Yep."  I suddenly realized it was good Friday and everyone was eating fish sandwiches.  We aren't Catholic so it wasn't even on our radar.  

Normally you can't see these seats because butts are on them.

Back to Side Project Brewing

Last week one of our friends from Disney saw that we were in STL and he was coming for work so we decided to hang out on a Friday night.  He suggested we meet at Side Project Brewing partially because his nephews wife works there and partially because it's a fantastic place.  Donna and I did the 1.8 mile walk from Carl's to Side Project because the bus we were going to catch was cancelled.  It was light out and not too hot or cold so it was fine.  It was along Historic Route 66 again and they are widening the side walks so parts of the walk were more pleasant than you would expect and parts were through heavy construction areas.

We got to Side Project and Chris and his sister were already there.  We sat down with beers and began to catch up.  Shortly after we got there Chris' nephew and his wife showed up.  It was a really nice evening of meeting new people and catching up.  We got to talk about our adventures on the road and learn about some of the local must visit food places in the area.  After Side Project Chris drove us a short distance to The Blue Duck.  We all bought appetizers and shared and some of us got a cocktail to round out the evening.  Their food is fantastic and their cocktails have been some of the best we have had on this trip.  

My Fantastic IPA at Side Project

I wanted to document The Blue Duck and Chris was there so I asked him to look like a Hipster.  I think he delivered.

All of their unused Tap Handles were on a dry cleaning track above the bar.

You order up front to start and then sit down and continue ordering at your table.  Interesting set up.

I wanted to try their Infinity Bucket but we all went with a house made Fireball type shot.  It was really good.

That was it for today.  It was a really fun day.  Also I just noticed that we went to two places today that had drinks referencing Stormy Daniels.  I wonder what that's all about? If you missed my previous post, here is a link to it SLAM - Saint Louis Art Museum.