Twenty years ago today, Bob Boland and a few of his friends bellied up to the Schlafly Tap Room, a new St. Louis brewpub on the western cusp of downtown. After several rounds, Boland asked the bartender to close out his group's tab.

"They told me it was a party, and everything was free," Boland recalled. "So I asked to speak with the boss, and they pointed me to Tom (Schlafly). I went over and thanked him for the beers and for opening a brewery. He said, 'Please stay and have a good time.'

"We did," Boland said. "And we've been loyal customers ever since."

The St. Louis Brewery, which makes Schlafly beer and operates two brewpubs, the Tap Room and Maplewood's Schlafly Bottleworks, celebrates its 20th anniversary today. The city's beer landscape has changed significantly since business partners Tom Schlafly and Dan Kopman opened the brewery in 1991, but their mission remains unchanged.

"The conventional wisdom at the time was that the concept of a microbrewery in St. Louis was a folly," Schlafly said this month over a glass of Blackberry Mead at the Tap Room. "To an extent, it certainly made sense to think that way. There hadn't been a new brewery here in 70 years."

Indeed, opening a microbrewery in St. Louis, in the shadow of Anheuser-Busch's mammoth brewery, seemed akin to starting "A New Religion in Mecca" — the title of Schlafly's 2006 memoir.

That's not the case anymore.

Four craft breweries opened in the city this year; another opened in St. Charles County. More than 20 breweries are within a two-hour drive of downtown, the most since Prohibition.

Talk to the owners of those other breweries, and it won't be long before they credit the St. Louis Brewery for paving the way.

"Schlafly was cutting a path long before it was cool to be in the craft beer business," said Jake Hafner, a St. Louis native who opened the Civil Life Brewing Co. in September in the Tower Grove South neighborhood.

"They've definitely given all of us new guys something to aspire to."

And despite the increased competition, Kopman and Schlafly aren't nervously glancing in their rearview mirror to see who's coming up behind them.

"When we were getting ready to open, we didn't know how accepting they would be of having another brewery in town," Hafner said. "But everyone at Schlafly has been incredibly helpful. They tell us, 'If you need anything at all, just give us a call.'"

Kopman believes his company's open-door, good-neighbor policy benefits everyone in the long run.

"There really are no great secrets in this business, so our whole thing is, why wouldn't we want to help everyone make better beer?" he said. "We've always thought that a robust beer scene in St. Louis can be a real key to the city, and we're happy to see others make a commitment to that like we have."

The St. Louis Brewery has grown to become the second-largest craft brewer in Missouri, behind Kansas City's Boulevard Brewing Co., and in 2010 it ranked 42nd in volume among U.S. craft brewers.

This year it made about 42,000 barrels of Schlafly beer, equivalent to about 14 million 12-ounce bottles.

The brewery produces about 50 different Schlafly beer styles a year. Its beers are distributed in eight states and mostly within a 300-mile radius of St. Louis, but Schlafly also can be found at some points further east, such as Washington — about 850 miles from the Delmar Loop, where Blueberry Hill holds the distinction of being Schlafly's first off-premise retail draft account in 1993.

The brewery's co-founders have been in talks for about a year with potential investors about an ownership succession plan.

While they are limited in what they can reveal, Kopman and Schlafly reiterated that they will retain ownership stakes, employees will get a piece of the company, and out-of-town investors are not being considered.

That last group includes Belgian-controlled Anheuser-Busch InBev.

"That thought has crossed my mind, and I rejected it," Schlafly said.

"We're taking the non-Pujols approach," he continued, referring to the Cardinals' former star first baseman who left St. Louis this month for a bigger paycheck in Los Angeles. "We're leaving money on the table to keep our business St. Louis-owned.

"It's an easy decision to make because we have values."

The succession planning hasn't stopped Kopman and Schlafly from looking ahead. The brewery worked out contract-brewing arrangements this year that will allow it to continue to keep up with demand by increasing production.

"It's very exciting to see how far we've come and feel like we're ready to be a part of the next 20 years," Kopman said.

"Our goal all along has been to make really good beer and throw good parties, and that's exactly what we're doing. Still."

Kopman has spent a good part of the past several weeks visiting every St. Louis bar, restaurant and retail account that has ever carried Schlafly beer, just to say thanks.

"We've gotten a lot more out of this than selling beer and putting money in the bank," Schlafly said. "We've employed more than 1,000 people over the years. Two ZIP codes here are better off now than they were when we moved in to empty buildings. And we're one of the cool things happening in St. Louis.

"Our little lemonade stand has grown up."