Must see breweries before you die!

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Because of their Homebrew Roots, huge success and fantastic facilities I would say.. Sierra Nevada, Anchor, Russian River and Stone
 
AB is pretty impressive and it is a historical land mark...while your in ST Louis check out Grants Farm which is owned by the bush family.....lots of good microbreweries in STL to check out like Schafly

In KC Boulevard just did an expansion cool to see a new brewery...north of KC ....is the Weston Brewery....claim to be the oldest brewery west of the Mississippi ...been through lots of names and owners...they have a tradition pub built under ground it's pretty cool http://www.westonirish.com/
 
Does the malibu distillery in barbadoscount? Only place i've been to that comes even close to being a brewery. I hear cricket hill which isn't far from me has tours.
 
Lakefront in Milwaukee is a great one, mid size brewery that has made quite the name for itself regionally, and the tours are quite a blast. I live a mile away and have done this one 5 times.

Bells in Kalamazoo, MI is an okay tour, the best is their brewpub menu with about a half dozen unreleased beers.

Smithwick's in Kilkenny, Ireland was an interesting one. Began giving tours in 2010 for the 400th anniversary, they are closing the brewery in 2014 to move everything to Dublin's parent Guiness breweries, so if you can make it while its still operating do so!

Have also toured:
Sprecher (Milwaukee)
Milwaukee Brewing Co (Milwaukee)
Pabst Brewery (Milwaukee) *no longer functioning brewery

Great Lakes Distillery (Milwaukee)
Old Bushmills Distillery (Bushmills, Ireland)
 
N9BOW said:
Yuengling - Americas oldest brewery

They have hand-dug fermentation caves that were used for storage before refrigeration.
Anheuser Busch tried to sue them for the logo and they lost... :)

Saw the one in Florida.. really want to see the one in PA.
http://www.yuengling.com/over21/over21.php?referrer=http://www.yuengling.com/

N9BOW
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they don't let you play in the caves, and they no longer have a virtually unlimited follow up tasting (2 beers when i was there last)- but it's still fun. For me - i'm with reverseapachemaster and i'd love to see the van Roys and cantillion, and while i'm in the area would have to hit the shrine in roeselare...
 
Anchor- Call at least a month ahead. Old place. Open fermenters.
Kona- Nice restaurant and nothing sucks about Hawaii
Stone - Super cool place. Always brewing. Go on a Wednesday and drink beer and watch movies outside.
Coors- been a long time but cool to see a huge brewery in action
The local brewpubs/micro breweries. I am always amazed at how different each brewery is when approaching the brewing process. Location, resources, local laws and other variables add to the individual brewers' stylistic quirks to make for totally different approaches beer making.
 
Last summer, my buddy and I drove around Colorado for 4 days going to as many microbreweries as we could.

You can buy a Beer Map for $12 to $20 at most places and it includes a list of all 260+ microbreweries in CO. Plus it's filled with coupon's for free pints and merchandise at many of them.

I think we hit 12 or 13 breweries in 3 days and consumed about 27 different beers.

New Belgium is nice and they do a lot for the Fort Collins residents

Big Beaver Brewery in Loveland, CO was a tiny brewery in a little industrial park with 12 seats at the bar. The head brewer dude focused on blending multiple yeast strains in each batch. Cool names to the beers, like Potent Peter IPA and Whiskey Dick Stout!

I had a beer made from hemp seeds in Denver at Wynkoop.

And I liked the Belgian Wit at Trinity Brewing in Colorado Springs!

Colorado is Beer Heaven!
 
kellzey said:
Last summer, my buddy and I drove around Colorado for 4 days going to as many microbreweries as we could.

You can buy a Beer Map for $12 to $20 at most places and it includes a list of all 260+ microbreweries in CO. Plus it's filled with coupon's for free pints and merchandise at many of them.

I think we hit 12 or 13 breweries in 3 days and consumed about 27 different beers.

New Belgium is nice and they do a lot for the Fort Collins residents

Big Beaver Brewery in Loveland, CO was a tiny brewery in a little industrial park with 12 seats at the bar. The head brewer dude focused on blending multiple yeast strains in each batch. Cool names to the beers, like Potent Peter IPA and Whiskey Dick Stout!

I had a beer made from hemp seeds in Denver at Wynkoop.

And I liked the Belgian Wit at Trinity Brewing in Colorado Springs!

Colorado is Beer Heaven!
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I freakin love Colorado. My sister in law lives in denver. Whenever the wife and I go visit we never want to leave. Ill have to check out the breweries next time I go. In the OP I stated I'd never been to a brewery. I did go to Rock Bottom on 16th. So I guess technically I have been to one. Its nothing special but I did get a tour and a nice beer flight with a bunch of extra samples. One of them was whiskey infused. I think it was 20-30% ABV.

Coming from Louisiana I got drunk as piss cuz of the altitude. I should have planned for that seeing as how it was only 11:30am and the girls wanted to shop all day :drunk: . Damn good times!
 
Church brewery in Pittsburgh was quite a site to behold!

IMG_0721.jpg
 
GilaMinumBeer said:
None. A brewery tour just isn't worthy of my bucket list. But a swim in a fermenter might qualify.
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For me seeing breweries from around the world would totally be worthy. Besides, there might be a few sanitation issues associated with swimming in a fermenter. Plus I don't think you'd last very long seeing as how it's almost completely void of oxygen. Wasn't that on family guy? Lol.
 
I just got to Glendive, Montana for work and Beaver Creek Brewery is 30 miles away in Wibaux. It's a tiny brewery that sells kegs to local eateries and has a small pub that is only open Thursday - Sunday 4pm to 8pm. Hopefully I get some time off work while they're open to run down and grab a few samples
 
Atlantic Brewing Company in Bar Harbor/Acadia National Park in Maine. They have a nice little tour, tasting room, and an outdoor BBQ. They also make their own sodas so people who dislike beer, like my wife, can still enjoy the tour and taste a few things. Its away from the touristy areas of town, so its a nice place to just get away for a few hours, learn about beer and eat some good food. Its actually the place that sparked my interest in brewing beer.
 
kellzey said:
Last summer, my buddy and I drove around Colorado for 4 days going to as many microbreweries as we could.

You can buy a Beer Map for $12 to $20 at most places and it includes a list of all 260+ microbreweries in CO. Plus it's filled with coupon's for free pints and merchandise at many of them.

I think we hit 12 or 13 breweries in 3 days and consumed about 27 different beers.

New Belgium is nice and they do a lot for the Fort Collins residents
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It seems like almost every town with more than a handful of people has a brewery except a few of the ski resort towns. My wife and I went last December for a few days and spent a ton of time driving to breweries. Lincoln St. in Fort Collins is awesome. Within a few blocks of each other is Funkwerks, Fort Collins Brewing and Odells. There's also NB and some other smaller breweries/brewpubs around town.
 
justin2001fox said:
Redhook portsmouth NH !!
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The guy who gave us the tour was great there. He was a wily old guy who snapped at a couple guys who were chatting during his spiel. Like a classroom lol, but he demanded your attention and gave an entusiastic tour which I loved. The facility felt like willy wonkas chocolate factory. A weird sterile modernism, a little surreal and not preferred (IMO) over the more customary messy, loud, and dangerous breweries around (Allagash, DL Gearys in portland were awesome).

I loved Brooklyn Brewery.
 
Schumed said:
In KC Boulevard just did an expansion cool to see a new brewery...north of KC ....is the Weston Brewery....claim to be the oldest brewery west of the Mississippi ...been through lots of names and owners...they have a tradition pub built under ground it's pretty cool http://www.westonirish.com/
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I'll second that, really enjoyed the history and brewpub at Weston
 
If you are in Cleveland you have got to try the Great Lakes brewing company. They even have a school where they teach you "secrets" about brewing.
 
They don't do tours, but Founder's in grand rapids michigan is a great place. Usually 20 some brews on tap many not available elsewhere. And some AMAZING sandwiches.

I suggest going for dinner and doing the quadruple d... Pint of Devil Dancer and the Devil Dancer sammich... The sammich isn't for those who can't handle Spicey though
 
cyclogenesis said:
Church brewery in Pittsburgh was quite a site to behold!
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aww, i was reading the thread and thinking to myself "i hope nobody mentioned church brew works" :D

didn't know what it was all about when i first walked in with the inlaws (they're from pitt but i don't hold it against them) but wow, great sight to see!
 
Hook Norton in the Cotswolds in England is great if you don't mind driving there. Great old brewhouse, small tours, still use horses to deliver kegs on town, and an hour tasting all their stuff after you're done. Of course its all English beer. The one they did this year that's more like an American IPA was great, but all the British people on the tour really didn't like it. "Too bitter!" they said. I of course thought it was fantastic...
 
Boulder Beer is a great little tour. They were the first microbrewery in Colorado so there's quite a bit of history on the tour and at the end they serve the tour group a pitcher of each beer that's on tap. Last time I was there we had 9 pitchers for about 25 people.
 
Stoudt's is a great place. The brewery itself is small, their whole operation is huge and awesome. If you don't know the history, Ed Stoudt started a restaurant, then expanded to antique sales, then he married Carol and she started the brewery. They have an awesome and authentic biergarten, the antiques seem to go on forever and the restaurant has a couple different rooms with different atmospheres.

Dogfish Head's production brewery in Milton, DE is awesome. The giant wood fermentors they age Palo Santo in are pretty crazy and then there is the giant store/tasting room, the steam punk treehouse and bocce ball courts.

The new Tröegs facility in Hershey has a brilliant self guided tour. You enter a hallway with glass on either side from the tasting room, behind the glass is the brewery on one side and a lab on the other. You walk down further and it opens into a bigger room with some tables. The bottling line is behind glass there and barrel aging is going on next to that. If you keep walking, you come out into the store. There is also the Scratch brewery right inside the tasting room along with their hop back system. They just started doing guided tours and I can't wait to go on one, but the way this is set up for self guided tours is great.
 
HopHeaven said:
Abita(In Abita Springs Louisiana) has the best tour ive ever been on. 2 hours of unlimited beer...only allow 20 people on each tour. Stone is beautiful. Im personally a big fan of the really tiny little ones where you can talk to the master brewer for hours. Went to one in San Diego called Hess brewing. Great beer brewed out of what looked like a public storage unit.
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My friends father is the man who founded Abita Brewing. Mr. Patton is one cool ass dude!!! I've pet Turbo, their dog they named a beer after. Mr. Patton was a huge Hendrix fan, thus Purple Haze. It's crazy seeing how much bigger Abita has gotten since he sold it. Now if they would just start shipping their Strawberry seasonal down here. I don't see myself being in Cajun country anytime soon.
 
For the best tour: New Belgium in Fort Collins, CO

For the most impressive facility: New Glarus in New Glarus, WI

For doing the most with the smallest / most crowded brewery: Avery in Boulder, CO

For the place where I like to drink a pint: Blind Pig Brewery, Champaign, IL
 
I've done the Coors brewery in Golden, CO which is cool to just see the scale of their brewing operation. Ye tasting was decent, like i said more of a tour to check the scale of their operation.. But there's definitely craft brewers near Denver that I'm sure would be better.

I also toured Redhook/Woodinville brewery in Washington. Awesome tour! It was only 50 cents a person and you get a glass, tour of the place as well as brewing information techniques, and what seemed like unlimited samples Haha More than a few people were a little buzzed by the end. It was about an hour long and and was neat to see how they started and how much they've grown.
 
I'm fortunate to live in Wisconsin. Sand Creek in Black River Falls, O'so in St. Point, Point Brewery, Central Waters, Viking, Leinie's in Chippewa Falls. Gosh I've been to many of the breweries. Been once to the brew pub in the Dells (they have a great Honey Beer). Sometimes I wonder why I homebrew with all these great beers around.
 
kellzey said:
Last summer, my buddy and I drove around Colorado for 4 days going to as many microbreweries as we could.

You can buy a Beer Map for $12 to $20 at most places and it includes a list of all 260+ microbreweries in CO. Plus it's filled with coupon's for free pints and merchandise at many of them.

I think we hit 12 or 13 breweries in 3 days and consumed about 27 different beers.

New Belgium is nice and they do a lot for the Fort Collins residents

Big Beaver Brewery in Loveland, CO was a tiny brewery in a little industrial park with 12 seats at the bar. The head brewer dude focused on blending multiple yeast strains in each batch. Cool names to the beers, like Potent Peter IPA and Whiskey Dick Stout!

I had a beer made from hemp seeds in Denver at Wynkoop.

And I liked the Belgian Wit at Trinity Brewing in Colorado Springs!

Colorado is Beer Heaven!
Click to expand...

Im trying to go to Boulder around December and if I do I plan on going to see Avery and Boulder Brewing. Should I book a tour in advanced?.... And are there any others in Boulder or very close I should definitely go see?
 
Brasserie Dupont, in Belgium. They only give tours four times a year. Fortunately for me, one of those dates happened to coincide with my vacation there last year. Despite infrequent tours, it was just a small group. One of the family members led the tour; he spoke decent English, and another person on the tour also spoke English and helped translate. Really interesting to see the old flame-heated copper kettles side-by-side with the newer mash tuns and fermenters. And of course, the beer at the end...
 
I've only been on a couple tours but the best two were great for two completely different reasons.

New Glarus hill top brewery is pretty much open to the public. my girlfriend and I went on a Sunday at about 9am. you guide yourself around the hallways new glarus built for the public to walk around in. they have windows so you can see the lab and the bottling line, the big copper kettles are just roped off. the fermenters are out in the open and they are enormous. they also have an open fermenter that you can see through the window. there is a employee floating around to answer questions but he is not a tour guide. the tasting thing is fun it's like 5 bucks and you get four tastes and you can keep the small tasting glass.

the other great tour I was on was the surly tour. Tour spots are hard to get and i got lucky one day. but you start out and they give you four or five beer tokens for small tasting cups. you hang out in the tasting room for a while then the tour starts. Omar, the founder, tells the whole story about how it all got started. he is a great story teller with a great story to tell. it's hilarious. they had to get laws changed like three times in their city to be where they are and the building of the brewery was full of snafus and hilarity. then the tour of the facility is pretty standard. the brew master is usually there but wasnt for my tour so it may be better if Todd is there.
 
evrose said:
The St. James Gate Guinness Brewery. There's nothing else quite like it anywhere.
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I was just there a week ago. I thought it was the worst brewery tour I've ever been on. It wasn't even a tour, just a bunch of interactive walkthrough crap for people who don't know how beer is made. It's a few rooms set up like a Chuck E Cheese with somewhat sensationalized equipment, there's no actual guide or decent information at all. My gf and I were sorely disappointed... the only cool thing was that they had a few old pieces of equipment on display. Maybe we're spoiled by visiting small breweries, but it felt totally impersonal and gimmicky. Jameson, on the other hand, was an awesome tour and felt personal despite the incredible volume that they put out.

Oddly enough, my pint of Guinness at the end of the 10 million steps to the billionth floor tasted somewhat metallic (like pennies) and I found a slightly fish/oystery character that reminded me of DMSO. It was one of the worst pints of Guinness I've ever had.

So yeah, I totally and utterly disagree, it felt like they were just pandering to the Homer Simpsons who just want to swim in a vat of beer. I suppose the volume of people they get is ridiculous, but there's gotta be something they can do that's better than what they offer for the 16.50 euro entrance fee.


The tours I've been on that I really enjoyed have been Ithaca, Cigar City, Allagash, Maine Beer Co, and Ommegang. Sam Adams is fun enough that I've done it almost a dozen times, and Schlafly was a good time too.

I think my worst tour ever was Shipyard. Pretty much the entire tour was looking at/hearing about the bottling line. They were pretty generous with the tastings and gave people extra beer if they answered questions right. Unfortunately I answered a question about hops and got an extra large portion of their summer ale... which is a standard super light summer offering but fermented with ringwood... think about that for a second. You know how good a job most American breweries do with that yeast... and Shipyard is the worst offender of all. This was another one of those "Homer Simpson" vibe tours so I choked down my way too large cup of green apple butterscotch and asked for very small samples going forward... and kept my mouth shut. I think their beers must be better if they've sat on the shelf for a bit, because everything fresh I had in Maine was chock full of diacetyl. They contract brew for many of the other Maine breweries and apparently will only use ringwood, so even beers I've had before that I thought were at least acceptable like Geary's Porter were butter bombs when fresh on tap. That summer ale still makes me shiver when I think about it, that was definitely my worst beer drinking experience ever.

I guess I got kind of off topic.

It's the beer talking :mug:
 
In Colorado, there is so many that you really have to seek out the small ones, as they are usually the best. My favorite here if in Ft. Collins are Odell, Funkwerkes, Equinox. In Denver go for Crooked Stave (re-opening soon after re-location), River North, Renegade, Dry Dock. Looking for brew pub? Bull and Bush.

There are some new ones that are promising too, Hogshead just opened and are only open Fri-Sun and specialize in English style Cask conditioned ales that are amazing! Prost is about to open that specializes in traditional German style lagers and ales. Bill Eye transported a brewing system from a brewery in Bavaria from the 1800's just for true authenticity, awesome...
 
Option said:
In Colorado, there is so many that you really have to seek out the small ones, as they are usually the best. My favorite here if in Ft. Collins are Odell, Funkwerkes, Equinox......
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Going to be in Ft. Collins next week, i had to make reservations for the New Belgian Brewing tour. seeing about the others you mentioned....
 

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