Best Brewery tours for brewing info, their story or history (a.k.a. cool factor)

[tke743]

I think it’s safe to assume that all of us go to breweries for tours. We do this for many reasons. Some are just cool breweries with history, some just have great stories, and some give us a lot of brewing information.

Mine are:

Coolest Brewery – Cantillon in Brussels

Best Story – Brouwerij 't IJ Amsterdam (Pronounced Brewery “tea-EYE”)

Best Brewing Information – Pilsner Urquell in Pilsen

Write ups for these below.

What are your best? Please post them.

 

[tke743]

Best Brewing Information - Pilsner Urquell in Pilsen – They flat out give you the actual recipe as part of the tour talk track and I asked no questions except to confirm the OG after the tour. They know their game and know you can’t exactly replicate it.

Boil – 90 Minutes

Grist – 100% floor malted Czech barley. They give you some to look at and taste. Lightest malt I’ve ever seen. Glassy as hell so very undermodified.

Hops – All Czech Saaz. Hopped at 50% (by weight) at 90 minutes, 25% at 15 minutes and 25% at 3 minutes. 38 IBU total

Mash Schedule – Tripple decoction. Note that the numbers in parenthencies are me converting their original stated measurements.

Mash in – 35C (95F) 30 Minutes
Steps

50C (122F) 30 Minutes

63C (145.5F) 60 Minutes

72C (161F) 60 Minutes

No Mash out

Fermentation – they noted that they pitch at 2.5 million cells/ml/degree Plato. Fermented under 0.1 bar (1.5psi)

Primary – 10C (50F) for 7 days

Diacetyl Rest – 18C (64.5F) for 2 days

Lagered - 5C (41F) for 15 days

OG – 12.4 Plato(1.050 SG) I got this from 2 separate people, and this is the number. Lower than I thought.

FG – 3.6 Plato (1:014 SG) Higher than I thought.

ABV – 4.44 percent

So, they really give you everything.

Side note 1- On the tour and in 2 bars in Pilsen they serve the old school version. Open fermented, lagered in pitch lined oak barrels, unfiltered. It’s delicious.

Side note 2 – There is no diacetyl Pilsner Urquell the beer in Czechia. That appears to be an issue with the exported and bottled beer.

 

[tke743]

Coolest Brewery – Cantillon in Brussels

Founded in the early 1900’s and they have changed very little.

This is a legacy lambic brewery and there is no fooling around there. All beers are fully spontaneously fermented. Wort is pumped into a coolship in the attic and overnight they open the slats in the roof for the wild yeasts to inoculate the wort. Then it’s into barrels for a long fermentation.

The brewery is still 100% belt driven, the only thing they have changed is swapping out the old steam engine for an electric one.

Best part is that you can sign up for public brew days and go be an assistant brewer and help with the entire process. AWESOME experience.

 

[tke743]

Best Story – Brouwerij 't IJ Amsterdam (Pronounced Brewery “tea-EYE”)

This one is awesome. The founder was an illegal brewer in Amsterdam for years. He setup downwind from the Heineken brewery to mask the smell of his brewing. He got quite a following for his 3 primary beers (a Belgian single, double and triple).

He was also a big player in the underground punk scene. He was in quite a few (very bad) bands, but wrote all the stuff. Another band picked up one of his songs and it became a hit.

At this time Amsterdam was trying to close the old bath houses (yes, exactually what you think they are). So if you could propose a business that could use one of them you could buy the for about 10 euros worth of the old Dutch Guilder. He proposed a brewery and tasting room and won the bid.

He used the money from the hit song to set everything up. He lived upstairs and ran this thing. Eventually, it became famous. He got older and decided to sell to a local brewing group. BUT he had stipulations.

• The tasting room must remain open (it is packed every day)
• They must make their beers in Amsterdam
• They must keep making his original 3 hits beers
• AND he gets to live upstairs until he dies and can drink for free at the tasting room 24/7.

 

[MaxStout]

I've toured several, and found that the tours tend to be aimed at the average beer consumer. It's meant primarily to help them understand the beer they're drinking and to have some appreciation of the process. A chance to look under the hood. The brewery's history is interesting, as well. Plus, it's cool to show off all that stainless steel!

I haven't picked up much helpful info for brewing just from the tours. I don't want to be THAT GUY in the tour group who asks in-depth questions when the goal is to give visitors an overview and send them to the tasting room.

However, I gain a LOT of knowledge if I have the chance to talk one-on-one with the brewers. That doesn't necessarily require a tour, just being fortunate enough to get 10 or 15 minutes to pick the brewers' brains and talk over a pint or two. A lot of what works for pro brewers can be scaled down to the home brew level. It gives me more to think about in this hobby.

 

[tke743]

I don't want to be THAT GUY in the tour group who asks in-depth questions when the goal is to give visitors an overview and send them to the tasting room.

Nobody wants to be THAT GUY. I never ask questions unless there is time after the tour and I have a one question or less rule.

 

[Zadkiel]

I've toured several, and found that the tours tend to be aimed at the average beer consumer. It's meant primarily to help them understand the beer they're drinking and to have some appreciation of the process. A chance to look under the hood. The brewery's history is interesting, as well. Plus, it's cool to show off all that stainless steel!

I haven't picked up much helpful info for brewing just from the tours. I don't want to be THAT GUY in the tour group who asks in-depth questions when the goal is to give visitors an overview and send them to the tasting room.

However, I gain a LOT of knowledge if I have the chance to talk one-on-one with the brewers. That doesn't necessarily require a tour, just being fortunate enough to get 10 or 15 minutes to pick the brewers' brains and talk over a pint or two. A lot of what works for pro brewers can be scaled down to the home brew level. It gives me more to think about in this hobby.

Recently did a brewery tour at Brasserie Surrealiste in Brussels, the tour was very much pitched at non-brewers, which was the majority of the tour group that was mostly a stag group, but the brewer didn't seem at all to mind me asking a couple of questions - I was sure to approach him at 'quiet' moments though, after he'd given his speech about a piece of equipment or a process and was standing idly by for a moment while the group looked it over before he moved onto the next one, and only did it a few times. He didn't seem bothered, but I was also trying not to be 'that guy' while also satisfying my curiousity

He also did hang around for the tasting afterwards and I was able to ask him a few questions, in particular about how they salt their Gose, which is the only Gose I've ever tasted that I actually liked, as craft Gose in the UK is massively over-salted and tastes like sea water to me.

 

[OldN1ck]

Had a great brewery tour experience at Lost & Grounded (Bristol, UK) about a year ago... chap doing the tour was tap room manager, and admitted he didn't know all the details, but his brother was head brewer and would be happy to answer any more in-depth questions. At the end of the tour another homebrewer & I got chatting to the head brewer, who was a great guy & seemed more than happy to talk brewing with us for as long as we liked... we ended up having to tear ourselves away as the rest of the tour were getting into the tasting session and we did not want to miss out

 

[betarhoalphadelta]

I definitely this isn't the most "brewing information" tour of any, but I've done the Coors tour in Golden twice and even as a homebrewer, I really enjoyed it. It was educational for someone that knows very little about the process, not for an actual brewer. But it was very cool and I think they do a really good job with it.

I did the Guinness tour in Dublin and I thought it was silly. It really wasn't a tour, nor was it particularly educational. It was pretty much a commercial for Guinness.

That said, it's not a brewery but the Jameson tour also in Dublin was fantastic. I think it had a very good mix of actual information about the process without being way too technical for the other people in our group (wife and in-laws).

 

[day_trippr]

When I was in college at Denver University we wore a path up to Golden every Saturday. We were obligated to take the "tour" as a condition to enter the hospitality room - which was always loaded with brews that never saw commercial sales.

Cheers!

 

[MaxStout]

I definitely this isn't the most "brewing information" tour of any, but I've done the Coors tour in Golden twice and even as a homebrewer, I really enjoyed it. It was educational for someone that knows very little about the process, not for an actual brewer. But it was very cool and I think they do a really good job with it.

I did the Guinness tour in Dublin and I thought it was silly. It really wasn't a tour, nor was it particularly educational. It was pretty much a commercial for Guinness.

That said, it's not a brewery but the Jameson tour also in Dublin was fantastic. I think it had a very good mix of actual information about the process without being way too technical for the other people in our group (wife and in-laws).

I think it's worth taking a tour of one the big macrobreweries, just to have an appreciation of how they can produce at such a scale.

I toured the AB facility while at Busch Gardens (you could take the monorail from the park to the brewery). This was a long time ago, in my pre-homebrewing days. But it was quite interesting.

 

[Broothru]

I'm not sure of 'informative' or 'best' tours, but I thoroughly enjoyed Heineken in Amsterdam, Fullers in London, Flying Dog (before it left Maryland behind), Dogfish Head in Delaware, Troeg's in Pennsylvania, Firestone Walker in California, Greem Bench in Florida, Sam Adams in Boston (original brewery), a bunch in Asheville, NC, etc., ad nauseam.

Did I mention, I really like visiting breweries, large and small, foreign and domestic. I just really like breweries. And no, I'm never that guy.

Edit: Left out Devil's Backbone in Central Virginia, and some rando micro-pub I wandered into once in Moscow (Russia, not Idaho). The tour guide spoke very good English, BTW. Can't say much for the beer, but I've still got the souvenir pilsner glass.

 

[VTMongoose]

My favorite brewery tours have been:

• Troegs, Hershey, PA - These guys have a pretty amazing setup for how compact it is. For me seeing this level of automation in a brewery this size was very impressive.
• De Halve Maan, Brugges, Belgium - Another extremely impressive brewery from a process standpoint and top-notch beer to boot.
• Sierra Nevada, Mills River, NC - Basically the Disneyland of beer as far as places I've been on the east coast. This place is incomprehensively huge and immaculately maintained.
• Allagash, Portland, ME - Every tour I've been on here has had extremely friendly tour guides that are very happy to answer any and all questions you have and you get a lot of great interesting history of the company and tastings.

 

[hungupdown]

Living in the Scottish Highlands, I've done many (maybe 100) Speyside distillery tours, with various sets of visitors.

Over the main visitor season, the tour guides are mostly temporary staff (often foreign students). They know the tour spiel, but can answer few questions, even fairly simple ones.
I don't trying asking them anything, I'll just ask friends who work there.

Some do more advanced, and more expensive, 'Maltmaster tours'. Glenfiddich blending tours, are now £75 and £250.