Sierra Nevada tour?

[LostHopper]

Has anyone toured the Mills Creek brewery in NC?

I'll be there this summer and was wondering if it was worth including it on the schedule. Wicked Weed is another popular stop there.

 

[myelo]

Yes, absolutely worth going. It's not a quaint little craft brewery, it's more like the Biltmore Estates of beer. The grounds are beautiful, the facilities are great and the taproom is awesome (and big) with several hard-to-impossible-to-find SN beers on tap. The tours fill up fast so it's best to reserve ahead of time. Otherwise you can walk around upstairs corridor on your own. They have a beer geek tour that I want to try but haven't done that yet.

Wicked Weed is also great but if you like sours the Funkatorium is like going to heaven without having to die.

 

[SoggyWood]

We actually toured the NC brewery this past weekend.

If you're heading in the summer, I would check their website now to try to book a tour. They seriously book up months in advance. We couldn't get a reservation for one so we showed up at 11:30, put our name on the 'stand-by' list, and drank beer hoping for no-shows. You can actually walk through a lot of the facility un-guided as the brewery was laid out with visitors in mind.

We luckily got on the 12:30 tour and it kicked butt. You get a full tour of the facility (which is huge), including a trip to the hop cooler where you get to break hole-cones off large hop bricks and rub them in your hands to get an idea of how a brewer might select a batch. They take you to a tasting room where you get a flight of about 8-10 SN beers to cap it all off. Mind you, the whole tour is FREE. We had a blast.

As for Wicked Weed, the Funkatorium is a must...assuming you like sours....hell, even if you don't like sours go anyway. you will afterwards.