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May 23, 2001
On a trip to the St. Louis area last weekend, I had the opportunity to take the tour of the main Anheuser Busch brewery, the one that started it all. I know, I know, what is a beer connoisseur doing with a detailed profile of the "enemy" on his web site devoted to the enjoyment of fine beer? Well, back off! Although most of their beers aren't very good, they do have good commercials.
Anyway, this is the first brewery tour for the BrewPalce, with hopefully more to come.
The Brewery is located just four miles from the Arch, which is in the heart of downtown. An impressive complex, it consists of several rather large and ominous brick buildings connected by lots of pipes.
The tour leaves from their interactive museum, which has all sorts of information on AB's history, the brewing process, their marketing, and their community involvement. You even get to munch on some different kinds of barley. It is here that they try to tell you that rice is a good thing for beer - that it is expensive and rounds out the flavor. We know better - rice is a cheap adjunct used solely to lessen production costs. Additionally, there is a German beer stein museum and a gift shop with every sort of AB accessory imaginable.
Below is a photo of AB telling everyone how great, smart and innovative they are. I will point out this hypocrisy for the betterment of my BrewPalace denizons: AB by no means was the first to use a dating system - in fact they initially fought to prevent others from using it! We all know now that the Microbrew guys have been using it for a long time - Bud just caught on and turned it to their advantage with their huge advertising budget. (The Born On system was theirs, but that is just a marketing name).
The tour starts out with a long stop at the Clydesdales - here is one that they put out in this pen just for people like me to snap their photo of. I don't remember the horse's name.
Inside the stables, they have their famous wagon. Here is a nice blurry shot of me in front of it.
From the stables it's off to the lagering area, kept at a nice cool 50 degrees F. St. Louis can get pretty damned hot in the summer, so I imagine this is one of the favorite stopping points along the way. Too bad it's in the beginning of the tour.
In here, they have 55 or so mega-huge lauder-tuns where their beers are fermented for up to 3 weeks. These suckers were huge. I would estimate they had a 15 ft. diameter, and were 50ft. long. They wouldn't allow photographs in here, but I snapped on of the prized "Beechwood Aging System":
Wow. That was some impressive technology. I don't really know what the big secret is. It's not like any micro brewer actually wants his beer to taste like Bud. Besides, I would be willing to bet that the reason Bud is #1 in the US and Worldwide has more to do with AB being excellent and agressive businessmen, along with some outstanding marketing.
From the lagering building, it was off to the brewing building, where the majority of the good stuff happens. Unfortunately, we were only in this building for a minute or two. Looked real fancy, as you can see from the photo below.
From there, it was off to the bottling facility, named Bevo - some British fox or something like that. Bevo is supposed to be eating a chicken leg.
This is the other place where pictures were not allowed - not overly exciting anyway.
The final stop (as any good brewery tour should be) was the tasting room, where we got to have a couple of beers. I stuck with the Killarney's and the Michelob Black and Tan - I wasn't about to touch Bud Light!
Well that's about it for the tour. It lasted about an hour (plus time for a couple of beers). It was light on the details of the brewing process, but otherwise it was very Disney-like - good sound system, huge video walls that showed fancy details about the process and the bottling plant. Quite good production quality. I imagine more brewing process details would be way beyond their customers, who clearly don't like beer that much and aren't interested in how to make it.
Overall, a good tour. Given that besides the Arch and a boat ride, there isn't much else to see in olde St. Louis, you should check it out. It's free, and you get to have a couple of beers at the end. I recommend the following AB products:
| Beer | Rating |
| Killarney's Red Lager | 3.5 |
| Michelob Golden Pilsner | 4.0 |
| Michelob Black and Tan |
4.0 |