We know, we know… the first day of spring was like, two seconds ago. To us, spring is “pre-summer.” Pre-summer gets us thinking about all of the wonderful places we want to travel when real summer hits, including the best breweries. With breweries popping up all over the nation, there are so many begging for us to show up and sample their product. Okay, maybe we’re the ones begging, but we just really love brewery tours.
Pencil these into your summer plans:
Magic Hat Brewery, South Burlington, Vermont
Magic Hat has always been known for their fun personality and that carries over into their brewery tours. The self guided-tour is probably one of the nicer aspects if you missed their guided tour – they have computer screens that tell you the story of the brewery and how things are made, so it’s a good alternative if you’re not really a guided tour person but still want to check things out. And we’re not kidding when we say they have a “fun personality” here is a yelp review that we love:
“As soon as we walked in we were enveloped by the titillatingly creepy carnival atmosphere. Far from off-putting, it makes you want to tattoo snake scales on your face, learn how to swallow flaming swords, and run away with a Brylcreem-slicked ringmaster. This ain’t your average brewery. This is “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” Something wicked good, that is.”
Deschutes Brewery, Bend, Oregon
It’s frequently considered one of the most informative brewery tours you can go on and people really leave feeling like they learned a lot. In addition to the tour being free, their beer tastings are free. Also, they have a 100% organic beer called Green Lakes Organic Amber Ale.
Anheuser Busch, St. Louis, Missouri
We love our smaller breweries, but if you’re a true drinker, you have to check out an Anheuser Busch tour once in your life to see how the big boys do it. The tour is free and year-round and you’ll get to see cool stuff like the famous Budweiser Clydesdales (yes, they will pose for pictures with you). If you’re a real beer connoisseur, they also offer a BeerMaster Tour to really get into the nitty gritty of how they make their brew. The BeerMaster tour isn’t free (it’s $25) but you do get free presents, so it’s totally worth it.