Can finally check this one off my bucket list: New Belgium Brewery Tour.
Sorry if it’s tl;dr….
For those who don't know, their tour is perpetually booked up 2 months in advance. Tuesday through Saturday, from 11:00 to 4pm starting every half hour. The Tuesday -Thursday ones fill up about 2 weeks ahead. The weekends are usually full up until that 7th-8th week. It's pretty crazy really.
Anyway, I got on thursday night to check, of course, fri/sat full for 2 months out. I happen to get back on the next day, friday to see if a new day had popped up 2 months from now, but low and behold, there were 10 slots (out of 20) open on saturday, the next day. I didn't even take the time to call wife or anyone, I booked 4 asap. Within 15 minutes I told my wife, looked back at calendar, and they were gone. Some party must have cancelled and actually updated it online.
So I got a Saturday tour with 18 hours notice, 11:30 slot.
Tour was 90 minutes. Man do they have a nice facility.
Arriving.. the signage out front
Lots of tasty goodness on tap in the tasting room. It was empty when we got there at 11:15; by 1pm after the tour, it was shoulder to shoulder.
The main production room. The floor is at the top of these tanks, which are about 30’ tall. The big one front and center is the mash tun. In foreground is lauter tun. Even closer to front but not in picture is boil kettle. They boil by siphoning up wort from lauter tun through center of boil kettle, then it pours over a piping hot plate, like a shallow river, which flash boils it immediately as it enters the kettle.. They can boil the whole thing in 20 minutes, basically the length of time it takes to transfer wort from lauter tun to boil kettle. A standard coil system which they used to use took 2 hours.
Every employee on their 1 year anniversary gets a fat tire bike. They differ every year. These bikes were parked all over the place. Almost 500 ‘coworkers’ as they call them, not employees.
On their 5 year, they get a paid vacation to Belgium to go on the ‘pub crawl’ their founder did some 20 years ago.
On their 10th year, they get a 4 week paid sabbatical to do whatever interests them.
This was inspired by the first person to reach ten years (outside of two founders), they asked what he wanted, he said he loves rock climbing, so they built a rock climbing wall in the cellar room (you can see it below). They can’t do something like that for every 10 year person, so they came up with the paid leave idea. Some people combine it with their vacation to get ~8-10 weeks off.
Cool story; this guy, the first employee, basically lived on their (two owners, husband/wife) couch and helped them brew in the basement. A year later (1991ish I think?), they had their business model and ready to go into licensed sales, but this guy wanted to move to east coast and start his own brewpub. They begged him to stay saying he was valuable to them.
He called his girlfriend who lived on east coast and asked her to move back to ft. collins.. she said only if you marry me. They got engaged on the phone, he stayed, and the rest is history.. Talk about a life changing decision...
They continued brewing in their house for like 2-3 years. Then moved into small location, then into current location, then expanded.
Their barrel storage. Holy cow. 30+ huge barrels. She said as far as they know, it’s the biggest cellar storage in the US, and they are about to double it in size, with 30 more barrels coming in.
Some whiskey barrel aging.. unfortunately we didn’t get to sample these small batch beers.
We tasted the brown sour (La Folie) side by side to the same beer pre-aged (pre-soured). Pretty interesting. The base beer was pretty dang good as it was, but then the soured version just kicks you in the tongue.
All of their storage/fermenting is outside. They brew 24/7.
Quite the bottling facility.
The Houston beer drinkers will appreciate this: A shrine to Saint Arnold
Along the tour we tasted pretty generous samples (~7oz) of the Abbey double, Lips of Faith Paardebloem, fat tire, the La Folie and it's pre-soured version, and the shift lager. I won a shift lager to take home by answering the trivia question: which CO brewery produces the most canned beer.. Oskar Blues.
After the tour we went down the street to Fort Collins Brewery for lunch and a few beers. Wanted to go to Odell’s next door, but we had an 80 minute drive ahead of us and were already buzzed enough.
Man within a mile of each other is New Belgium, Odell's, Funkwerks, and Fort Collins Brewery.. There were some houses right there, I was thinking, if I lived here, I'd be drinking at one of these breweries 7 days a week.
[This message has been edited by 62strat (edited 7/23/2013 1:59p).]
