Brewery Tours Across the Globe

Why Not Tour. .  a Brewery?

Touring a brewery, distillery, or really any factory is a standby way for me to pass a couple of hours while I am waiting for a flight or need a much needed break on a road trip.  Plus most tours offer samples.  Over the past four years, I have visited five breweries that I will compare and contrast here.  The breweries range over two continents and some very small islands.  However, they are brand names that most folks from the US will be familiar with.  I have listed them here from my personal least to most favorite. 

Budweiser Tour

The Budweiser brewery I visited was in Fairfield, California.  Fairfield is a little city between San Francisco and Sacramento, and I passed through it every time I went snowboarding the in the Lake Tahoe area (Lake Tahoe Snowboarding and More).

Outside the Budweiser brewery in Fairfield, California

The tour was free (pro), but not as interactive as other brewery tours (con).  The entire tour and tasting lasted about 30-40 minutes.  A tour guide led us through areas where fermentation tanks were held and where bottles were filled and packaged.  After the tour, our guide led us to a tasting room where we sampled a few of Budweiser’s current offerings.  We visited the Budweiser brewery three years ago, and I have just now seen one of the beers we sampled at the brewery in a market.  One of the attractions of visiting this brewery, is that the Jelly Belly factory is located across the street.  We toured both factories in the same day.  While I am happy that I took advantage of the free Budweiser brewery tour in Fairfield, it is not an activity I would spend my time repeating. 

On the tour at the Budweiser brewery.

Heineken Tour

The Heineken brewery tour is located in the home country of Heineken, The Netherlands.  The Heineken tour, which is located in the heart of downtown Amsterdam, is more of an interactive ad experience.  More of the self-led tour had to do with all of Heineken’s innovative advertising than how Heineken is actually made.  The second half of the tour was exhibit after exhibit of how Heineken has been advertised.  There is even an exhibit where we placed ourselves in Heineken ads using a green screen.  Unfortunately we could not keep copies of the ads; they were merely available for us to view online for a couple of months.  The tour did include a tasting station where we could taste the wort, a liquid that is the precursor to the final product.  In the tasting room we were treated to three glasses of Heineken, which offset the price of admission to this tour.  Yes, unlike the Budweiser brewery, this tour has an admission fee of 18 euros.  Also unlike the Budweiser brewery, the Heineken experience requires a couple of hours to complete. 

Part of the length of time the tour requires is due to the tour extension outside of the actual complex.  After finishing the tour, we walked across the street to the canal, where a Heineken canal boat was waiting to ferry visitors to the Heineken store in another part of the city.  Along the way, visitors get a short city tour through Amsterdam’s famous canals.  Riding in a canal boat is often a goal of visitors to Amsterdam, and this free shuttle is a cheap way to execute that desire.  After reaching the Heineken store, we showed our ticket stubs from the tour for a free gift, a bottle opener.  Between the free bottle opener and the rubber wristband with detachable buttons that served as our drink tickets in the tasting room, I would say Heineken is a master of advertisement at their tour touts. 

Kona Tour

Most Kona beer is actually brewed on the US mainland, simply because it is cheaper to brew and distribute to the rest of the US mainland from the US mainland than from Hawaii.  However, Kona still has a brewery in Kona, Hawaii.  Kona is a little city on the west coast of Hawaii, also known as the big island.  The Kona brewery is the smallest of all breweries on this list, with the building where the beer making actually occurs, the size of a high school gymnasium.  After our very short tour, short due to the relatively small size of the brewery, we sat down on the patio to enjoy a sampling of beers.  Sampling the beers, is the best part of visiting the Kona brewery, because in Kona they brew and distribute beers only available in Hawaii.  It was at this tasting I tried a lemongrass wheat beer which I incessantly sought out at every bar the rest of our trip, which lasted about 7 more days.  The Kona tour was not as expensive as European brewery tours (Heineken and Guinness) I have taken, but it also was not free.  It cost $5.  We did get to keep Kona brand sampling glasses.   We visited the Kona brewery while on a cruise, and the brewery was a short 10 minute walk from the pier. 

Waiting for the tour to begin at the Kona brewery on the big island.

Coors Tour

The Coors Brewery tour in Golden, Colorado is hands down the best free tour on this list.  We visited the brewery, while waiting for our outbound flight a few hours later.  Our tour began with a narrated shuttle ride through Golden from the parking lot to the tour complex.  At the tour starting point we were equipped with audio sets.  At each stop on the tour, we simply entered the number on a red sign into the audio player to hear a description of what we were observing.  Stopping at every red sign and listening to the recording was not required, and many other visitors passed us as they wandered through the tour area to the tasting room.  The Coors tour was quite comprehensive with observation rooms for the most important steps of the brewing process and displays with diagrams for the steps not able to be seen from an observation room.  In the tasting room we were treated to three samples of Coors beers, including beers only available in Colorado. 

Photos from inside the Coors brewery of  brewing and packing.  

The Coors brewery in Golden is the largest single brewery in the world.  As we drove past the brewery on our way to the airport, we had views of the entire 5 mile long complex .  I think the Budweiser tour was so short, because the Budweiser brewery in Fairfield is small compared to the Coors brewery in golden.  Budweiser has several breweries throughout the US which their most popular beers brewed at all of them.  All Coors Banquet though, the first and signature Coors beer, is brewed in their Golden Brewery.  So in effect, Coors has put a lot of effort into one guest exhibit instead of spreading their resources all over as Budweiser has.  One negative to the Coors tour is that we had to wait in line about 40 minutes outside to start the tour, there was no wait at the Budweiser tour.  Of course, we did visit on a Saturday during spring break.  Presumably the non-break season mid week visiting hours require a shorter wait. 

The entrance to the Coors brewery tour.

Guinness

Outside the St. James Gate Brewery in Dublin

Let me first start by saying the tour of the Saint James Gate Brewery in Dublin, Ireland is awesome.  I may be a bit partial to this tour because Guinness is my favorite beer.  Visiting this brewery was the first item on a bucket list I made when I turned 21.  My favoritism aside, the Saint James Gate tour is quite an experience.  As with the Heineken tour, this tour has a substantial admission fee (16 euros), although those who do not want a beer at the end get a discount.  The first step of the tour is viewing the original lease for the Saint James Gate Brewery.  Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000 year lease for the brewery at 45 pounds per year, which is still valid.  In addition to learning about the process by which Guinness was invented and is now made, we attended a class on how to pour the perfect pint of Guinness, at additional cost.  As visiting this brewery was the first item on the bucket list I had made so many years before I did not hesitate to splurge on the class. 

Enjoying my perfectly poured pint of Guinness and showing off my certificate from the perfect pint class.

At the end of the class, we were presented with a certificate, which hangs in my office still today, as we drank our perfectly poured Guinnesses.  We then headed up to the Gravity Bar where we were treated to a 360 degree view of Dublin and many of the sites we had visited earlier as we drank another Guinness. 

Enjoying the view in the gravity bar at the Saint James Gate Brewery

The bartender drew a shamrock on my pint in the gravity bar.

Breweries are available to tour all over the US and all over the world.  I look forward to touring more in the future that I am not yet aware of.  Have a brewery tour I haven’t talked about in this post?  Tell me about is in the comment section below.