We got Ryan’s mom a ticket to the “Beermaster Tour” at the Anheuser-Busch brewery in St. Louis for Christmas. Of course, we didn’t want to send her off on the tour alone, so I got to go, too! It was a lot of fun, and very informative. We got to go in quite a few places that the regular tour doesn’t visit, and we got to sample both “chip beer,” and five-hour-old beer straight from the finishing tank! We also learned more about the history of the company…just when I thought I’d heard it all!

Here are some of the “no-entry” areas:

The fermentation area is not part of the free tour…very cool!

We also got to go past normal checkpoints, like where the “chip beer” sampling was:

There’s a beauty to the architecture of the brewery:

And to the interiors of the buildings:

Walking the floor of the bottling area was especially interesting:

Of course, we visited the Clydesdale stable, and we even got to see the tack (and a horseshoe!) up close!

We were a little surprised to see a Clydesdale inside the tour center, though!

Of course, the high point of the tour was trying the beer straight from the finishing tank. I’m not a big Budweiser fan, but even I had to admit this was good. It was so fresh, and so, so cold!

The “Beermaster Suite,” located in the Learning Center, had been open for less than a month…it was a really cool place to be!

Next time, we’re hoping to go to the beer school!