Quick trip to visit the Clydesdales

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We have been to St. Louis once before and stopped by the Budweiser Brewery to take a tour.  However, we did not know that they sell out really fast.  So this time we pre-booked the tour that we wanted to do a few weeks in advance.

At the St. Louis location, the options for Budweiser tours are endless. Choices range from a free tour of the facility to a tour solely focused on meeting the famous Clydesdales, to a full-blown brewmaster’s tour. All tours explore some portion of the facility, and all tours (even the free ones) have sampling opportunities for those 21+.    

 

The tour we picked was an interactive tour with lots of knowledge on how a macro brewery works, great views of beer being made in mass quantities, and plenty of samples along the way.  The guide we had was amazing!  

Tour options can change depending on the time of year, so make sure to check BudweiserTour.com to see what they are offering when you visit and book ahead.   We decided on the Beer master Tour, which we booked three weeks prior.

Beermaster Tour – This tour lasts two-plus hours and explores the brewery as a whole.  Rather than just focusing on the facilities, this tour also focuses on the brewing process, showing participants how a macro brewery works. The Beermaster tour is the most expensive option; however, this tour includes the most samples and a variety of gifts for Beermaster’s guests. 

 

We were able to see a few Clydesdales that weren’t on travel.   After which we went into the stables,  which was beautiful in itself. They have three wagons in there that use to be used for parades.  There is a chandler just as you walk in that will take your breath away.  

There is also a  room for the harness the horses wear in the parades.

 

Once we explored the brewery’s stables, we were then led to the beer production areas. The first place we were able to see was the Beechwood aging process  – complete with St. Louis’ iconic “Gloria” tank that supposedly helped the Blues win the Stanley Cup.   Here we were able to sample beer. 

Our guide told us this FUN FACT:  Each tank holds over 1.2 million 12-oz beers. If you started to drink today from the brew tank, it would take drinking one beer an hour for the next ~130+ years to drink all of the beer held in the tank.  

We were then brought to where the beer is actually made. It is a historic six-story Brew House. Built in 1891, the Brew House has its own clock tower, ornate wrought-iron railings, and hop vine chandeliers from the 1904 World’s Fair. 

Here you will see the Mash Tanks used to help the crushed grain turn into sugar, this room was warmer than the outside.  Anheuser-Busch use to bring people wanting to invest in the business to this building.  That is why it is so ornate with the chandelles, the railings, and the tile mosaics.  This mosaic on the second floor was made for the family's German heritage.  Make sure to look at it.

 

On the lower floor, you will see the Brew Kettle Process.  In 2020 they changed the original copper tanks to stainless steel as they are easier to clean.  

 

As you leave the building make sure to look closely at the mosaic to see if you can find the mistake they made in the mosaic.  This one represents the family coming to America.

 

I did not get a photo of The Lyon School House, built-in 1868, it is the oldest structure in the Anheuser-Busch complex. It served as a school for the children there until it was decided that the children should not be that close to the brewery.   Then it served as the company’s headquarters from 1907 until 1981.  The photo below is of the entire plant.  Now it is a  museum and if you want to get married there it is used as the location the bride will get ready.

 

The bottling area is held in a building called BEVO and indicated by a whimsical fox perched on the building, he was the mascot for BEVO, a non-alcoholic beer produced during the Prohibition Era by Anheuser-Busch, which helped to keep their workforce in place throughout the Prohibition Era.

When we visited the machines were down for maintenance, so we didn’t get to see any beer being bottled. But we did see them filling the boxes.  Our guide told us that this location does more than Budweiser and Bud Light and is known to bottle a wide variety of Budweiser-branded brews such as Elysian or Shock Top.

After visiting BEVO, we went back down to street level and hopped onto a trolley to make one more stop.   We walked down a back alley and took a freight elevator.  Here our guide tapped a “keg” where we were able to have a glass of Budweiser that had never been exposed to air.

 

After this, we went back to the original room that we started in and were able to sample a few different products that the company makes.

To be honest, I am not a beer person, that is my husband.  But I really did enjoy the tour, the samples, and the history that our guide shared with us.

Happy Traveling.