"Anheuser-Busch Brewery Tour" Saint Louis Travelogue by Paulie_D

The Brewery is located just four miles from the Arch, which is in the heart of downtown. It is an impressive complex, consisting of several rather large and ominous brick buildings connected by lots of pipes.

The tour leaves from AB's interactive museum, which has all sorts of information on the company's history, the brewing process, their marketing, and their community involvement.

Here we met our guide for the tour. Throughout the tour, you are given a lot of information that comes at you very quickly so you do have to pay attention.

The tour, proper, starts out with a visit to the Clydesdales' paddock and stables.

The Anheuser-Busch Clydesdales were formally introduced to August A. Busch Sr., President of Anheuser-Busch, Inc., by his son on April 7, 1933. Prohibition had just been repealed, and to commemorate the event, the team of horses were hitched to a wagon and thundered down Pestalozzi Street in St. Louis, carrying with it the first case of post-Prohibition beer from the St. Louis Anheuser-Busch brewery.

My, these horses are really pampered, just look at the chandelier and stained glass windows they have to look at.

Neigh!

Unfortunately, at the time I visited, most of the horses were out for their exercise. However, there was one still 'at home'

The full-grown Clydesdale should stand 18 hands (about 6 feet) at the shoulder and weigh between 2,000 and 2,300 pounds.

The ideal horse is bay in color, has a blaze of white on its face, a black mane and black tail.

Most important, the Clydesdale will have white feathering on all four legs and feet.

All hitch horses are geldings, characterized by their even temperment and stronger, more natural draft horse appearance.

Nice garage!

Also inside the stables, they keep a fully restored example of one of their old delivery wagons.

Climbing on it is NOT appreciated as one of my group was told in no uncertain terms.

Brew House

From the stables it's off to the lagering area, kept at a nice cool (chilly) 50° F.

St. Louis can get pretty hot in the summer, so I imagine this is one of the favorite stopping points along the way. Too bad it's in the beginning of the tour.

In here, they have 55 or so huge lauder-tuns where their beers are fermented for up to 3 weeks.

Photography is not permitted (due to union rules, I was told) in the lagering area so I can't give you a picture of the beechwood aging process. Here's one of the Brew House which is the next stop.

Mash Tanks

Behind all this quite lovely architecture are the stainless steel mash tanks where the brewing process begins as they mix ground barley malt with water. Milled rice is mixed with water in a cooker. The rice is boiled and combined with the malt in the mash tank. There, natural enzymes in the malt break down the grain’s starch into fermentable sugars.

As we leave the Brew House, we get a short film on how the beer process all comes together.

Bevo eating a chicken leg

From the Brew House we head down to the Bevo Bottling Plant.

Bevo was a non-alcoholic malt beverage, or "near beer", manufactured in the United States by the Anheuser-Busch company. It enjoyed its greatest success during prohibition.

Despite the coining of the brand name from the word "beverage", the product was pronounced "Bee-vo".

Some Bevo advertising featured the character "Renard the Fox" (based on the protagonist of a medieval French folk-tale).

Photography is not permitted in here either so here's a picture of 'Bevo'

The finished beer is packaged into bottles, cans and draft kegs.

Packaging lines are capable of filling up to 2,600,000 12oz. cans or 1,400,000 12oz. bottles per day.

The draft beer line is capable of producing the equivalent of 2.3 million 12 oz. containers per day.

Trolley

After the bottling plant, we are loaded on to the trolley which takes us back up the hill to the Hospitality area where you are allowed two FREE draft beers.

Overall, a good, informative, tour especially considering the price.