Beer!
Well, a brewery tour of Abita Springs Brewing Company, a local and successful brewery. I don't particularly enjoy drinking beer or most other forms of alcohol but I love seeing how they're made. (Which is why I should stop and tour the Jack Daniels Distillery next time I go to visit Grandma.)
Abita is a small brewing company. At a rough estimate, they produce about 150,000+ barrels of beer a year. (For comparison, a company like Anheuser-Busch would produce in the millions at least.) They've got seven year-round brews, five seasonal brews, three harvest brews, two big-bottle brews, and a root beer. Their beer, as near as I can tell, is quite good; their root beer is excellent.
They've got a good water-source for their brewing; Abita Springs is sitting on top of an artesian source, and it produces delicious water.
Their visitor's center is a nice little pub centered around a bar. An open bar. A free open bar with all of their main brews, the current seasonal brews, and the root beer on tap. There's a sign with "Help Yourself" on it.
Let me say, if I actually liked the taste of beer, this would have been fantastically awesome. I did try a few varieties, and I like their pecan ale harvest brew. As much as I like any beer.
The tour starts with a video showing the beer-making process and explaining it. The nice lady who got our attention and made us shut up to watch it warned us the video would last for twelve minutes, and eleven minutes in, they would temporarily close the bar. So keep your eyes on the time, because you'll want some cold beer when you go into the brewery itself; it's hot today.
Video was interesting. Abita was founded in 1986, and they produce about 1500 barrels of beer that first year. Nowadays, they donate more than that to charity. They've moved once and expanded several times. (According to a fellow who worked there, they're likely to drastically expand in the next few years or so. They're doing well, they are.)
Because Abita is a relatively new brewery, they can install very modern equipment a lot more easily (less accounting worries) than older breweries. So they're a lot more energy-efficient than they might otherwise be, which really helps. (If you care about the green-ness of your breweries, Abita is quite green.)
After the video, we went on a walking tour. Lots of gleaming silver metal, and the smell of the place... There's some parts that smell very much like beer, but at the brewing equipment itself, it's more... hops, I think. Fascinating.
The floor's a bit wet because they keep their equipment very clean. If you weren't wearing closed-toed shoes, they'd give you blue foot-covers.
After the walking tour, it was back to the little pub. I left shortly after that; it can get quite loud in there, and the beer didn't do much for me. But man, that was seriously fun and interesting.
Abita is a small brewing company. At a rough estimate, they produce about 150,000+ barrels of beer a year. (For comparison, a company like Anheuser-Busch would produce in the millions at least.) They've got seven year-round brews, five seasonal brews, three harvest brews, two big-bottle brews, and a root beer. Their beer, as near as I can tell, is quite good; their root beer is excellent.
They've got a good water-source for their brewing; Abita Springs is sitting on top of an artesian source, and it produces delicious water.
Their visitor's center is a nice little pub centered around a bar. An open bar. A free open bar with all of their main brews, the current seasonal brews, and the root beer on tap. There's a sign with "Help Yourself" on it.
Let me say, if I actually liked the taste of beer, this would have been fantastically awesome. I did try a few varieties, and I like their pecan ale harvest brew. As much as I like any beer.
The tour starts with a video showing the beer-making process and explaining it. The nice lady who got our attention and made us shut up to watch it warned us the video would last for twelve minutes, and eleven minutes in, they would temporarily close the bar. So keep your eyes on the time, because you'll want some cold beer when you go into the brewery itself; it's hot today.
Video was interesting. Abita was founded in 1986, and they produce about 1500 barrels of beer that first year. Nowadays, they donate more than that to charity. They've moved once and expanded several times. (According to a fellow who worked there, they're likely to drastically expand in the next few years or so. They're doing well, they are.)
Because Abita is a relatively new brewery, they can install very modern equipment a lot more easily (less accounting worries) than older breweries. So they're a lot more energy-efficient than they might otherwise be, which really helps. (If you care about the green-ness of your breweries, Abita is quite green.)
After the video, we went on a walking tour. Lots of gleaming silver metal, and the smell of the place... There's some parts that smell very much like beer, but at the brewing equipment itself, it's more... hops, I think. Fascinating.
The floor's a bit wet because they keep their equipment very clean. If you weren't wearing closed-toed shoes, they'd give you blue foot-covers.
After the walking tour, it was back to the little pub. I left shortly after that; it can get quite loud in there, and the beer didn't do much for me. But man, that was seriously fun and interesting.