Sprecher Brewery Tour

Yesterday I got to meet Amanda's lovely parents, Julie and Don. They drove over from Mineral Point to hang out with Amanda. Being the genius she is, she thought it would be a good idea to go to the Sprecher Brewery for a tour. I have only been on one tour before, and it was the Miller Brewing Tour. Sprecher was way, way better. We actually got to go into the brewery area, where they have the tanks for the mixing, cooking and whatever else is involved in making beer. We didn't get to go into the fermentation area, but, we got to see where they keep the beer once it is completed, before it is bottled. Learned a few fun facts:

1. Sprecher Root Beer was voted #1 Root beer in America by the New York Times
2. Sprecher started in 1985 and has 50 total employees...50. Thats it!
3. They sell 50,000 barrels of root beer per year, vs 14,000 total combined barrels of the other beer and soda.
4. They use natural and local ingredients...including honey. I wish I could have gotten a picture, because there was a tub of honey...660 lbs of honey...that is a serious tub of honey.

Here are a few pictures from the adventure:These are ingredients, lots of ingredients

These are bourbon barrels used for special edition brews

<--- As you can see...this is 1,000 liters/250 gallons of Root Beer Syrup.




These are the stacks of finished and ready to ship product. --->

To the left here is the Sprecher label and it was designed after the founder's family shield. Or that was the thought. He believed his family crest involved the Griffin, however, he later learned that was entirely the case but it was too late to change it.

Once we were done with the tour we went and had a burger at a local burger joint and all in all it was a good time. Oh, once the tour is over, you get 4 free samples of beer, a small glass for the samples, which you get to take home and all you can drink soda. It was great!