While in St. Louis, I decided to take the tour of the Budweiser brewery.  After all, it had been highly recommended by several people, and it often appears on lists of the best brewery tours in America.

I had high hopes, but I was disappointed.

The tour docents weren’t particularly knowledgeable about the process of brewing beer.  The tour route made only the most cursory of dips into the workings of the factory.  And my fellow tourists?  They all seemed more concerned with the free beer samples than with the tour proper.

Free beer at the end of the free tour, so it wasn't all bad

I should qualify this by saying that I’ve been on only one other brewery tour, that of the Harpoon Brewery in Boston.  The Harpoon tour was excellent.  It probably helped that the tour was given by one of the brewers, so he had intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the brewery.

One of the brewers/tour guides at the Harpoon Brewery in Boston last year. Pulling something from one of the fermentation tanks, I think?

There was one bright spot on the Budweiser tour (besides the free beer at the end).  They offered an optional “beer school” for the nominal charge of $10.  The class consisted of tasting a flight of Anheuser-Busch beers, along with a discussion of the ingredients and tips on pouring the different styles.  That last bit I found particularly informative.  I had no idea about the correct way to pour unfiltered beer.

A funny moment during the beer school came when we were smelling and tasting one of the samples of beer.  The class “professor” asked what we all smelled.  I swirled the beer in my glass, lifted it to my nose, and inhaled.

My first thought was that it smelled like my hockey gear.  I kid you not.  My second thought was, “That can’t be right,” then, “Wait… maybe my gear smells like beer instead of the other way around?”

I revisited the issue at hockey that night, and I noticed there was a definite smell of fermentation emanating from my hockey bag.  I’d like to hope that the smell was from the alcohol in Febreze, but I think I really just need to get my gear cleaned.