New Glarus Brewing Co. Hand-crafted Beer Tour

The New Glarus Brewing Company is located on a hill overlooking America's Little Switzerland, New Glarus, Wisconsin. The brewery began business in 1993 and today produces almost 80,000 barrels of beer each year. They are known for their quirky names and fruity seasonal beers like, Totally Naked, Road Slush, and Back Forty Bock. The product is only available in Wisconsin but has a following throughout the country.

The new hilltop facility is open for self guided tours every day from 10:00 A.M. to 4:00 P.M. This facility opened in November of 2007. They built the facility with the idea of self guided tours.

You enter the impressive stone building through a center hall door way. If you take the left door, you enter the tasting room, the right door leads into the gift shop and brewery. The gift shop has everything you can imagine related to beer. I suggest checking out the selection of beer related cook books for some intriguing recipes.

The gift shop has a small tasting counter where you can purchase a taste of three, 3 oz. samples and keep the glass. The self guided tour of the brewery starts just on the other side of the tasting bar. Many of the visitors carry their beer along with them as they tour the facility. This is Wisconsin where beer drinking is mandatory.

As you enter the brewery, you walk past the quality control lab. I am certain most of us envied the technician's job, tasting beer all day long to ensure its quality. The next stop is a room filled with awards. New Glarus has been in business for only seventeen years but during that short time they have managed to win an impressive amount of awards for their beers.

The next room held four large copper kettles. James an employee of New Glarus was giving a talk about the brewing process. I caught up with him at the second kettle. This is where the ingredients were mixed and each kettle held a new ingredient in the beer brewing process. James' explanations were very long and highly detailed. At each kettle a few more people dropped out of our little group. I stayed up to the fermenting towers and then drifted off to guide my own tour.

The brewery is laid out in a circle. There is a wide brightly lit walkway with glass windows looking into the working areas around this circle. Each step of the brewing process is labeled. You can decide how long you want to spend at each step.

New Glarus Brewing Company offers a hard hat tour on Friday afternoons starting at 1:00. This tour begins at their old facility down by the river on the north end of New Glarus. The three-hour tour takes you through both the old and new facility and finishes off with a cheese and beer tasting on the hill. The cost for this tour is $20.00 and reservations are required. You can call 608-527-5850 to make a reservation.

The best way to end either tour is with a visit to the beer store. This store is located on the lower level of the hilltop brewery building. Here you can purchase any of the products they are presently brewing. My suggestion is to make up your own case for $26.00. They give you an empty case and you choose the twenty-four bottles to fill it with. You can sample all of the flavors this way.

In Santa Rosa, California, 2010- The New Glarus Brewery won the Gold Medal as one of the Top Brewers in The World. That is quite an achievement for a small craft brewer. I encourage you to stop by when in the area, take the tour and try the beer. You'll learn why they have earned such a high distinction