New Belgium Brewery Tour - Brewer's Friend
Brew your best beer EVER. Save 10% on Brewer's Friend Premium today. Use code TAKE10. Sign Up ×

New Belgium Brewery Tour

Saturday, April 25th, 2009

I remember when Fat Tire ale came out and how awesome it was. New Belgium Brewing has carved out a respectable niche and I’m really glad I got to visit. It is located in Fort Collins, Colorado, about a hour north of Denver. By the way, the town is nick named ‘Fort Fun’ by the local college students who like to frequent New Belgium and two other local breweries nearby that give free tastings – daily! Essentially if you visit Fort Collins, no need to buy beer, you can get totally loaded for free on high quality brew.

New Belgium brewery

New Belgium brewery

The place is packed all the time (we went there twice). When you walk in get ready for a very youthful, loud, fun atmosphere. Beer everywhere – it is all they serve! You get to choose four 4oz samples from their menu, which explains the different varieties. You only get one shot per day so pick wisely. I was lucky to share with my wife. We both left there in high spirits.

New Belgium beers

New Belgium beers

Their lambic style was right in line with barn yard like flavors and ripe fruit. They also had a Belgian golden ale which was delightful, hints of white wine, but a mild bitterness, very refreshing. I was not a fan of the 1554 Ale, it seemed too light in body for such a dark beer. Apparently they used lager yeast on it, but I was searching for malty body and my tongue did not find it.

They also offer guided tours. I took some snaps of the behind the scenes.

New Belgium brewing lab

Yes, those are cans, New Belgium is packaging in cans these days. Who’d a thunk it??

New Belgium stainless steel fermentors

I sure would love to have a stainless steel canonical fermenter of that size (or any size for that matter)!

New Belgium cellar

I don’t even know what these pipes are for but they look shiny and must be important.

I highly recommend visiting this brewery, it was a lot of fun, I learned a few things, and I got some free beer. Did I mention free beer?…..

By the way, if you want to piss off a Belgian, mix up the grammar. Say ‘wow you are from Belgin‘, man I’ve heard ‘Belgium beer is CrAzy’. As I was writing this post I mixed it up myself several times.

One of the things I learned there, the host/bouncer will “bounce you out of here like a golf ball in a Walmart parking lot” if he doesn’t like you. He felt obliged to let the entire room know this at one point. Thanks for reading!

Click here to read about the Coors tour we took on the same trip.

  1. 2 Responses to “New Belgium Brewery Tour”

  2. Haha! I’ll have to stop by the next time I am in Colorado.

    By Gile on Apr 25, 2009

  1. 1 Trackback(s)

  2. Apr 26, 2009: Coors brewery tour | Brewer's Friend

Post a Comment

Want no ads? Go Premium and unlock all our brewing tools!