But back to Colorado...
As you probably know, we like to brew beer. In fact, this is what our kitchen looked like Sunday night:
and what Kate's closet has in it right now:
So while in the area, we thought visiting the Coors brewery in Golden, CO would be a fun way to spend an afternoon. It's a massive concrete and plumbing-filled complex, and was interestingly different than the micro and craft breweries we've toured before. For example - there are train tracks leading directly into the building so the loads of grain coming from the fertile midwest can be delivered literally straight into the mash tuns. And instead of one or two or maybe a handful of fermenters, they've got a forest of giant copper kettles for brewing all the varieties Coors makes.
The self-guided audio tour was pretty fun, and gave a good, simple overview of the brewing process. At one point, however, there was a display showing how Coors uses "only the freshest, natural ingredients" for their beers or something, and had some bins of said ingredients for tour goers to touch/smell. The bins contained 1) Barley, 2) Hops, 3) Corn. Eek! Corn! They're advertising that they throw a bunch of corn in their beer to get the sugar needed instead of getting it from malted grains like real beer is supposed to!? Yechk.
Soon after the fermenting area we came to a little serving window. We thought this was the only tasting opportunity, but it turned out only to be a "mid-tour" tasting room with the selection limited to two choices. Kate opted for "bad" while Tom picked "slightly less bad." Mmmm... taste that corn!
Fortunately there was more after this refreshing pit-stop. We were lucky to see the packaging room in action, with cans of Keystone being mechanically corralled into 12-packs and then being whisked every which way on a maze of conveyor belts and tracks. Pretty cool to see from an operations perspective. A lot of technology in that room to make sure college students around the country have cheap beer with which to play pong.
Finally we arrived at the tasting room, which was basically a bar. We had wristbands that entitled us to 3 drinks each (!), and these were good 8-10 oz. glasses too! After getting here we realized why they mention at the beginning, "Please, only one tour per day" (it's free). To their credit, they had a couple of reasonably interesting Colorado-only smaller batches that were more craft-style beers than the watery Coors Light most people associate with the brand. And despite their corporate overlords, I still enjoy Blue Moon and much of that family. And they do have a lot of neat sustainability efforts going on in the giant Golden, CO plant. I think overall the best part was arriving at the facility and realizing that, although we were outside on a windy summer afternoon, it smelled like our kitchen does on brewing day.
Well, that got longer than I had intended! The bucking broncos will have to wait another day...
1 comment:
My grandfather went to Colorado School of Mines in Golden. His fraternity was across the street from the brewery and they contraced with the brewery to run a pipeline from a vat in the brewery under the street and into the basement of the fraternity house.
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