So I was on vacation on the way to Duluth, Minnesota and that took me through Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Chippewa Falls is small town, a few thousand people, but home of the Leinenkugel’s Brewery. My favorite Leinenkugel’s beers are their Oktoberfest, Creamy Dark, Red and Honey Weiss. I really don’t like some of their latest ‘beers’. I don’t care for Sunset Wheat, Summer Shandy or the new Fireside Nut Brown. But enough of my preferences on to the brewery tour!
Since we were going on a Saturday we made a reservation since tours are limited to rather small groups. The tour starts at check-in in the new Leinie’s Lodge. After check-in you are given two coupons for a free 7oz sample, you can sample before or after your tour. The lodge is pretty big, with a nice fireplace, lots of merchandise to purchase and a lot of nostalgic Leinie’s stuff.
The brewery begins outside around all the buildings, some of the buildings on the brewery grounds are the original from the mid 1800s! The tour then proceeds through where the mash is performed, then you follow where the wort is chilled and finally to the huge fermentation room. The fermentation room has a lot of tanks, I believe each holds 400 some barrels of beer! In homebrew terms, that’s about 2500 5 gallon batches! After the fermentation room, we got to see the bottling line and finally warehouse area, where there were thousands of cases of beer, truly a delightful experience.
Overall I enjoyed the tour. It wasn’t overly informative, the tour guide knew their stuff as long as your followed the lines, anything out of the ordinary was given the typical ‘I can check for your response’. Also production only runs Monday-Friday, so if I did it again I would try to stop by on a weekday to see some of the stuff in action.