12/30/2009
I proceeded to sing the Hershey’s Chocolate World song all the way to Pottsville – home of D.G. Yuengling & Sons, America’s oldest brewery. Neither Laura nor I drink at all, so this place wasn’t high on our personal lists, but where Patricia Schultz commands, we go.
The brewery conducts a free tour every day at 10:00 and 1:30. A huge group had arrived just as we did, so the guides were a little overwhelmed. The tour brought us down into the beer cave, where Daniel proceeded to throw up. Apparently, he doesn’t like beer either. Laura left the tour and cleaned him up, while I continued on with the tour – which was probably for the best. The tour brings you up and down steps and even out into the street up a steep incline. Not exactly pregnant lady approved. I personally didn’t mind – after all, the facility is 180 years old. The highlight of the tour is watching the bottles stream along conveyor belts, fill up with beer and then drop into boxes for shipping. The tour guide made the obligatory “Laverne and Shirley” reference, but it really did look like that.
The end of the tour leads into a bar – at which point Laura had rejoined us – and everyone was given a free sample. We asked for ginger beer. The lady laughed. Yeah… Who would go to a brewery if they didn’t drink alcohol? Us, I guess.
This place held little interest for us, but that’s a personal taste issue. Most of the people there (primarily manly men) were salivating at the very prospect of being there. (One guy saw Daniel and said, “Wow! What a lucky kid. His first brewery tour!”) Nevertheless, like football, “crackin’ open a brewskie” is an undeniable side of American culture. And there’s something to be said for the Yuengling family for not selling out to the big national chains, despite decades of tempting offers.
Sounds a lot like the Great Lakes Brewery tour I went on. Yeah, it was pretty boring to a nondrinker like me but my tour had overly excited men (not even, like, manly men, just men) on it too (one guy even commented that it was "like a toy factory" and that he would "love to work there". Mind you, we were a few feet away from *real* workers on the assembly line who had to work at 7pm while people gawked at them).
ReplyDeleteThey gave samples too but you had to pay a quarter and you could only have one. I didn't have anything so I just walked around the room and was bored.