7/20/2012
St. Louis-based Anheuser-Busch is the world’s biggest brewery – the makers of Budweiser and apparently 400 other brands of beer. We expected to arrive at a dingy factory for our free tour. Instead, this is a slick tourist spot. There’s a museum dedicated to the history of the company that rivals some of the other museums we’ve seen. The tour took a little over an hour, as we were moved along from twenty-something female guide to the next twenty-something female guide. (Laura noticed this part, not me!)
The tour began with a visit to the Budweiser Clydesdale
horses, which actually live at the facility. The tour guide said they were
originally used to discourage thieves when delivery men were away from the
wagon. We also learned that if they shut the factory down the world’s supply of
Budweiser beer would be gone in less than 18 hours! People drink a lot of Bud.
We’ve been to enough of these beer places to know there
are always these guys… the beer guys. I saw one guy touch the vats of Budweiser
like he was touching the Vietnam Wall. One guy tried to correct one of our tour
guides. She said Anheuser-Busch makes Corona Beer. He said they don’t. She said
they bought the company two weeks ago. He said, “Oh.” However, the oddest “fan”
was an Indian woman who kept taking pictures with a huge camera. At one point
she said, “This is the most beautiful place in the world.”
The tour was really designed for fans of the company.
Even though it’s a PR thing for Anheuser-Busch, there really was nothing
commercial about it. No one was really trying to sell anything here. Of course,
they have the obligatory gift shop, but the focus of the tour was not to get
you to buy anything. (We enjoyed the Stone Hill tour too, but obviously, the
point there was for us to buy a bottle of wine at the end.)
We got a nice history lesson, a slick tour, and they
didn’t get any of our money. Cool.
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