A-B Facts

Alright readers, you may have been asking yourself, "Where's Whitney been?" (or not) . . . But in the answer to that question lies some exciting news! Namely, I have been fortunate to work several temp JOBS the last few days. (Friday and Mon-Wed) So that was fun, from a financial standpoint, but I had today off and now I'm back in action on the blog.

Simon did a great summary of the Budweiser Tour, but I'm just going to throw in a few details I found interesting.

First of all, Anheuser-Busch has 12 breweries in the U.S., but only 5 of them do tours so this was actually a pretty unique thing to see. And the famous Clydesdales are only in three locations: Missouri, New Hampshire, and here. Go Fort Collins!

Anheuser-Busch is famous for their Budweiser brand, but they actually manufacture a ton of other products too. They had a neat display case showing every kind of drink they make:

Additionally, you might guess that the company owns Busch Gardens, but they also own SeaWorld and -- someplace I went when I was young -- Sesame Place! I remember how we stumbled upon this small themepark somewhere in Pennsylvania while on a family trip, so I was certainly surprised to the kiddie park advertised here!

That wraps up fun facts about the Anheuser-Busch Corporation; now on to the beer. The company has a 50% market share. That's right -- that means that one out of every two beers sold in the U.S. is an Anheuser-Busch product. Wow. They manufacture 125 million barrels of beer annually, of which 9 million are made right in Fort Collins. (1 barrel = 2 kegs)

The process for making Budweiser beer uses 5 key ingredients: barley, hops, rice, water, and yeast. They say the rice is unique and is what gives Budweiser its light, crisp finish. The other unique part of their brewing process, shown below, is the beechwood aging process. When the beer is fermented with yeast, adding the alcohol content, it's technically done -- but Budweiser calls this "alpha beer." It goes through another whole aging process that takes about 2 weeks, or about half the total time required to manufacture a batch of Budweiser (30 days). The addition of beechwood chips is supposed to allow the yeast more surface area and let the beer ferment better without affecting flavor.

Now a word on cans: as can be noted on the sign in this picture, the company is the "world's largest aluminum recycler" and recycles enough every year to make all their cans. Guess how many cans are in this block? . . . . . . 800! And here's the process by which the metal becomes a can, which I thought was kind of a neat display.

The very last step is putting the top on the can. Simon showed you the can filler, and here you can see the tops going into the machine on the right. They come in those big paper rolls to the left, and a worker was continually unwrapping and loading those. The filler goes really fast.

The last thing we did was see the Clydesdales in their barn -- there were about 6 of them, but it was hard to get a good picture because the lighting was poor. Here's one. The original Clydesdale-led beer wagon was a gift from August Busch, Jr. to his father in 1933 to celebrate the end of Prohibition.

And for you animal lovers, don't worry -- the horses had a gorgeous pasture outside with plenty of room to stretch, and Clydesdale Camera Day is only once a month for 2 hours, so we were very lucky it happened to be while our friends were in town!

Finally, I leave you with the boys enjoying their free samples and Karri with her soda. A great day!