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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Yuengling Brewery Tour

Another 1st for Sumptuous Consumptions:  Florida Brewery Tour #1.  My girlfriend Terri and I, are committed to touring all the Florida Crafted Beer Breweries in the state and reporting back to you here.  We started with one of the larger breweries closer to home this past weekend: Yuengling Brewery.

Yuengling brews 7 beers on a regular basis with a few seasonal beers along the way.  There are 3 facilities brewing beers under the Yuengling name, the original in Pottsville, PA, Tampa, FL, and Mill Creek, PA. 
Janis, our tour guide, was knowledgeable and made sure the large group was well informed.  She pointed out that this brewery was originally built in 1958 as a Schlitz Beer brewer, and was bought by Yuengling from the Stroh's company in the 1990's, and was up and running in 3 weeks after the purchase.  The grounds and facilities still have that 1950's feel.  The color's, building materials and the lab equipment are still the original, as well as the hospitality house the tour starts from.

It just so happened that the day we chose to tour the brewery the Master Crafted Beer Association was meeting in the hospitality house, where they were voting on beers from around the state.  Randy the Tampa brewery chemist, made himself available to answer questions that you wouldn't normally have access to on a Saturday.  Between himself and Janis, we were able to learn about the brewing process from start to finish, to include QA, crafting new brews, and how Yuengling maintains consistency throughout their facilities.

Of course part of the tour is tasting the output of the brewery.  Now if you have been reading the blog regularly  you would know that I am already a fan of the Lager.  The other popular line is the Premium.  Janis made sure as a blog we were able to taste as much of the samples as we could. 
Now all the beers are tasty.  The Lager I could drink on a regular basis, and the Porter (a little heavier brew) is definitely my favorite, while Terri chose one of the seasonal beers, the Bock, as her favorite. 

I being a big fan of IPA's did enjoy the Chesterfeld Ale that I had heard so mush about, but it seemed like it would be better enjoyed with a meal than just on its own.

Janis and the rest of the Saturday staff were all very friendly and accommodating, and as an outing we had an enjoyable time.  The beer of course was tasty, and we wasted no time on the way home to pick-up greater quantities to more thoroughly familiarize ourselves with the Yuengling craft.  Stay tuned for our next entries to follow in the next couple of weeks.

Sean

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