New Belgium

Fort Collins, Colorado is home to the New Belgium Brewery.  Before the flooding completely cut us off from the rest of the state, we managed to take a tour (it's so popular that reservations are recommended).  Tours of anywhere stuff is made fascinate me, and I'm not sure whether it's because of all the museums we visited when I was a kid, spending time in the garage with Dad, natural engineer's curiosity, or Mr. Rogers.  To be honest, I could probably credit pursuing a career in engineering to all of the same things.

A portion of one of the shadow box tables at the start of our tour.

I toured a few of the breweries in Bend, OR during Zwickelmania (I'd slap a link in there, but at this time, no webpage exists for that specific event.  If you're interested, do the search yourself, or check the Oregon Craft Beer website for updates), but that event is CRAZY with people, and while I learned a bit about the process, I also learned that each brewery does things a little differently, and many assume you already know a lot about how beer is made.  I gleaned what I could.

Mosaics run around the tops of these processing tanks in a room claimed by our tour guide to be "so beautiful, three of our employees have had their wedding receptions here." It was easy to see why.

The New Belgium tour was a little different; it was nearly 90 minutes long, and included five four-ounce samples of various beers, but explained almost none of the process of making beer.  However, it was thick with their corporate philosophy and practices, company history, and general good cheer (it ended with a "tornado slide" from the second floor to ground level).

Towering wine barrels used to age the sour beers.

Our guide's enthusiasm for the company and his place in it was infectious.  A few years ago, the CEO decided to distribute shares to the employees, making them their own bosses.  It is still an employee-owned company; at the annual meeting they decide which holidays to take in the coming year (Valentine's Day is a good selection).

The brewery owns two electric cars, and provides a charging station in the parking lot for visitors.  Solar panels cover the roof of the bottling facility, known as "Thunderdome," and they capped a pond on the property to create an anaerobic environment generating methane.  Between the solar panels and the methane plant, they produce up to 20% of their own electricity.

"Church of Brewology" fermentation tanks

Each bottle in this chandelier was hand-blown by a local artist.  There is no camera angle inside the building that lets you see the whole thing.  It's huge, and winds its way down a hallway and up these stairs.

Welcome to Thunderdome.  Over 20,000 bottles can be moving through this room at any given time.

I saw a sign near this ... chandelier?  that said Americans discard enough aluminum cans every three months to rebuild every commercial airplane in the U.S.  Art is also a good use for it.