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Anheuser-Busch Brewery Tour & Gift Shop
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Category: Tours
3101 Busch DrFairfield, CA 94534
(707) 429-7595
Bud Light Golden Wheat is Here!
Stop by for a visit and try the newest Anheuser-Busch…
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- Hours:
Tue-Sat. 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.
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19 reviews for Anheuser-Busch Brewery Tour & Gift Shop
Several Yelpers complain about the short tour and yes it is short. The best days to come are Monday - Thursday since the plant is in operation. My tour was on Friday early afternoon and the line had just shut down. The line does not operate during weekends.
21 and over can sample two beers free.
If one wants a more complete tour, they offer the "Beermaster Tour" for a small fee, here is the link;
http://www.budweiserto...
Yes, we only intended to go to the Jelly Belly factory... really! But when you exit the freeway and head toward the Jelly Belly factory, you immediately see a sign for a Free Tour and Tastings at the Budweiser factory. Now I learned how to like beer from my Marine friend. I can't say no to free beer. And what an opportunity to recreate the opening credits to Laverne and Shirley with the BFF. We're gonna do it!
Directly after the Jelly Belly factory, we headed across the street to Budweiser. When you enter the Visitor Center, you see heavy oak furniture, dark leather... very cool, very man cave-esque. You're led to a bar area where you are able to sample any beer you want (you're limited to two), but I hadn't seen some of these beers ever. Listening to the rumblings of the other tour takers, apparently, some were pretty rare. I stuck to the girly Pomegranate-Raspberry beer which tasted like a less fruity wine cooler. The BFF got the Wild Blue! which is their blueberry beer.
The tour itself was eh... I'm not so intrigued by the beer making process, and after I got what I wanted in the first five minutes, I was disinterested. You can't complain when someone doles out free beer, but I was giving the judgement face to the grown man acting a drunk mess before the tour even started. There was a two beer limit. How drunk could you get? This is coming from me, the notoriously cheap date.
One star for free beers and one for the free pretzel to compliment the beers. This tour consist of lounging around in front of a TV playing Budweiser infomercials while enjoying the free beers (we got 2 free choices and 1 of the shocktop); 5 minutes staring at the conveyor belt full of bottles; another 10 minutes in the refrigerated aging tanks room. The weird part was that there was no one working at the machineries, but there was a large group playing pingpong in the vast space next to the conveyor belts.
Overall, very boring, but perhaps come back again with someone who hasn't been here and skip the tour part and just enjoy the free beers.
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I read this piece about a couple who traveled across the country visiting different breweries in the process. The ended up blogging and writing a book about the experience. Mostly microbreweries, but they did mention stopping at some major spots--Coors, and Budweiser, if i remember correctly.
So it is in their spirit that I stopped here on my way back from a fun, too short trip to Sacramento. There's really nothing to see here. The plant employs over 400 people, but it's so automated that only a handful actually run the machinery. They showed two forgettable videos, and offered two tiny beer samples. I had the amber bock and dunkelweisse, both equally forgettable.
Interesting fun fact, Budweiser and its derivatives use rice. Rice!
Two stars, one for each free beer sample we received. Like another post said, it was very underwhelming. I went on a weekend, so we weren't able to see bottle/packaging line in action (they only run M-F). Most of the tour was lecture with a video to learn about Budweiser's "drinkability" and other characteristics.
I would have rather gone to the Jelly Belly factory!
Gave them the two stars for the free beer, which was delicious. But the tour was highly disappointing. We sat in a room watching a television screen and watching a over enthusiastic guide read from index cards. Then we walked to a bottle line and the tank room. That's it! Not really worth the trip in to Fairfield. =o/
We went on Sat 5/17/08. I don't like beer & didn't try it here so I'll just review my experience on the tour.
They have FREE tours on the hour. We got there by 2:45pm and I took a picture of the horse statue & Budweiser building sign outside. Then we went inside. There was a girl that gave us each a tour badge & told us to go inside. You can then take the stairs or the elevator. We took the stairs.
You then get dumped into a waiting area where they show Budweiser commercial & there's a gift shop on the left side. Next a tour leader took us into another room where those 21 & up can try 2 beer samples FREE . The samples are pretty big at 8-10 oz each! I didn't try them, one friend got non-alcohol beers. He doesn't like beer, but finished both. Other friend got 2 beers - and liked both. They also have a self serve soda fountain for the kids & water at the soda fountain. They even have Energy drinks that are non-alcoholic, but didn't try them.
Separate bathrooms available at the Tasting Room area.
We then saw some videos on Budweiser stuff and since the machines aren't working on the weekends just saw the production floor & a cold room called the aging room with the Beechwood aging tanks and torpedoes (which are kinda neat to look at, but also boring).
That's about it. I think most people come for the FREE samples (only 2 given) and stick around for the tour which is lame.
I only recommend it if you're in the area & like beer.
Dates: Days: Tour Hrs:
Sept-May Tues-Sat 10-4
June-Aug Mon-Sat 10-4
Gift shop closes 60 min. after last tour
707-429-7595
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So, I expected this tour to be a little bit better than it was. I was hoping that there'd be this really thorough tour of the plant, but all I really got was just a couple of walks through a hallway and a giant fridge that carries all the beer. And I'm not saying I wanted to know every detail of the place, but I expected more.
I went on the last tour of the day, by the way, so there was one other group besides us (they seemed to be pretty hammered for some reason). We got to have two beer tastings and were able to choose two of the Budweiser brand. I think that if the beer tasting was after the tour, I wouldn't have felt as rushed as I did to down those beers. It did, however, make walking around a lot better during the snooze of a tour.
The only factory part that I actually did see were the bottles traveling down those conveyor belt deelies, like on "Laverne & Shirley." It's not an uncommon association I bet, but I also kind of wished that the tour would be like the Duff tour on "The Simpsons." Alas... it was just drinking beer and walking for about five minutes. Suckage. But then again, I got free beer, so it's not all a loss.
By the way, I don't know what's more disturbing: how much I didn't like this tour, or the fact that some Budweiser person thought that mixing CLAMATO and beer was a good idea.
Not my favorite tour. We really didn't see much, had to sit and listen, and then taste bad beer! Too much talk, not enough action.
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I must agree with some of the other reviewers about the tour at Budweiser. It wasn't so much a tour of the facility as it was of seeing a few videos and then seeing a few rooms that the beer was made of. I didn't have high expectations going into it so I wasn't really let down but compared to the Coors tour I took in Colorado this was not even comparable. If you're looking for a few free beers during the day though it's worth it.
It was fun. not much action, no Bud girls...but we got free beer!
a little buzz from the Ale.
You'll get a better tour with halftime commercials and the beer aisle in your grocery store. I give them an extra star for providing hundreds of good jobs and enriching the downwind with toasty grain goodness.
Yes, it's free. Yes, you get 2 free drinks. One sip of their wretched Bare-Knuckle Stout will either put you on the wagon or a Guinness bender to nurse your poor tastebuds back to health.
Our tour guide appeared to be drunk enough to be distracting, but not enough to be entertaining. You watch a video. You walk past a distant bottling machine to the fermentation room he points to 160 tanks that each hold 500,000 twelve oz. servings of watery abuse juice. To be fair, the 47 degree room felt good on a hot day. BFD.
They won't even let you sit on the life-sized fiberglass Clydesdale out in front. :(
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Right down the street from Jelly Belly factory, closer to the freeway though. Apparently, kids like the tour. Overheard from a preteen boy: "I love the smell of beer."
The free tour is divided into 2 parts: one is the factory walk-through, second is the sampling near the gift shop. Each is about 1/2 hour, so total is 1 hour. Depending on when you catch the tour, you may do one before the other. As other Yelpers note, the walk-through is underwhelming. Really it's just the bottle/packaging line and then walking to the freezer where they ferment (?) the beer for a month.
The better part is the sampling of which you get 2 12ozs (or so). When I went, they didn't have much on tap: Bud & Bud Light. Bartender said there's usually 4 options. The rest are bottled varieties. I tried the Michelob pomegranate raspberry thinking maybe it would taste like a lambic, but it didn't. Not a Bud fan to start, and didn't leave one.
I was not too impressed with this tour. The tour was way too fast and too loud to hear what the instructor / tour guide was saying. The video seen in the middle is lame and I would have to say a waste of about 8 minutes. I felt like I was watching a motivational speaker at work. The free beer tasting at the end was nice. I am glad I got to try the Pomegranate Beer; it was delish and I will probably pick some up soon at the closest convenient store.
Walking through the brewery and seeing all those bottles rumbling down the conveyor belt, I almost wanted to look for Laverne and Shirley doing their little dance. If I had a glove I would have stuck it on one of the bottles. I would have been thrown out, but it would have been funny. (I think I just dated myself. I watched reruns, OK?)
I'm not a beer drinker, so this tour was really for my husband. It guess it's pretty cool. Not much they could really show us though. I got sick from the strong smell of the hops. I couldn't get that smell out of my system for a while. Yuck.
The best part was after the videos they make you watch at the end, you get free samples. Heh, heh... I found some new 'cooler' type drinks that I can actual enjoy. Yes, I like the foo foo sweeter stuff. Husband like the whole tour more than me. Maybe I should have let him write this review instead?
Free tour - not very impressive. Free samples, boosted my rating up one more star.
Budweiser offers free tours at their Fairfield plant from 10-4 Tuesdays through Saturdays. The plant is easy to find right off the highway and down the road from Jelly Belly.
The tour starts out in the tasting room where you are given a ticket for two free tastings of Anheuser-Busch products (pretzels and soft drinks are also complimentary but all you can eat/drink). The tour starts with the tour guide talking about the history of Anheuser-Busch and vital stats of their specific production facility. You watch two videos while you are tasting your free beers. After about 20 minutes or so the tour begins in the bottling area of the plant where you see first hand the bottling and packaging process. Then they take you into the aging room with the Beechwood aging tanks and torpedoes. The tour ends back in the gift shop for souvenirs.
I would have liked to see more of the manufacturing process and a longer tour, so I guess a trip to St. Louis to the mother plant will be on my list.
Overall a nice, short tour that even kids can go along for, plus free beer (how can you say no to that?).
http://www.budweiserto...
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Definitely not a big fan of Budweiser before the tour and still not after. I'm somewhat shocked at the low quality tour this company provides. You sit in a room and watch a video and eat pretzels. You can get unlimited soda if you don't drink beer. The tour guide can certainly recite the facts but have this nasally voice not meant to be a spokesman.
You walk past all the cool bottling equipment and look at 120 half million gallon stainless steel tanks. You look at them for 2 minutes and walk back where you came from.
They keep on saying they have the largest beer market share in the world. But probably only because it's so cheap to buy? If only they upped the quality of the tour and bring out the freshly brewed stuff then it may even sway me towards drinking more of their stuff.
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Okay, yeah- I have to agree... definitely not the most exciting tour ever, especially on a weekend when they're not actually producing anything. Especially when I went and the whole factory was being cleaned or switched or something along those lines- I wasn't really listening because what reason is there to listen to anything when you're getting free samples of alcohol at the end. That's not even a question, that's a statement.
By the way, doesn't offering people two 20-ounce samples and then sending them driving away immediately thereafter concern anyone?
free. two 10oz glasses of beer from a fairly large selection, free. i don't understand why people are hating on this. they tell you how they make the beer, and then they show you. it's not a difficult process, thus they don't have much to show you. the large holding tanks are impressive though. doing this along with the jelly belly tour down the street makes for a splendid afternoon!
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