Brewery Tours can make for a fun activity while on vacation. It is even better when they are free or low cost! I always like to try out the different styles of beer and see how different breweries run things. It has made for some pretty eventful afternoons. The following are some traveler’s best brewery tours in the United States.
Samuel Adams Brewery: Boston, Massachusetts
Cost: Free
Hours: Monday-Saturday 11am-5pm, Closed Sundays
What makes the Samuel Adams Tour in Boston one of the best brewery tours in the United States is that it is a free tour! They have tours almost every hour and each tour lasts about an hour. The guide will first take you to a room where you learn about how the beer is made. Here, you get the chance to sample hops. Visitors are then taken to the next space where some of the smaller batches of beer are brewed. This part of the tour takes about 30 minutes.
Finally, the best part of the tour comes at the end. The tour group is taken to a small tasting room with lots of tables and chairs. Here, you get the opportunity to try 3 different types of beer. The first pour is always the traditional Samuel Adams lager. The other two rotate depending on what seasonal beers there are and what your guide decides to pour that day. When we went, it was wintertime, so we got to try their seasonal Cold Snap along with an unfiltered Pale Ale. In the end, you also get to take home a miniature glass that you used for the tasting. Not a bad tour for no cost and thus why it is one of the best brewery tours in the United States.
Goose Island Brewery: Chicago, Illinois
Cost: $12 for a tour
Hours: Wednesday/Thursday 12pm-8pm, Friday/Saturday 12pm-10pm, Sunday 12pm-6pm
The Goose Island Tour in Chicago is a 45-minute tour that takes visitors through several rooms in the brewery. The unique thing about this tour is that you get 3 samples throughout the tour, plus another pint at the end. Visitors also receive a pint glass. The first part of the tour shows visitors how the beer-making process works and ultimately how the beer is made. You then move into the bottling room to see how the beer gets bottled.
The next area you get to visit on the tour is where the brewmasters brainstorm ideas for new beer types and flavors. The last area you visit on the tour is the most unique part. After a quick walk across the street, you enter the barrel aging room where some of the beer is aged for a year or two. This is a different technique than traditional beer making and makes for some interesting flavors. At the end of the tour, you are brought back to the tasting room to get your souvenir glass and a pint of beer. Overall, this tour gives you a lot of bang for your buck, which makes it one of the best brewery tours in the United States.
Brooklyn Brewery: Brooklyn, New York
Cost: Free
Hours: Saturday and Sunday every hour 1pm-6pm
The Brooklyn Brewery was established in 1988 by Steve Hindy and Tom Potter. Hindy learned the brew-making process during a six-year stay in the Middle East. When he returned to the states, Hindy and Potter decided to establish the Brooklyn Brewery in Brooklyn. Their signature Brooklyn Lager has been a staple since that time. Present-Day, the beers are available in over half of the United States and over thirty other countries.
On the weekends, the Brooklyn Brewery offers free tours every hour starting at 1pm until 6pm. Although the line is usually pretty long for the tour, it is well worth it for free! The tour covers the history of the brewery, the brewing science, and the history of beer. The tour lasts about 45 minutes and you get to see the brewing rooms. At the end, you receive some tokens for a pint. I enjoyed the traditional Brooklyn Lager the most.
Avery Brewing Company: Boulder, Colorado
By Sydney from A World in Reach
Cost: Free
Hours: Tours Mon-Fri at 4:30pm, Sat at 2pm and 3:30pm, Sun at 2pm
If you’re visiting Boulder, Colorado, consider paying a visit to Avery Brewing Company, a regional brewery known for its unique brews. At the brewery, you can take a guided tour of the brewhouse, sample some beer at the taproom, or both!
The free tours at Avery Brewing Company last for an hour and are family-friendly. One of the brewery’s lovely guides will take you through the brewhouse and the barrel-aging cellar, educating you about the history of Avery Brewing Company as well as the brewing process. Throughout the tour, you will be given samples of some of the brewery’s most popular beers. At the end of the tour, you will be given a sample of one of the brewery’s latest limited-time offerings, where you’ll be prompted to guess the flavor and inspiration of the beer before its name is revealed.
After the tour, make sure to head to the Tap Room to sample a few more of Avery Brewing Company’s offerings. If you’re hungry, they also serve lunch and dinner! Free hour-long tours of Avery Brewing Company are given every day. Private, exclusive tours can also be booked for $15 per person – these tours last for 1.5 hours.
Four Peaks Brewery: Tempe, Arizona
By Constance from The Adventures of Panda Bear
Cost: Tours start at $5
Hours: Tours on Saturdays at 10:30am, 12pm, and 2pm
Four Peaks Brewery is one of the best breweries in Tempe, Arizona, not only is their beer great, but their brewery tour is also insanely informative! Even though we had already been to quite a few brewery tours, we still learned something new at Four Peaks.
Starting off your tour at Four Peaks Brewery is the best part because they give you samples right away! When we visited, they provided samples of their famous white ale and Kilt Lifter, their flagship Scottish ale.
Afterwards we began to explore their brewery facility, and walked past all of their equipment from fermentation and wort tanks to their kegs and even their bottling area. We were surprised by how small their bottling area was even though they have such a high production!
They also have a special room used to age some of their select beers. This room is held at a specific temperature and we learned that certain Four Peaks beers will have a unique taste due to their barrel aging techniques.
One unique thing about the Four Peaks Brewery is that the building is haunted. The tour guides love telling stories about their (and their coworkers’) experiences in the building with all of the various spirits that reside in between its walls.
Four Peaks Brewery is definitely one of the most unique brewery tours we’ve ever done, aside from the amount we learned, it was just a fun tour overall!
Lakefront Brewery: Milwaukee, WI
By Emmajean Snook from Snook Outta Water
Cost: $10-$12 for a tour
Hours: Mon-Fri: 12pm-7pm, Sat: 11am-8pm, and Sun: 12pm-4pm
Lakefront Brewery, situated on the east side of Milwaukee, has one of the most popular brewery tours in the city. Their beers, of course, are excellent: Lakefront has a wide variety of staple beers, perhaps best well-known for their Riverwest Stein, an amber lager, as well as small-batch seasonal beers and a gluten-free beer to try. Tours are available all week, but it’s much better to go during the weekend when the brewery is not in production, as you can get up close and personal.
Although chock full of 45 minutes of good information about beer brewing, the best part about the tours are the guides themselves. They are loud, always ready to make a cheesy joke, and partaking in beer drinking themselves, they truly do make the tour. If you really want to get the details, you can sign up for their smaller technical tours, which are led by a master brewer, capped at 15 people, and include a food-and-beer pairing experience. Of course, in either tour free beer samples are provided throughout, as well as four six-ounce pours at their Beer Hall afterward. Delicious food options, like fish fry (served every day) and cheese curds are available at their Beer Hall as well. A teeming cafeteria-style set-up, gives you the perfect venue to meet other tour-goers and beer lovers afterward.
Magic Hat Brewing Company: Burlington, Vermont
By Danielle from Wanderlust While Working
Cost: $3 for a tour
Hours: Mon-Thurs: 11am-7pm, Fri-Sat: 11am-9pm, Sun: 12-5pm
Vermont is home to the largest number of breweries per capita, so it’s no surprise that some of the best brewery tours in the country can be found there. During our trip to Burlington, Vermont we had the chance to take a tour of Magic Hat Brewing Company as well as enjoy a flight and some delicious tamales in their tasting room.
Magic Hat does offer guided tours at certain times 7 days a week, but you can also do a self-guided tour at any time. Guided tours cost a nominal fee of $3 and include a video explaining the beer-making process at Magic Hat. The tour then takes you through a creative and colorful display on the history of the company and a viewing area overlooking the manufacturing floor. Their tasting room is also referred to as the “Artifactory” and serves up favorites like Magic Hat #9 along with seasonal brews and limited edition releases you won’t find in stores. We especially enjoyed the quirky vibe of the brewery out of all the breweries we tried in Burlington.
Upland Brewing Company: Bloomington, Indiana
By: Emily Hines from Em’s on the Road
Cost: $10
Hours: Mon: 4pm-12am, Tues-Sat: 11am-12pm, Sun: 11am-11pm
Upland Brewing Company in Bloomington, Indiana is the third-largest craft brewery in Indiana and is especially unique because it offers two distinct brewery tours: one of their production facilities focusing on lagers and ales and their sour brewery that focuses on wood-aged sours. On the production facility tour, see how Upland’s beer goes from grain to glass, starting at the grain silo to the brewhouse, to the bottling line. When you finish the tour, enjoy a guided tasting at the dog-friendly West Side Beer Bar.
At the Sour Brewery, you’ll take a similar journey from grain to glass but the process for wood-aged sours is much longer and complex moving from different wood casks used for aging. As you follow the beer’s path, the guide will offer samples directly off the foudres. Since wood is an organic matter, different foudres impart different flavor notes on the base beer and each sample will taste different. I’d highly recommend a tasting tour of $10 so you can taste 4 of the unique sour beers when the tour is over. It doesn’t hurt that the bar in the brewery is absolutely gorgeous and perfect for a photo opp.
The United States has a ton of fantastic breweries, but not all of them have brewery tours. What are your favorite brewery tours in the United States?
4 thoughts on “8 of the Best Brewery Tours in the United States”
I have been living out of the states for nearly 17 years, but I was surprised that I only knew of one of these brands (Samuel Adams). I grew up in Chicago, and don’t know the one there either. Love this list. Plenty of cool options.
There are so many awesome brewery tours now a days. Goose Island as one of my favorites.
Love this post! Great to see some I’ve been to and definitely agree on 🙂
I need to visit some more breweries.