Meeting The Budweiser Clydesdales

 St. Louis, MO

We got to pet the Budweiser Clydesdales!

Bud Wei Ser

Today we revisited the St. Louis Budweiser Brewery.  We were here back in 2015 and I believe there were 2 tours, #1 was a free tour of the brewery and #2 was a $5 or something and you got a beer brewed that day along with your tour.  Today there are 4 tours you can choose from so we chose the Clydesdale VIP Tour.  You get to go into the Clydesdale round house, learn all about them, see a bunch of stuff associated with the Clydesdales, and then pet and have a photo op with them.  There were two opportunities to have beers on the tour.  The first opportunity was in the roundhouse.  There was a refrigerator and the guide asked if anyone wanted a beer and handed out Budweiser and Bud Zero beers.  The second opportunity was after the photo op.  You were led to the Biergarten to sample a few different AB Inbev Beers.  The 2nd tasting was what you would expect from a brewery tour but the beer in the roundhouse felt special.  It felt like you were visiting a friend at their ranch and they offered you a beer.  

I am glad we did the Day Fresh Tour in 2015 because the Clydesdale VIP Tour didn't include anything related to brewing beer.  You didn't see any of their buildings expect for the roundhouse.  We had several Day Fresh tours come through the roundhouse while we were in there so that tour got to do both but they didn't get to pet the Clydesdales.

The bus we wanted to catch was cancelled so we decided to walk.  We stopped by a brewery on the way to the brewery.

It was a really nice day so everyone was on the patio while we had a beer at the bar

Our next stop was an open air farmers market that has more going on for the weekends.

We bought some Black Walnuts

We wanted to try some so we found a loose brick on our walk to Budweiser.  Black Walnuts are WAY harder than regular walnuts.  We made sure to replace the brick.

The nuts cracked but it was still hard to get to the nuts.

We practiced meeting the Clydesdales before the tour

We got there a little early so we had a beer as one does at a brewery.  It is local beer.

Oh that 90s advertising!

There were opportunities for selfies around every corner

Two Clydesdales enjoy the sun and each other 

The original Clydesdales Roundhouse is still in use.  Adolphus Busch asked that it be built to look like a train roundhouse.

When we first entered the roundhouse it just so happened that we were in the front of the group so we took the opportunity to get a few shots

This shot really turned out great

My tour guide friend gave me a beer!

Donna needed to focus on the horse pets and had no time for a photo! Oh and check out her Cloudburst Brewing bag!  Founded by Elysian Brewer Steve Luke.  When Elysian was purchased by AB InBev he broke his non-compete and gave up some of his sale money to open Cloudburst.  It's an interesting story.

I wanted to get a pretzel and have a sample of Budweiser Zero so I asked if I could taste a little pour and it wasn't on draft so they bartender just gave me a whole can.

We bought the photo to go with our other photo from 2015

In our 2015 photo we all decided to look sulky but Donna broke character. 

All in all The Budweiser Experience is great.  The food and beer prices are reasonable, the whole place smells like a yummy brewery, and the space is comfortable.  We really enjoyed our time at The Guinness Brewing just outside of Baltimore, but I have to say the Budweiser Experience is a better experience if you want to visit a giant brewing facility owned by a giant corporation.  It was also better than the Coors Tour in Golden, CO (read that one here).

It was a great day with a lot of walking.  If you missed One Year On The Road Celebration! check it out.  We had Prime Rib!