Brewing & Touring at New Belgium

Way back in the day, when I was still new to the craft brewery world, I fell in love with two different wheat beers. One was from a former craft brewer {Goose Island} and the other was from a brewery that I'm 100% positive will never sell out: New Belgium.

While I haven't quite forgiven New Belgium for sending my beloved Snapshot Wheat out to pasture this past winter, I've been introduced to a few recently that are doing their part to make up for the absence of that particular wheat beer. I went to New Belgium last year as part of my bachelorette weekend but knew that Patrick and I would have to come back for a visit and a tour.

Y'all.

If you've only got enough time to visit one brewery in Asheville, let it be this one.

Patrick and I rolled into the parking lot just before 11am last Friday and I checked online for tour tickets. We were in luck and we snagged the last two tickets for the 90 minute tour at 11:30am {ps - the tour is FREE!} Tickets secured, we walked inside when the doors opened and headed straight to the bar where we had our first encounter with a guy named Michael. He poured Patrick a beer {first one of the day!} and then asked me what I wanted.

I told him that I wanted the Sunshine Wheat {my favorite beer from my bachelorette weekend & one that I can only find at the brewery} and he said "Well, ok, I'm going to get you to try something else first."

He handed me back a sample of "Fat Tire No. 2" to try. He told me about how this was a brand new beer that had just been released the week prior and that distributors were already clamoring to get on their shelves. This crisp, refreshing, unfiltered white ale was amazing. I abandoned my Sunshine Wheat and went with Michael's suggestion. Honestly, I don't really think that I had a choice when it came to the beer I was getting because I think I was going to be served Fat Tire No. 2 no matter what.

Our tour started promptly at 11:30am under the bicycle archway between the Liquid Center and the brewery and luckily for us, we had encounter number two with Michael. He was our tour guide!

I have never met anyone in my entire life who speaks so passionately about what they do and the company that they work for. This guy lives and breathes everything New Belgium. He was wildly entertaining, too. We learned about his farm {& his bacon seeds}, how he ended up at New Belgium {it involved many years of rejection letters & living out of a truck for a couple of months}, and so much more. Our tour would have been an entirely different experience with any other tour guide.

Did you know? There's a slide! The highlight of the tour for me might have been sliding down this thing. Maybe.

There's also plenty of beer to sample along the tour. We had the Fat Tire, the Belgian Trippel, the Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA, and a sour beer that I opted to skip out on.

& crazy murals to take pictures with.

It was seriously such a great tour and experience. It's one that you've got to check out yourself and not just read about ;)

Afterwards, I may have purchased a few anniversary presents to ourselves from the New Belgium shop. It's hard to not want to support this company and all of the owners {since it's a 100% employee owned company} after learning more about it. I only wish that we had more time to sit outside of the Liquid Center, watch paddle boarders on the French Broad River, and enjoy more of the Fat Tire No. 2.

We checked New Belgium off of our never ending list of breweries to visit. 33 down, hundreds more to go!

Happy Tuesday, y'all.