St. Louis Sights: Anheuser-Busch Factory

This week, my team is going to be out in Kansas City, Missouri, for the annual National SkillsUSA Championships. We’re competing in parliamentary procedure, so we’re gearing up for battle! We had team shirts made that read, “Roving Death Squad #9” on the front, with our nicknames on the back. I think we revel in the ludicrous. Because obviously, there has never been a commissioned team of mercenaries of parliamentarians…that I know of…

Tonight, we made a pit stop in St. Louis to see the sights and rest before the last few hours of our drive tomorrow. It’s honestly been an exhausting day, because we walked almost everywhere! I had a healing blister on my foot, but now it’s open again, and I’ve developed another one from the shoes I had on today. Note to self: Walking requires something more substantial than flats!

The first thing we visited today was the Anheuser Busch factory, better known as the Budweiser factory. I’ll be honest, I didn’t want to go on the tour, and I didn’t much care about anything the tour guides had to say. I was in a pretty sour mood. But as we progressed, I ended up having a pretty good time!

When our party walked in to the building, we got our tour tickets and waited for about five minutes for the tour to begin. After the guide gave us some basic history, we headed out the stables where the famous Clydesdale horses are kept. The building is really old; it was built in the late 1800s and has housed many beautiful horses. There’s a gigantic chandelier hanging in the middle of the building made entirely out of brass and weighing several hundred pounds. The chandelier has a sister, but the tour guide said you’d have to go a hotel in Texas to see it.

The horses were beautiful! Clydesdales are amazing animals regardless, but these horses have been trained, groomed, bred, and pampered individually. Mike, the stable’s resident celebrity, is actually the largest known Clydesdale on Earth. The animals generally weigh a ton, but he weighs well over 2500 pounds and is over six feet tall.

After the stables, we headed to the buildings that housed the brewery itself. There are seven steps to the Budweiser brewing process, and all of them occur in the gigantic red brick buildings. Most all of them were built in the late 1800s, and most have also been repainted and remodeled many times, so the color looks thick and goopy in places on the bricks. That’s not to say they’re not impressive; these are really tall, old facilities, so they have something of an imposing air, like something you’d read about in The Jungle. I mean this in the best of ways, of course!

The first thing you notice when you step into the factory is the smell. It’s a wheat and malt-inspired sour smell that isn’t altogether unpleasant. I didn’t know what to make of it at first, but I actually started to like it! It’s nothing like curdled milk or anything bad; as a matter of fact, the smell has a tangy odor similar to that of an indoor pool. It doesn’t smell exactly like a pool, because it has a more natural feel to it, but it’s close. It reminds me a little of baking bread or rising yeast. The smell of the place is definitely what I remember most about it.

The tour guides at the Budweiser factory are awesome! They’re cheerful and eager to please, and the facility itself is just as welcoming and clean. I ended up really enjoying myself and in all, the tour was pretty interesting. I hope you get the chance to go on one too; after all, you get two free beers at the end of it.

If you want more information about the factory, or about the company or anything else, check out their website, and have a wonderful day!