Welcome to New Glarus, you will never want to leave.

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend the New Glarus Hard Hat Brewery tour. This tour is $18.50 and only held at 1pm on Friday afternoons. Now at first glance the price may seem a bit steep for a brewery tour, but this tour is well worth the price and lasted from 1pm until 4pm. You start out your tour, which is limited to 15 people, at New Glarus’s first location. You tour the small brewery and get a good look at the processes and bottling lines here. We got in to the fermentation area and had a great Q & A session with a guy there who specializes in fermentation processes. From here, we move on to the new Hilltop Brewery and get an all access pass in that brewery. There is a self guided tour at this brewery as well that is free, but the advantage of the Hard Hat tour is you have three tour guides, and gain access to areas that are closed off and roped off to regular visitors. We also had a meet and greet with Dan Carey, the owner and head brewmaster of New Glarus. Upon completion of the tour, you are led upstairs for an exclusive tasting of select New Glarus beers including unplugged and R & D beers. Our selections included all beers I have had before, except for Golden Ale, a beer that is only sold from the brewery and you cannot get in stores anywhere. We also had the Coffee Stout which is not going to be released until January, Old English Porter, Cracked Wheat, Raspberry tart, Yokel, and one other one I can’t remember off hand. I got a lot of great information off the tour, and some of it I will share with you guys and gals in this posting. I don’t want to share it all, that way you have more to look forward to when you take the tour. Some of what I heard is great news and some is what I consider very sad news.

Me with Dan Carey (Owner and Head Brewmaster of New Glarus)

The Fermentation Tanks at the old brewery.

There is enough Stainless Steel piping in the new facility to cross Lake Michigan!

One thing that is very evident from our tour, New Glarus treats its employees with great love and respect, and it shows in the employee’s attitude about not only the brewery, but also about their bosses, Deb and Dan Carey. I don’t think I have ever seen this level of love and respect for ones boss ever. It truly reflects the atmosphere of the workplace as a whole. This just shows that quality ingredients, along with quality people and honest love of ones job really creates a high quality product. Our tour was led by Scott, DJ, and Chase and these three really made the tour quite entertaining as well as informative. They made it clear that the tour was for us, the fans and consumers of their beer and without customers like us, New Glarus wouldn’t be what it is today.

One other thing to note is that New Glarus does not have a huge corporation mentality, not only are their brewing processes truly green in that they recycle their waste hot water to heat other processes, but also donate their spent grains to local farmers for livestock food. Yes, donate, not sell. The appearance of the new facility was also designed to not only compliment the local architecture, but also hide any “factory” look the brewery may have. The big red barn on the south side for example, is strictly for aesthetic purposes and hides some unsightly equipment. There is even a beautiful cut stone stairway up to the brewery with a flowing stream as well as flowers, trees, and shrubs. You don’t really feel like you are walking into a stale brewery, but rather a brewing haven.

Some interesting findings I got from the tour, is that New Glarus has no plans to distribute outside of Wisconsin (Sorry rest of the country), even with the ability to brew more with the new brewery. The reason is that even with the increased capacity, they still can only satisfy demand here in Wisconsin. And the demand shows, New Glarus does not distribute outside of Wisconsin, and they are ranked 14th in the US for overall craft beer sales. If you ask me, that is incredible.

I asked Dan Carey about the plans for 2010 as far as the unplugged series plans go. He stated that in 2010 we will see the return of Enigma, Apple Ale, a Belgian (I think he said Belgian quad again, but I am not 100% sure I am remembering correctly), a bock, and some more barrel aged beers. I asked if we will see the return of either Smoke on the porter or maybe another smoked beer, like a smoked IPA. He said the possibility is there in the future, but we will not see anything like that in 2010. He did say that he loved smoked wheat beers, so I personally would like to see a smoked wheat in 2011. So lets keep our fingers crossed. I am fairly excited to see some of the older Unplugged beers repeated for two reasons. First, they were great beers. Second, I saved several of them and if they repeat the beers I can compare young and aged side by side. Off the top of my head I still have a few bottles of Bourbon Barrel Bock and Belgian Quad in the beer cellar so I hope those get repeated.

One bit of sad news I learned yesterday is that Hop Hearty IPA will probably be retired in 2010, and in its place will be a new IPA more along the lines of the west coast IPA’s. For some, this may be a welcome change, but for me it is not. What I love most about Hop hearty is that it is not an American IPA like all others. The malt profile of New Glarus’s IPA has some serious depth and makes them a refreshing change from the overly hopped versions that everyone else has. In the end, I think they will brew a great beer, but I wish it was an addition to the line up instead of killing off an old friend. For me, the Hop Hearty IPA was set apart because of its rich malty profile, combined with the American hops. It was a lot more balanced and offered a lot more complexity than many of the other IPA’s out there. For me, this was an old stand-by if I was in the mood for an IPA that was not like any of the others. I am just happy I have one more year with it.

All in all the tour was a wealth of information about New Glarus and I highly suggest taking the hard hat tour. But if $18.50 does not sit well with you, the self guided tour is free. Another advantage of heading off to New Glarus is being able to by an R&D beer that you will not ever find in stores (but I will be reviewing the Golden Ale soon so stay tuned for that), plus I picked up the Cran-bic Ale which is not supposed to hit stores until November. You can buy it at the brewery, and as a matter of fact, the tour guides told us that they just labeled all those unplugged beers the day before our tour! Talk about fresh.

Another thing to quickly note is that Randy Theil, formerly of Ommegang Brewery now works for New Glarus. Randy was the first American inducted into the Belgian Brewers Guild. So I think we can expect to see some more Belgian influenced creations in the future.

Randy Theil, formerly of Ommegang and the First American inducted into the Belgian Brewers Guild now works for New Glarus.

Here are a few more photos from the tour.

They were Brewing Spotted Cow at the Hilltop brewery when we arrived

Some new kegs full of Snowshoe Red Ale getting ready for shipment in November.

Our tour guides: Chase, DJ, and Scott. A great group of guys who obviously love their job.

The stairway leading up to the tasting room.

We sampled several beers including the Golden Ale, Coffee Stout, and Old English Porter to name a few.

The advantage of making it to the brewery is you get some beers you can't get elsewhere. They just labeled the Cran-bic ale the day before our tour and I picked up 2 packs. The Golden Ale is only sold at the brewery, you will not find this in stores.

Drinking a pint of Fat Squirrel right from the source. I enjoyed this pint on the steps of my favorite brewery, and just soaked in its aura. It was awesome.

Review of New Glarus Cran-Bic Ale

Because I was lucky enough to pick up a few packs of the Cran-Bic Ale, I thought I would do a quick informal review.  It will be interesting to see how this ages because I got this the day it hit the brewery’s store. Cran-Bic Ale is a fruit lambic style beer.

New Glarus Unplugged Cran-Bic Ale

The aroma gives off some very mild earthy and barnyard aroma, lighter than I would have thought with the lambic base, but there. For me, the brett is nice and subtle at this point. I wonder how it will progress. What I got most in the aroma was sweet tart fruit (obviously from the cranberry) along with some clean malt. You will not find any hop aroma here, not only wouldn’t you expect it in a lambic style, but you wouldn’t want it in this beer anyway. ( 10 points)

The color is amazingly red, crystal clear, with a pinkish bubbly head to it. Reminds me of cherry 7up. (3 points)

The flavor is a bit sweet, there is some sourness that mingles well with the tart cranberry. For how red this beer was, I was expecting it to be overwhelmingly cranberry like, just like the Belgian Red is very strong in cherry and Raspberry tart is smash you in the face with it’s raspberry flavor, this beer was not quite as fruit flavor packed as those two. The flavor is very good, with just barely enough brett in it for those who want to find it to be able to, but not nearly enough to put off others. My wife even liked it, and she hates geueze because of the brett character. All in all I didn’t find the cranberry flavor all that much as you have come to expect from cranberry juice, but was rather more like semi-tart cherry than dry and puckering like I expected. The lambic side of this beer is tart, acidic, and only slightly funkdafied, which will appeal to the masses. The sweetness is just enough to offset the tart slightly, and also plays with the fruit. As a good fruit lambic should, the fruit takes center stage but the lambic side is noticable. Great beer! (18 points)

Mouthfeel is light, and there is enough body from the malt and fruit to prevent this beer from feeling too watery. The beer is tart, but not astringent. (4 points)

In the end, this will be a huge hit during the holidays, because it is just enough lambic to keep the beer geeks interested, and enough fruit beer to satisfy those looking for an easy drinking, sweet, and refreshing holiday beer. But if you are a hardcore geueze or lambic fan, don’t expect to be hit over the head with funk, I think this beer was meant to be more a sweet holiday alternative to the traditional holiday spiced beers. For me, I would like to see just a touch more lambic quality to the beer, but that will come forward with age. I personally wouldn’t change a thing at this point. (9 points)

Final score is 44 points! That is a solid A in my book and I am more than happy to lay that score on this beer.