FOOD NEWS
12 Mistakes You're Making When Visiting A Brewery
BY JAMES HASTINGS
Not Doing Your Research
Visiting a brewery can help open your eyes to the processes that create beer, but that doesn’t mean you should show up completely unprepared.
To ensure that you enjoy your tour to the fullest, research breweries that align with your interests, their ratings, and their visitation guidelines.
Dressing Inappropriately
Since breweries are active work sites with heavy equipment and open ingredients, it’s best to dress as if you’re visiting a construction site.
Rather than wearing a hard hat or high-vis jacket, opt for durable, closed-toe shoes with a grippy sole and layers of clothes in case it gets cold on the large, open brewery floor.
Touching The Equipment
Hygiene is an important part of brewing beer. Any reputable brewery will sanitize all of its equipment, so don’t touch anything without express permission.
Not only can touching the equipment lead to contamination of beer and ruin the whole batch, but it can also pose a danger to yourself, the other visitors, or the staff.
Not Paying Attention
Brewery tours offer an inside look at the science behind brewing, and you’re almost guaranteed to learn something new and fascinating if you pay attention.
However, if you don’t listen to your guide, you can miss a wealth of information. Likewise, save your questions and conversation for the appropriate moment.
Not Asking Questions
While you shouldn’t blurt out questions every other moment, you should ask questions so you don’t miss out on the opportunity to learn.
If you're new to beer, don’t worry about asking 'silly' or 'obvious' questions, as the beer industry is thousands of years old, and no one expects you to know everything.