New Belgium Brewery Tour

This week’s adventures continued with a fantastic tour of the New Belgium Brewery in Fort Collins. I was really impressed with so many aspects of this company.

Fun facts about the company:

• Is and always has been 100% employee owned
• After one year of employment, you’re gifted a BIKE!
• Parking is assigned by gas mileage and not status–the better gas mileage you get, the closer you park!
• There’s an actual “Director of Fun” position.  My new dream job…
• You can take a slide from the top floor to the bottom floor.  And I definitely did it.
• The Mighty Arrow ale is named after the original owners’s dog.
• All of the labels are designed by an older lady who lives next door to the owners
• The reason why there are SO many breweries in Fort Collins (6 currently, 10 by the end of the year) is because of the quality water source.  The key to good beer, is really good water.  Who knew?

We got to sample 5 different beers along the way.  My favorite was this dark malty one that was served with chocolate at the very end of the tour.  Could there be a better combo?? Probably not…

Overall it seems like a great place to work.  They have a committee that is solely devoted to sustainability as they’re always working to be more environmentally friendly.  The tour leader actually said that other companies will travel to meet and discuss ways to become more “green“.  Pretty cool I’d say.  I love companies that have values like this.  They really focus on partnering with other businesses to help the community in any way possible.

ALSO, New Belgium openly supports other breweries as they feel proud to be apart of the wonderful industry of beer.  Sweet.

I think I need this mirror in my apartment:

Happy Friday!  Never in my life has the phrase TGIF been more appropriate.