Boulder, CO - Avery Brewing Tour

On Day 2 of our Colorado Easter weekend extravaganza, we decided to head out to Avery Brewing in Boulder, a short 10 minute drive from my Uncle's house.  Avery is one of my favorite breweries in Colorado, so this was a treat.  And it turned out to be one of the most unique breweries I've ever visited.....

We started the tour....OUTSIDE!  That's right, part of this brewery is actually outside.  Shown in this photo is our tour guide, a drunken Scotsman with an awesome accent and a bitter hatred toward the Brits.  He gave a top-knotch tour.  Behind him is one of their grain bins - that particular bin held their pale malt.

This photo is a peek into their kettle room - this is where most of the mashing takes place.  This brewery turned out to be MUCH smaller than I expected....the polar opposite of the Budweiser brewery we saw the previous day.  This place is running 24/7/365 in order to meet their demand.  Interesting note - most of the fermentation tanks at Avery are located outside.  They can do that because the tanks are double-layered, which allows them to electronically control the temperature of the inner tank, regardless of the outdoor conditions.  But who are we kidding, weather is beautiful 99% of the time in Denver.

In this photo, the Scotsman is showing us Avery's tiny, winding, apparently fiesty bottling system.  They purchased this system from an Italian company, and it was shipped in pieces....small pieces.....187,000 small pieces, to be exact.  Luckily, they have an engineer on hand that's good at putting things together, probably played with Legos as a child, who was able to put this bad boy together in about 1 month.
  

A closer view of a corner of this fiesty little booger.  Apparently when the machine gets mad, it deliberately breaks bottles, just to piss off the packaging guys.  Nothing a firm kick can't fix!

This was one hell of a tour.  It caught me by surprise when they told us to dress warmly because most of the tour was outside...  Another interesting twist with this brewery is how spread out everything is.  This place is located squarely in the middle of a bunch of run-down autobody shops, and it seems like the fermentation tanks are intermingled around the garages.  It's strange... you'd never guess this brewery actually produces good beer, based on the 'aesthetics' of the place.  But their beer speaks loud and clear - I had a glass of their New World Porter Black IPA during the tour, and it was poisonously good.