Budweiser Brewery Tour In St. Louis

Despite the German name, Budweiser has always been associated with America and Clydesdales, a beer with nostalgia to it down to the very red, white, and blue colors of the can. Who doesn't remember those horse ads from childhood with "Here comes the king, here comes the king, here comes the big number one"? 

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Budweiser's ubiquity in the beverage marketplace now even crosses over to microbrewing relationships with Red Hook and Goose Island, expanding reach beyond just the flagship lager beer.

As a rice beer, Budweiser has fans and critics, but no one can deny that the beer giant is everywhere, whether as the brand hiding behind Land Shark or as Shock Top. They even have a relationship with Stella Artois now, a beer made with maize.

Adolphus Busch knew what he was doing when he decided to create crispness in his beer by adding rice. Keep in mind that the St. Louis heat and humidity was not the place for traditional, heavier English ales, and so industrial workers who wanted a potable quaff after their grueling jobs drove the demand for a lighter lager.

The Budweiser brewery in St. Louis offers probably one of the best tours in the world, with some of the cleanest machinery and most-efficient production on display. Can Line number 60, for example, produces 1,950 12-ounce cans per minute.

The Daily Meal was fortunate enough to tour the plant and have a few drinks at the end in the tasting room. Not only did we get to pet the tallest Clydesdale on the property, but we saw from start to finish how this ever-present symbolic American lager is created.