Description: The drive from Milwaukee to Rice Lake is about five hours, with Chippewa Falls being about an hour from my final destination. Taking the 20 minute detour from Hwy 53N brought me to the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company. It worked out well, that I arrived there at about 3:45pm just in time for a 4:00pm tour.
Leinenkugel's "Leinie Lodge" is just outside of the downtown area and adjacent to their 140+ year old brewery. The lodge serves as not only a large gift shop selling just about everything imaginable with the locally famous Leinie's logo, but also as the starting point for their hour long walking tour and ending point at the sampling bar.
It was a drizzly cool afternoon, but that did not put much of a damper on our time with our tour guides, Abby and Katie. As we left the lodge, we learned about Jacob Leinenkugel arrived here in Wisconsin in 1845. A German immigrant, he brought with him a passion for beer and brewing. He founded the brewery on this very site, with some original buildings still standing, in 1867. Today it is the fifth generation continuing the Leinenkugel family tradition using the same recipe for their namesake Leinenkugel Original Beer. This is also the seventh oldest active brewery in operation in the United States.
Since that time, they have introduced a number of specialty varieties including seasonal favorites like Oktoberfest and 1888 Bock. There is another that is currently not in production called Big Butt, which gave everyone in our group a hearty chuckle. Some of their more popular flavors, like Berry Weiss are now available year round thanks to purchase agreements for ingredients from farmers around the country.
While the brewery was not in production on a Friday afternoon, we were able to take the full walking tour to see how the grains are mixed with the local spring waters, hops, brewer's yeast; then fermented and strained to make the lager beverage. The walking tour goes through the two original buildings, concluding in the bottling and warehouse area of the second. We got to watch the pasteurization process in progress on Honey Weiss cans (argh . . . cans!). Unfortunately, no photos are allowed inside the brewery tour.
After your tour, enjoy milling around the Leinie Lodge as there are also a number of old antique pieces from the original brewery making it a nice museum type visit as well. They also provide all tour guests with three certificates good for samples. I must say, while I didn’t sample, I was impressed that the sample cups were about 4 ounces each. I thought that was very generous, not just a flavor sampling.
Tours are offered daily every 30 minutes and are free. They limit groups to just 15 people, so they highly recommend reservations. For more information, including tour times may be found at www.leinie.com or call 1-888-534-6437.
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