New Belgium Brewery

Arrived at the Cambria Suites in Fort Collins Saturday morning, for two days out of the mountains. Wow, a real bed, and shower....

Having made reservations earlier, we had a wonderful tour of the New Belgium Brewery.
Sampled a whole bunch of the "product" as you might surmise from the photos.

New Belgium is the third largest mircobrew or "craft beer" in the country. There are about three hundred employees who tend to never leave. Our great tour guide tried for 10 years to finally get a job driving a fork lift. He eventually got a position giving tours and drinking beer (responsibly) all day. After one year, everyone gets a special New Belgium fat tire bike (and the start of company stock). After five years, they get a "on the clock" trip to Belgium to study beer. After 10 years, they get a 5 week paid sabbatical to do anything they want. Beer is free for all employees. In fact, our guide finally decided to buy a house after landing this job. He figured he could afford a house, since he no longer had to buy beer.

One of their 19 year key employees has the official title of "Director of Fun". They take regular R&R retreats and there is lots of R&R stuff around the "plant". By the way, number 2 is Sierra Nevada out of Calif. Number 1 is Sam Adams (who may be reclassified as a large brewery soon).

I guess we had too much "product" as we seemed to have traded in our Travel Trailer for a New Belgium Airstream. Oh My Gosh!