6/5/607 A Day in Saint Louis (Part One)

We left the campground this morning around nine. By 10:15 we were in St. Louis looking for our first stop on our list of things to do. We found it with only one wrong turn which took us into Illinois for about 4 minutes.

Back into Missouri and we found the first place we wanted to tour.

Once we stepped foot on the grounds Bob got this smile on his face and said, "Ahhh, I'm home!"

One of the first things we noticed was how beautiful the grounds were. We were told they have quite a large groundskeeping crew and it certainly shows!

We found these flowers shown below especially pretty.

We made our way into the visitors center and found several displays. We didn't know that Budweiser owns the worlds smallest jet. This plane which has a wing plan of just 18 feet actually does fly.

Here is a picture of one of Budweiser's earliest deliver trucks.

Bob standing in front of one of the parade wagons.

There were several displays in this building such as the one of the beer steins. Beautiful, ornate drinking vessels that were kept behind glass of course. I truly would have liked to share pictures of these beauties with you but decided not to take photos because all that would have turned out was the reflection of the flash in the glass. Take my word for it, they were beautiful!

From the visitor center we went to the barn area to see the famous Clydesdale horses.

Now I'm sure a lot of you have been in a horse barn at some time in your life. The question is, did the barn you were in have stained glass windows and a chandalier like the Budweiser barn?
The Tack Room, take note of highly polished wood in this barn room.

From the barn we made our way to the .....

The clock tower on the Brew House.

We weren't allowed to take photos of too much in this building because of trade secrets. For instance, they took us to the area where the vats are that the beer sits in for six days aging. These things are HUGE! Each one holds the equivalent of 200,000 six packs! From what we could see the vats ran 3 deep and 3 high and 3 across, again that was only as far as we could see. Considering how much beer is bottled and canned each day there to be many more that were out of view.

They did have this area that we could photograph.

From here we went to the packaging plant.

We were lead into a very large room with conveyor belts and robots all over the place. Can after can snaked their way around the room and we were amazed to find out that 1,950 cans of beer are "born" every MINUTE! Bottles are slightly less at 1,650 per minute. No pictures were allowed because other beer manufacturers aren't filling containers as fast as Bud because of these very well guarded trade secrets.

At the end of the tour we were taken to the tasting room for 2 servings each of our beer of choice. Bob made out very well here as I don't drink beer so he got my share as well. Thank heavens they also served Pepsi!

Bob, Bobby and Shelly enjoying their beer.

One of the employees came over to our table and told us he has worked for Budweiser for the past 41 years. He works 7 days a week! When we asked why he worked so much he replied, "I love my job". He went on to tell us that when he started all those years ago there were about 2000 employees in the bottling plant. Now there are only about 500 due to robots that now can do the jobs.

He also told us that prior to 1985 every employee was allowed to drink beer on their lunch hours and breaks. That isn't allowed anymore so now each employee is given two cases of beer per month. Bob wanted to know where the personnel office was.

The tour was most enjoyable and we're glad we took the time to see the Budweiser plant.

This is it for the first part of our day. I'm breaking this down into two entries because yesterday I got this all done and lost it and had to do it over again.