New Belgium Brewing – Asheville, NC

Yes, this is the nationally-known brewer of the commonly-known Fat Tire amber ale. Everyone said we must visit this brewery and here we are. As expected, it is a HUGE operation in terms of craft beers but is dwarfed by other mass-production breweries like Anheuser-Busch that we visited in St. Louis. We were pleasantly surprised by the menu that offers 30 different beers ranging from everything you can imagine. We kept it simple and ordered a pint of Mountain Time lager and Old Tuffy lager while sitting out on the deck overlooking the river of what could be described as an “event center”. A large, modern building lacking intimacy and built for one thing: serving the masses. We weren’t really all that impressed with the beer – something you would expect from a mass-production craft beer factory.