Drank a few of these and then a few more (im quite popular as you can see by the empty chairs)

France is famous for its wines, but Strasbourg being right on the border with Germany has had some of their beer influences woft over. Strasbourg is home to a beer company called ‘Kronenbourg’ which is now part of the Carlsberg Group. The main beer they produce is ‘Kronenbourg 1664’ which is the best selling premium lager in France with a 40% share of the market (according to Wikipedia).

The brochure that they produce is all in French and it has extremely vague directions on how to get there. There is a map with their logo on it that is so big it spans over like 4 different streets and a huge area. I take the tram from near my hotel to the stop it suggests, get out and look to be in the middle of nowhere, definitely not near a brewery. I know which road its on so I walk till I find that road, go down it for a while and don’t see anything like chimneys etc that you would expect from a brewery. Retrace my steps and think for a bit, look around and then see a big Kronenbourg sign on the top of a building. I was on the right road before, just didn’t go far enough, even though I felt like id gone so far I was in Germany. Worst. Map. Ever.

Asked at reception to do the tour and she said 2pm was free (currently its 1:30pm), but it was in French. I ask what about tomorrow, she says yes there are times available, but they’re all in French. Im not sure if she understood why I was asking about tomorrow. They only do English tours for big groups apparently.

Tour started with a big presentation and talk about the water, malt and hops that they generally use. Well, I think, because it was obviously in French. Then we walked to another building that housed the old distilling stuff, pretty typical really, same stuff in every brewery. Went from there back to the original building and went down to some underground tunnels. I have no idea what the guide was saying but we came to some of the original massive barrels that had the beer in it, so I just assumed those tunnels used to be full of them. Then there was a movie about the advertising of the beer, the ads seemed to be funny as people were laughing. I was not.

Then came the best part, the end of the tour at the bar. They had 4 taps with different kinds of Kronenbourg, a Guiness tap and a Carlsberg tap. And also a few lesser known bottles of beer such as ‘Wel Scotch’. You could drink as much as you wanted, so I did. I tasted all of them, some a few times, the Wel Scotch was a bit of a surprise and it was quite nice. The only Kronenbourg ive ever drunk has always just been while in Europe, and the varieties I had today were all good.

Overall the tour for me wasn’t that impressive as it was mostly talking which I couldn’t understand. It was a LOT different to the Heineken brewery which is catered for tourists and is usually a ‘must see’ when in Amsterdam, where as this one is just kind of a side thing to do if you’re in Strasbourg and have spare time. Glad I did it though, free beer is always a good incentive.