Imagine a vacation where all you did was tour breweries and sample beers from all over the nation. This kind of vacation is now possible in this country. The proliferation of microbreweries has reached such an epic proportion in the U.S. that every major city – and many smaller burgs – have breweries that offer guided tours. Naturally, not every beer fan is going to be able to convince their spouse of the fun and excitement of a brewery-tour-style vacation, but it is easily feasible to work a couple of brewery stops into the family road trip. After all, brewery tours are educational and interesting for the whole family!

Most brewery tours take place on the weekends, so make sure to take this into account with your holiday planning. Some brewery tours are free, others cost a small amount (usually $5 or so), and sometimes reservations are encouraged or required. A little research on the interweb will provide all the contact information you will need. It pays to call ahead at the brewery and ask about family, student, or elderly discounts – and to make sure that someone is there!

To determine which breweries to visit, I suggest first searching out the locations of where your favorite beers are made. Many beer companies, even microbrews, have multiple breweries. If you are planning a brewery vacation, it is easy to then connect the dots and start calling about tours in the spots you want to hit. If you have a vacation route already planned out, and have found a brewery that tours on it, you should ask the receptionist if they know of any other touring breweries in the area. In this manner, you can discover some of the local flavor, and perhaps run across your new favorite beer.

Many distilleries also offer tours of their production facilities. Perhaps the most famous of these is the Jack Daniels distillery in Lynchburg. The distillery is located about 75 miles southeast of Nashville, Tennessee, and offers 1 hour and 15 minute tours of the facility. The Jack Daniels tour incorporates informative information about the distilling process, historical anecdotes about the famous whisky, and a chance to buy commemorative bottles at their White Rabbit bottle shop. Although Moore county, where the distillery is located, is a dry county, and it forbidden to sell any form of alcohol, the distillery has a special legal dispensation to sell small commemorative bottles there.

Another fun and interesting brewery tour is that of TAKARA Sake works in Berkeley, CA. I heard from many friends about the quality of this tour for years before I was able to make it. This tour features a sake museum and an instructional video about sake making and its history. At the end of the tour, the generous hosts of TAKARA Sake treat the (21+) brewery tourists to a tasting of 11 different kinds of sake. This tour is quite a treat, and a must see for any brewery fan touring breweries in Northern California, especially the San Francisco Bay Area.

For Texans, the Shiner brewery tour is an easy jaunt. If you are interested in how a larger brewing operation works, you can visit this brewery where the daily production reaches approximately 8,000 cases of beer and 500 kegs. The Spoetzl Brewery is one of the fewer than 170 breweries in the U.S. that survived prohibition, and is still going strong to this day. As far as breweries go, this is a historical operation. Located conveniently close to San Antonio, Houston, and Austin, the Spoetzl Brewery offers tours Monday through Friday at 11 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.

The few brewery tours listed here give you some idea of the breadth and variety of brew tour adventures available to the general public. While researching your brewery tour vacation, keep an eye out for the unusual, perhaps a drink you are not used to. You will come away educated and with a greater sense of the variety and adventure available while touring breweries.