Google Sightseeing’s Brewery Tour
Wednesday, 19th January 2011 by Ian Brown
Some of our writers have been known to enjoy the occasional alcoholic beverage1, and the ongoing expansion of Street View means that we can (virtually) visit some of the world's best breweries without having to worry about driving home. So pour a glass of your favourite beer and join us for Google Sightseeing's first Brewery Tour!
Carlsberg Brewery, Copenhagen
To start, we visit the quite ornate Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen, Denmark2. The western gate tower is supported by four carved granite elephants, the symbol of the brewery. The Latin inscription above the gate means Let us work for our country.
Businessman J.C. Jacobson founded this brewery, which has become a major part of what is now a global brewing conglomerate. He named it after his son Carl, who - after a feud - started his own New Carlsberg company. Following the elder's death the breweries merged under Carl's leadership.
The elephants are each marked with an initial of one of Carl's four children, as well as a swastika. This was originally seen as a symbol of luck based on its origin in eastern religions, though the brewery abandoned its use when it was adopted by the German Nazi party.
One thing I remember from my visit is that workers were allowed to help themselves to a beer any time during the day. They went on strike in 2010 when the company tried to regulate that consumption!
The eastern gate is also notable for the plaque describing Carl Jacobsen's vision for the brewery, and the depictions of his family and important figures from the business. Learn more about this historic brewery at its official site.
St. James's Gate Brewery, Ireland
Over to Ireland now, and one of the world's best known brands - Guinness, and its original brewery St James's Gate. The gate is marked '1759' - the year Arthur Guinness first made beer here, and when he signed a 9,000 year lease!
Once the world's largest brewery, the plant occupies a huge area south of the river Liffey. Along Crane Street we can find both an attractive brewery gate and a slogan painted by conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner.
At the heart of the factory is The Guinness Storehouse visitor centre3. While it's difficult to get a clear view of it from Street View, it does have a new glass atrium designed to resemble a pint of their famous beer.
Weihenstephan Abbey, Germany
While Street View is available in some German cities, it has not yet made it to Freising in Bavaria, where the Weihenstephan Abbey claims to be the world's oldest operating brewery.
While there are records of hops being used at the monastery as early as the 8th century, it was granted an official license in 1040, meaning it will celebrate its thousandth anniversary just 3 decades from now!
Abbaye Notre-Dame de Leffe, Belgium
A different group of monks created one of my personal favourite beers, Leffe. It's no longer made at the Abbaye Notre-Dame de Leffe4 in Dinant, Belgium, though a revitalised religious community there does offer tours of the building, and there's also a nearby museum.
Bragdy Gwynant, Wales
And finally, just to prove that size isn't everything5, how about the world's smallest brewery? The title is claimed by Bragdy Gwynant in Wales - basically a tiny shed where real ale is brewed for the Tynllidiart Arms pub next door!
We'd love to hear from our readers - post a comment with a link to the location of your personal favourite brewery or brewpub!
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See for example our post from last year about Britain's notable pubs. ↩︎
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Which I have slightly fuzzy memories of visiting some years ago. ↩︎
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Which I also have slightly fuzzy memories of visiting some years ago. ↩︎
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It is instead created in a large industrial InBev facility, but it still tastes fantastic! ↩︎
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You'll note that I'm not including the world's largest brewery in this post. ↩︎
About the author
Ian Brown lives in Ottawa, Canada, and spends his spare time perusing maps to find new routes to ride on his orange bicycle.
In Texas, we have Shiner beer, brewed in Shiner, TX at the Spoetzel Brewery. It’s almost a requirement that when you visit Texas you grab a Shiner Bock beer (though they make a ton of different kinds like Shiner Blonde, etc.).
View Placemark (29.433632,-97.166771)
Street view is sparse in Shiner, but you can see it from a bit of a distance.
British Columbia’s top microbrew, Granville Island Brewery, has the hilarious distrinction of being located right across from a children’s market (there’s even a zebra crossing connecting them, presumably to help guide staggering parents across the street to pick up their children).
Thwaites Brewery Blackburn – Local brewer who have famous shire horses pulling their ceremonial delivery carts.
http://tinyurl.com/thwaitesblackburn
Give it a bit of time to pull up the Street View.
(How do you get the view placemark link?) That would be easier I think…
Hi Martin – the system can’t make a view placemark link because you used a TinyURL, if you just post the original Google Maps link it will work:
View Placemark,,0,-2.59
Leffe is one of your favourite beers? Time to get to know the good ones then i guess…. Like Orval, Grimbergen, Westvleteren, Chimay…
Sadly, Streetview does not exist in Belgium, which may be a good thing as quite apart from the Trappists above, there are something like 300 breweries to log.
A couple of new and old breweries in the Netherlands
Ye olde Heineken Brewery (aka the Experience, ahem) View Placemark,,0,-17.99
The modern site, unfortunately only the office building is recognizable Heineken, the rest of the site is not covered very well by Streetview View Placemark,,0,-1.47
In the distance is the location of the former brewer Hengelosche Stoom Beiersch Bierbrouwerij in Hengelo. If I’m not mistaken the building in the centre is the old brewery house. View Placemark,,0,2.4
This is the former Grolsch brewery in Groenlo View Placemark,,0,3.59
The old brewery in Enschede was located here View Placemark,,0,0.32
This is the current Grolsch brewery View Placemark,,0,0.9
The preview of my previous comment worked, fine, sorry about that 🙁
The New Belgium Brewing Company in Fort Collins, CO: View Placemark,,0,2.59 The founder is a friend of a friend, and I remember drinking his homebrew in his kitchen almost 20 years ago. He said his ambition was to start a brewery, and he certainly succeeded. Good for him!
Looks like a problem with the formatter on the web site.
Thanks Wayne, we’ll look into it (I’ve fixed your comments manually for the moment)
“They went on strike earlier this year …” Perhaps it was last year, Ian 😉 ?
In Ian’s defence, he actually wrote the article last year, we just published it yesterday! I’ve updated the incorrect part, thanks 🙂
OK, that’s funny… the preview was correct.
Thanks for trying yym_c, I’ve fixed Andreas’ links in the original post.
I’ll look into what’s going on with the previews!
Thanks Alex and James for wrangling these comment issues while I was at work. And yeah – the post was written (not under the influence of any beer whatsoever) quite a while ago, but I should be more careful with date-related matters!
Well, would you look at that, the time has reached beer o’clock!
Couple of interesting ones I’ve visited, IJ in Amsterdam is a microbrewery in a windmill
View Placemark,,0,-13.48
The Hook Norton brewery – quite a famous old building
View Placemark,,0,-0.04
Oh, go on then, if no one else will: The home of Stella
Here in Scotland, despite Inbev no longer owning the brewery, Stella is still brewed here at the Wellpark Brewery in Glasgow.
View Placemark
Today the brewery is once again owned by Tennent Caledonian Breweries and of course, this is the permanent home of Tennent’s Lager.
In fact, I’ve actually been on a tour here, and there’s lots of stuff to keep someone like myself interested, including these awesome blue phone boxes:
View Placemark,,2,3
(Yes, of course phone boxes are interesting!)
https://www.googlesightseeing.com/2009/07/telephone-boxes/
One of the better local brews, just to show the monks they don’t have it all their own way in Belgium: De Cam, Gooik