Yankee Brew News Archive

Have Brewery? Will Travel!

Originally Published: 02/97

By: Gregg Glaser

Do you like beer? Do you like visiting breweries, brewpubs and good beer bars? Do you like international travel? Do you have a valid passport? If you answered yes to all those questions, then, boy, do I have a deal for you.

Hot on the heels of the American craft brewing renaissance, the surge in homebrewing, BOPs popping up all over the country and beer dinners and tastings taking place at restaurants nationwide, the travel industry has jumped on the bandwagon with tourism packages designed for the beer enthusiast. One- and two-week trips to the great beer producing countries of the world are being sold by travel agencies and tour operators throughout the country.

In Connecticut, Eagle Tours offers the British Pub Crawl, the Dublin-Edinburgh Pub Crawl and the Long London Pub Crawl Weekend. The week-long British trip takes visitors on brewery and pub visits, in London and in the country, as well as general sightseeing visits. All three tours are led by Paul Corballis, owner of Eagle Tours. Author and photographer of the book Pub Signs, and the pocket-sized, illustrated The Travelers Guide to the Pubs of London, Corballis claims to have enjoyed a pint in over 2,500 different British pubs. He lends his special expertise and insights to his tours.

Also in Connecticut, Small World Adventures began marketing beer tours in 1995. Small World, specialists in international "adventure travel," outdoor/experiential programs and corporate training, got into the beer travel business for a simple reason. Owner Gary Markowski's brother, Phil, is a professional brewer (originally at the New England Brewing Company of Norwalk, and now at the Publick House of Southampton, New York) and a beer enthusiast of the first order.

Small World's beer tours, designed by Phil and Gary, center on the Czech Republic, with stopovers in Belgium on the way home. Either Phil or another knowledgeable beer enthusiast leads the eight- or nine-day tours, along with a Czech/American restaurant and tavern owner. Highlights of the Small World Brewer's Tour are visits to Pilsner Urquell, Prague's U Fleku brewpub and the original Budweiser Budvar Brewery.

Alan Britton, of Britton's Heritage Travel, is an Englishman living in Vermont who each summer offers a Hops & Horses Tour. This sixteen-day tour includes visits to pubs, breweries and horse racing tracks in England--both flat and National Hunt races. Britton's tours also include visits to historic landmarks that happen to be along the way between the beers and horses.

Beers International, a New Jersey company founded about ten years ago by beer salesman and beer lover Richie Stolarz, presents several international and domestic beer tours each year. Trips include the Boston Brewers Festival, Stoudt's Great Invitational Eastern Micro Festival, a Baltimore Brewpubs & Baseball Tour, a 7-day Belgian Beer Tour, a London Weekend & Great British Beer Festival Tour, and the Great American Beer Festival & Rocky Mountain Brewpub Tour.

Stolarz sells the Belgian beer imports of Vandberg and Dewulf in New Jersey, and because of his relationship with the importers, he has made good contacts with many of Belgium's great small, artisanal breweries. The Belgian trip includes visits to the breweries of Liefmans, Rodenbach, Moortgaat, Frank Boon, Saison Dupont, DuBuisson and DeKoninck.

Moving down the East Coast, Travel with Foster is Baltimore's beer travel provider. Frank Foster has designed tours to Germany and England. The ten-day Oktoberfest trip includes a Rhine river cruise, castle tours and visits to villages, the Alps, Innsbruck and Salzburg, in addition to the Oktoberfest. The eight-day Genteel English Pub Crawl is led by the General Manager of Baltimore's Sisson's Brewpub. The trip features visits to the breweries of Young's and Marston's, the Bass brewery museum and numerous pubs, as well as Stratford-on-Avon, Blenheim Palace and other London and English tourist destinations.

There must be travel agencies and tour operators in the middle of the country offering beer tours, but I haven't heard of them. The next company I discovered in the beer travel business is located in Craft Beer Central, a.k.a. Seattle, Washington.

The MIR Corporation is a specialty tour company concentrating on "citizen diplomacy custom group tours" in the nations of the former Soviet Union. MIR began their European Brewery Adventures in 1993, and the company now offers four trips a year: Brewing Traditions of England & Scotland (London, Tadcaster, Edinburgh), The Best of Bohemia & Bavaria (Prague, Plzen, Bayreuth, Kulmbach, Bamberg, Munich, Aying), Artisan Breweries of Holland & Belgium (Amsterdam, Maastricht, Brussels, Brugge) and Fine Beers & Wines of Czech & Hungary (Prague, Ceske Budejovice, Sopron, Budapest, Holloko, Eger, Lillafured, Tokaj). MIR's tours are led by Larry Bausch, editor of The Pint Post magazine and founder of the Microbrew Appreciation Society, Portland, Oregon wine expert Bob Liner and chef and Edinburgh native Bruce Wright.

A short West Coast mention should also be made about Star Travel. This Sonoma, California travel agency is currently working with beer writer and beer industry analyst Jack Erikson to develop several European beer tours. A Caribbean "brew cruise" is also planned.

Back Roads Touring Company, an English firm with a sales office in the U.S., offers The Great British Pub Tour and London's Historic Pubs' Evening Tour. The four-day pub tour starts and ends in London, visiting pubs and breweries in Somerset and Dorset counties. The London evening pub tour takes place every night and visits ten historic pubs in eastern and southern London, along the Thames.

Most of the above trips include package prices comprising airfare, ground transportation, hotels, some meals, visits to breweries, pubs and tourist sites, a host and/or escort, etc. For the one- and two-week European tours, prices range from about $1,400 to $2,600. The size of the groups varies considerably - Small World Adventures will design a beer tour for two people - but the average group size is about ten to fifteen people.

The detailed itineraries of these tours seem well designed for the serious beer enthusiast, while allowing for enough non-beer touring to interest a spouse or friend who isn't a beer fanatic. The prices are reasonable, and the inclusion of knowledgeable American brewers and beer writers as tour guides, as well as local escorts who know the in-country beer scene of each location, is a good touch. It will be interesting to see how beer tours succeed in the next year or two. Will there be new entries in the field or a few drop-outs? For the moment, the status of beer travel looks good.

***SIDEBAR for HAVE BREWERY? WILL TRAVEL!***

Beer Tour Operators

Eagle Tours

Danbury, CT, 800-832-4538

British Pub Crawl - March

Dublin Edinburgh - March-April

Small World Adventures

Bridgewater, CT, 203-350-6752

Brewer's Tour Prague/Czech/Brussels - March-April

Belgian Beer Lover's Long Weekend - April

Brewer's Tour of Belgium - April

Brewer's Tour Prague/Czech/Brussels - open dated, year-long

Britton's Heritage Tours

Morrisville, VT, 802-888-9113

Hops & Horses - English beer & horse racing tour - August-September

Beers International

Teaneck, NJ, 201-836-6540

Boston Brewers Festival Tour - May

Stoudt's Great Invitational Eastern Micro Festival - June

Baltimore Brewpubs & Baseball Tour - July

Belgian Beer Tour - July August

London Weekend & Great British Beer Festival - August

Great American Beer Festival/Rocky Mountain Brewpub Tour - September

Travel With Foster

Pasadena, MD, 410-437-9553

Oktoberfest -- September

Genteel English Pub Crawl - September-October

MIR Corporation

Seattle, WA, 800-424-7289

Brewing Traditions of England & Scotland - May & October

The Best of Bohemia & Bavaria - May-June

Artisan Breweries of Holland & Belgium - September

Fine Beers & Wines of Czech & Hungary - September

Star Travel

Sonoma, CA, 707-935-4300

Several beer tours are planned with beer author Jack Erikson

Back Roads Touring Company

London, 800-274-8583

Great British Pub Tour - April -October

London's Historic Pubs' Evening Tour - every evening