Under the threat of pouring skies, sweltering heat and humidity, 4 brave souls departed Fletchers for Tampa and the D.G. Yuengling and Sons Brewery.
The Yuengling Brewery, (pronounced ying ling), has the distinction of being America’s Oldest Brewery and that has been continually operated by the same family since it’s beginning in 1829. Andrew Jackson was President when this brewery went into operation and was started by David G. Yuengling in Pottsville PA, the brewery is now owned and operated by the 6th generation of Yuengling’s. The Tampa plant, which was formerly owned by Schlitz then Stroh’s was purchased by Yuengling in 1999 and has the brewing capacity of producing up to 202,000 -12 oz. bottles of brew per day but is currently operating at only about 25% of it’s capacity.
In the past few years the brewery has grown dramatically, with production increasing from 127,000 barrels in 1989 to over 360,000 barrels in 1996 to now over 1.5 million barrels of beer per year. A barrel, by the way, is 31 gal. That’s 46.5 million gallons of beer per year. It sounds like a lot and would take a pretty big refrigerator to hold it but it is a drop in the bucket of the more then 6 billion gallons of beer produced annually in America. And you wondered where all those beer belly’s came from.
The eagle in the Yuengling logo had been the subject of a lawsuit by Anheiser Busch that was ended when Yuengling proved it actually had the eagle in it’s logo for more the 30 years longer then the larger Budweiser producer. When prodded to counter sue, current owner Dick Yuengling stated, “I have better things to do”.
The tour of the brewery took about 40 minutes and was hosted by a lovely English lass named Elizabeth and concluded with a taste of beers made in the brewery. (2 glasses per person only). Since we were on the bikes we asked for small glasses.
The trip over was uneventful and John Pantelis got to practice some u-turns on his recently purchased Ultra Classic. (Hey, I heard 30th street had construction and I followed my GPS which had apparently never been to the brewery before.) We saw parts of Tampa that we never saw before. In fact we saw parts of Tampa that may not have been seen by ANYone before. After crossing the Hillsborough River for the 3rd time in as many minutes we managed to get back to Nebraska and Busch and on to the 30th street entrance of the facility.
Our thirst for knowledge and malt having been satisfied, we headed to the closest Hooters for some lunch followed by a ride back home.
Good Ride, Good Tour and Good Company for an early morning ride. Mike Rieker
