A few weeks ago, Rivertowne Brewing Company of Pittsburgh PA had a deal on LivingSocial for their brewery tour. They offered a regular tour and a VIP option that included dinner and live music for $20 more. Dave and I decided to try the VIP tour because it sounded like fun. This tour was for 2 people and cost $50. It included, for each person, a tee shirt, 6 tastings, 1 full sized beer for during the tour, the tour itself, and buffet dinner with live music.
So I guess we will start from the top. The tee shirts are super nice and soft. They had a bunch of different styles and colors. Tee shirts from breweries can be very expensive so this was definitely worth it just for the tee shirt.
The tasting was rushed, very rushed. I usually like to do tastings similar to Dogfish Heads style which is at your own pace. You get the main 6 beers from their line and no seasonals for the tastings. It was very rushed, there was no real time to savor the beer. You get about 2-3 ounces for each sample. Their beer is very good. In particular I enjoyed the Grateful White and the Hala Kahiki. Dave liked Maxwell's Scottish Ale.
The tour was amazing. We were led by the head brewer. The tour was pretty basic on how beer was made, which I expect from a large tour group. The interesting thing about this tour is that you get to see a canning line. Canning isn't very common for breweries because many people think of canned beer as crap, such as Bud and Miller, and canning is actually very expensive to implement. The technology used in canning has also come a long way in recent years and makes canning actually better for the beer than bottling. That's the main reason the people at Rivertowne convinced their accountants it was worth the extra money to can their beer.
The dinner was okay. There was pretzels, sausage and penne in tomato sauce as well as salad. If you were on the tour, the price of beer was $3 for a glass. This was good cause you don't get to try any of the special seasonals during the tasting. So we grabbed the seasonal beers during dinner. They had a helles, a session IPA, and a stout, I believe. The lower price on beer was an added bonus for the dinner.
The music was so loud that even though we were sitting outside we had to yell at the other people at the table we were sitting at to talk. The inside is pretty small so for the volume that it was, the people had to be deaf. Dave says it was a little quieter than the sound system he helped set up for an outdoor ZZ Top concert, before they doubled the number of sub-woofers for the show, so about 120 Decibels aka louder than a Jet taking off. For the size of the place and the fact it's indoors, it was completely inappropriate. I would have preferred no music to the loud raucous being played.
We're glad we did it once, but we won't be doing it again. It's okay and the tour is interesting but with the fact that the tasting was rushed and the food was meh, I'd suggest saving the $20 and getting a general admission tour.
Rating: 2.5 pints
I did it once, I won't do it again. (Dave: I'd consider doing the general tour again, but not the VIP tour.) The music was too loud, the food was meh, the tasting was rushed. If you're interested in Rivertowne, do the regular tour instead of the VIP tour.
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