Miller Brewing

Hi!

Last weekend we went to see my brother in Milwaukee. While we were there, we stopped at the place he was staying to pick up the stuff he had to move. (Hello, moody Tivoing dishwashing obsessive! Thanks for letting Robby stay!) We put the stuff into the car and moved it to the house of the girl who went to Europe with him last winter. (Hello, crazy centipede-capturing, picturesque-computer-owning guy! Roommate to my brother's friend!) It was fab. The guy with the centipede, though? I hate centipedes. Peter is a whack-job for keeping one in a jar like that. It was very nasty.

Then we all went on the Miller brewery tour. It was great. First of all, they're not like the Busch people - they totally understand that the reason people go on the tour is to drink beer. They don't take themselves too seriously - while they were all about the "In 18-something, Frederick Miller did something" references, they stopped themselves short of going into his family heritage in favor of more humorous references to the "Champagne of Beers". It was very worth-while. I recommend it.

We got to see lots of things, including the place where they package the brew. They would have been packaging the brew when we went through, but they weren't, because it was the day they do repairs:



Then we saw the warehouse, where they store about 500,000 cases of beer every day. (This is convenient, the tourguide told us, because Chicago consumes aproximately 40% of that beer every single day.) It was awe-inspiring:



Then we went to drink beer. I got a good picture of Bruce and Robby:


*Edited to show a non-fuzzy picture of the two of them.

And one of me and Robby, too:



Let's please not forget the moment when Robby totally abandoned all thoughts of comfort to lay front-down on the pavement to get the best picture ever in front of a Miller High Life bus:



Then we drank a couple of more beers. I can tell you without a doubt that after this weekend, everyone who's been aching for more pictures of my gorgeous brother will get them. We're going to dress up as pirates on Saturday. Doesn't that sound exciting? I thought so.