Four Peaks Brewery

Day 81
Tempe AZ- Day 25

Tibbs is running around the house like a meth addict on a fresh high. It's 7am and the RV park is still silent. I wonder if I can get outside and beat on some Jeep parts before anyone notices. Slowly, I climb out of bed and look out the window. Yeah... let's do this.

A few quick and hard wraps with a hammer pops the u-joint out of it's driveshaft home. The bearings are still in decent shape but the trunion and cap have worn down enough to make some slop. Then it's the same process in reverse and the new u-joint gets put back in. Once bolted up we are ready to head out for today's adventure.

Four Peaks Brewery in Tempe Arizona offers free tours of their process on Saturdays. The brew pub is located in the oldest poured concrete structure in Arizona. Built in 1892, this old creamery and ice house retains much of it's charm. The bare concrete walls and steel beams are all original. Most of the wood trusses appear to be original along with a few single pane windows.

Our tour guide for the day starts pouring samples from cans.... which is odd. This is our fourth brewery tour and the first one that didn't give samples out of the tap. To be fair the other three were Budweiser (St. Louis/ Houston) and Miller-Coors. 

Our tour guide takes us aimlessly through the brew process and rooms. He is knowledgeable in the process, but lacks fluidity in the lecture. The facts just kind of drone on and on with no real rhyme or reason to the process. Below you will see special edition beers aging in old whiskey barrel casks.

Halfway through the tour I'm standing around staring at the floors and walls of the building. This place is a mess. I have 15 years of food and pharmaceutical manufacturing experience under my belt and I know what to look for. The floors and equipment do in fact appear to be clean. It's the final execution from the last shift worked that is ridiculous. The tour takes us in between tanks where guests have to step over hoses. Pallets are on edge and boxes are not put away. This place is a slip/fall hazard just waiting to happen.

Look at this jumbled pile of crap. I don't want to hear that they have nowhere else to go with it. If that is the area you must use, then organize and store it on shelving and hooks. And that paint.... ugh.

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The end of the tour takes us into a small bottling room for the special editions. Here our guide points at the wall and talks about what other businesses where here over the years and how they took plaster down to find this beautiful old brick wall. What you can't see is that the wall has flaking paint. Actually, a lot of rooms were in a state of disrepair due to paint. That's not historic, it's called being lazy. I sure hope the boss of this place gets his act together and cleans this place up.  It is at a tipping point of either being something special... or getting them a 483 from the FDA.