Aug 30: Missoula rest day

UM

We took the day off to tour around Missoula.  With a population of 60,000 it is the biggest town we have been in so far.  It is the county seat and the home of the U of Montana.  We toured the campus, which sits on the edge of town and we were able to wander around the stadium.      
Set into the hills on the edge of town the stadium has a terrific setting.  After lunch we tracked down the breweries.  Microbreweries are a success story in Montana.  The licensing laws allow breweries to sell beer to customers on site (to a limit of 3 pints per day) and there is a tradition of “growlers”.  We see most customers bringing in 48 fl oz bottles for refills.  At a price of $6 per fill up, this is a great price for beer, but it must be drunk fairly quickly. 

Growlers

Our final visit was to the Big Sky Brewery. When we arrived at the entrance we could see there were still a lot of visitors even though it was getting late in the day. The visitor’s room had a lot of merchandise on offer but we headed resolutely for the bar where a single barmaid was struggling to keep up with demand. We were drinking samples (about 0.2L) that were limited to 4 per person when a young man from Newcastle, UK started talking to us and explained that the beer is FREE!!!!!!!!!!!! The posted limit of 4 beers is the DAILY limit of free beer because the brewery does not have a licence to sell beer for consumption on the premises. Why don’t we adopt such US customs in Europe?

University of Montana