Tymeg

Then I probably would have ordered the beer instead of saying "water's fine"...

I hate when you're at a restaurant and ask what they have, and they laugh and tell you the county you are in is dry...

I'd like to introduce you to some wonderful irony where you can't even purchase the stuff in their gift shop...

I wonder if that's a permitting thing, maybe distilleries in TN have to go through a distributor.  The rum distillery near me sells their products in the gift shop, not that I know much about that.  When I'm there it's usually to visit the business next door and buy my brewing ingredients and equipment...

The irony is that Lynchburg, TN is a dry county. That's why you can't purchase their product...

Ahhh, now that is ironic.  There are still dry counties here in NC, and it's always a newsworthy item when it comes up to a vote, especially if it fails.  That's why it was really surprising to me when they raised the ABV limit on beer from 6% to 15%.  I was in the House on the day they voted and the discussions were still pretty heated and the vote was close.

Lynchburg will probably always be dry. They need to have 75,000 signatures to bring it up for a vote. The problem here is the population of that town is a little over 6,000...

Ok, that's at least funny.  Welcome to the south, where unrealistic laws and restrictions keep businesses from earnings potential.  Now take the homebrew shop that I frequent (parked next door to a rum distillery).  They sell all of the equipment and ingredients to make moonshine (or any other distilled liquor).  Maybe JD needs to up their sales in their gift shop to include that and barrels and just call it a DIY JD kit....

I think they have another "gift" shop in the next town over where you can buy all their goods. I'm still not a fan of southern mash whiskey though and I can definitively say I certainly would not fit in down south...

That's pretty much one reason I've never been to the distillery, I'm not a fan of that type of liquor.  Something else that may be funny is no matter how many times I visit a brewery I will do a tour.  I know how beer is made, I don't need someone to show me around and explain the process.  But it's fun to talk to people in the business and ask questions.  I'll often ask the bartender or waitress if they do tours.  If they say no, I'll ask if the brewer is there then ask them.  Fun secret, if they're not in the middle of some busy process, they will usually take you around and show you everything.  Unless it's a corporate owned / chain brewery, those usually have corporate rules to keep people away from the equipment "for safety reasons".  But the small local breweries will usually be pretty happy about showing a customer everything because they're pretty excited about it in the first place and want to share that enthusiasm.

I'm the same way with just about any factory tour. I've seen how ice cream and cheese are made, but if a tour is available, you better believe I'm going to go on it...

Ooooh, cheese tours!!!  How have I never been on a cheese tour.  I need to remedy that one.  I've been to a cheese festival in Wisconsin (that was pretty awesome) but never a cheese factory tour.  <Bucket list item added>

Hopefully no earthquakes happen because I could imagine the mess that could make. I do like Vermont because here we are visiting Harpoon brewery...

That's awesome!  And beer touring and tasting with Stile had to have been fun.  But I honestly learned something new just now...  I always thought Harpoon was in Boston and never realized they opened a second location in VT.

Visiting big breweries is fun, but sometimes the smaller ones are better.  One of our brewery "tours" to Asheville that Mark Rodda organized and rented a bus to hit some of the smaller breweries that are there.  After the tour and we're sitting in the tasting room, they put Mark in charge of the bar so they could get back to work.  All he had to do was fill pitchers for us to fill our tasting glasses from..  Any "real" customers still had to pay, though...

That sounds like fun. One of these years I'm going to do the full Vermont brew tour. Stile and I tried it a few years back. I think we managed to hit only 5 or 6...