Freeport: Bahamian Brewery
When looking at Freeport I didn’t find that there were very many excursion options. A lot of people were going to the Grand Lucyan Resort. The Bahamian Brewery tour and tasting sounded more my style.
I didn’t book an official tour. I took a cab and paid for the tour separately. My total cost was right at $30 which is in line with the Bahamian Brewery Tour and Beer Tasting tour you can book on Viator. It requires a minimum of two people per booking. Since I was going solo, booking this tour was not an option for me.
Freeport Cruise Port
It looks like there’s just tons of fun waiting to be had here!
“Open window” is another way of saying “no AC”
The cab stand is the white tent in the picture below. As you can see all of the cabs are vans that are not very single passenger friendly.
Not a single person under the tent was looking to go to the brewery. They refused to put one person in a van. I had to wait for about ten minutes. Finally they just put me in a van with a group going to the beach and stopped at the brewery on the way. I was charged $11 for the ride.
The Bahamian Brewery
The brewery has a liquor store if you want to purchase something to take home.
There wasn’t anyone else waiting so I got a private tour.
This Brewery sits on 20 acres of land and opened in 2007 launching it’s first beer “Sands” which is named for it’s owner, Jimmie Sands.
This is a look at the bottling facility in action.
After the beer tour you go to the tasting room where you can sample six beers. After that they just give you more of whatever beers you want for 45 minutes.
The tour/tasting costed $10. I drank a lot more than $10 worth of beer I’m sure. The beer tour girl had just completed a group tour where one of the people didn’t drink. So she drank for them. That made for an interesting tour for me.
This is their original Sands beer.
This is Sands light and Bush Crack which is their malt liquor.
This is their premium beer High Rock.
This is their stout beer, Strong back and their Bahamian Ale which is brewed special for Virgil’s BBQ at Atlantis.
After the tasting I found a cab driver buying liquor and thought “what could go wrong?” We are kind of in the middle of nowhere and there aren’t any other cab drivers around so I caught a ride with him.
While I was waiting for him a couple came in with receipts showing they had purchased brewery tours online. I think they said carnival connections is where they bought them. The brewery people said they didn’t have any affiliation with carnival connections. In all of my excursion research I had never heard of carnival connections. It sounded like a scam to me. Unfortunately for the couple, they had to purchase new tour tickets.
Freeport Cruise Port
I am back at the Freeport Cruise Port. The beer girl told me I should try a conch salad. When I got back to the port I ordered one at Robinson’s Seafood Delight.
I wasn’t a big fan of the conch salad. Half of the conch I tried you couldn’t even chew. The stuff I did eat didn’t have much flavor. I took a couple bites but it wasn’t my cup of tea.
The brewery tour was pretty short but with 45 minutes of drinking included, I thought it was definitely worth the $10 ticket.
Much of what we saw was destroyed or flooded during Hurricane Dorian in 2019. Since then the brewery has been renovated, expanded, and has re-opened.
I was happy to hear that the brewery was able to recover and they kept their employees on staff the entire time. The brewery employees assisted in the restoration of the building during the shutdown. I hope you will support this company on your next visit to the Bahamas. I know I will.
