Most folks are amazed at how Rick’s Brewery puts on a different face depending on where you are looking from.  As we don’t currently give tours, the most common view available would be from directly south.  This is what anyone driving along the road would see. So we start there, showing the original 1850s brewery, continue along the road until we get to the Minnie creek bridge.  The remaining pictures show a walkaround starting at the west side of the Brewery, going around to the north, then completing the journey back at the original 1850s building

Brewery Original building

View of the east side of the original brewery. We believe that this building was originally built right into a hill. That there was a similar earth profile on the west side as well. To support that, there is a second floor level exterior door on that side. This doorway was filled in when the addition was built.

Brewery Front View Fall Leaves

Front view of the Brewery showing the original structure on the right. You can see a distinct line where the original building ends and the newer addition starts. As a help, there are 5 windows and one door on the original buildings south side.

Brewery street view

Front view of brewery, the large door with the arch above it was the wagon entrance. A team of horses would pull a wagon through the brewery and then on into the cool ale aging storage area to the north. There was an exit out of the hill bat at the racking shed.

Brewery South View

Another view showing the south side, this one shows the new roofing that was installed in 2009.

Brewery front profile

A nice profile view of the south side of the brewery. Anamosa city limits is just past the first telephone pole. Many folks say that this used to be a stage coach stop in the mid 1800s.

Brewery SW view from bridge

View from the bridge of Minnie creek. Flood water was at least 3 foot deep at this spot in 2008.

Brewery west side

View of the west side of the brewery. The large garage door was added around 1960 we think. To the extreme right, between the small door and the front, you can see a small concrete patch. This patch fills the hole used by the horse driven turnstile that was located outside. This was used to power the grain mill used for preparing the grain before the fermenting process was started.

Brewery West view from creek

View of the West side from about where the original outhouse was located. We don't know the exact spot, just the whereabouts.

Brewery NW View

Another view of the west side. The earthen works was different back in the 1800's. There was close to four feet of dirt against the north side. This helped provide a covering for the ale storage tunnels going into the hill to the north. Much of this dirt was removed in the 1960s.

Brewery north side

North side of Brewery, you can see both the original building to the left, and the large 1872 addition. On the addition, the window to the left was originally a door, and the door on the extreme right used to be a window. The window in the middle was added in the early 1900s. Stone is very plastic, you can add and remove at will.

Side entrance NE view

View showing the triple windows installed around 1814. The boarded up window was restored back to a window after being used as an additional entrance door.

Brewery original building north side

View of the original brewery to help give an idea how small it was in comparison to its current size.