Hitejinro's free Gangwon brewery tour offers majestic views and fresh brews

Home > Business > Industry

Hitejinro's free Gangwon brewery tour offers majestic views and fresh brews

Published: 24 Sep. 2025, 18:05 Updated: 25 Sep. 2025, 11:21

CHO YONG-JUN
[email protected]

Audio report: written by reporters, read by AI

The view from Hitejinro's Gangwon brewery in Hongcheon, Gangwon [CHO YONG-JUN]

HONGCHEON, Gangwon — Thousands of green beer bottles move along a conveyor belt at Hitejinro's Gangwon brewery, where 4 million bottles of beer are produced every day. There are also 108 beer storage tanks, each holding 600,000 liters (158,503 gallons) of beer, enough for someone to drink for 330 years if they drank 10 500-milliliter (17-fluid-ounce) bottles of beer daily.

A two-hour drive from Seoul is hardly convenient, but it does offer one place where you can actually check out how beer is made, how glass beer bottles are recycled and most importantly, taste ice-cold Terra and Kelly beer fresh from the vat: at Hitejinro’s Gangwon brewery.

Hitejinro hops on new beer trend as sales of Kelly overflow

The Hitejinro brewery in Hongcheon, Gangwon [CHO YONG-JUN]

The liquor company most famous for its soju opened Hitejinro Park in August last year, an upgraded version of its existing Hitepia visitor center at the Hitejinro brewery in Hongcheon, Gangwon. What was originally a simple visitor center with minimal content turned into a full-fledged brewery tour experience, more in line with those offered by overseas beer brands.

Beer crates stacked up outside Hitejinro's Gangwon brewery in Hongcheon, Gangwon [CHO YONG-JUN]

Best of all, the tour is free of charge. Visitors can reserve a spot on Hitejinro’s official website if they have a registered Korean phone number and are over 19 years old. For foreigners visiting Korea short term, they can either book through a third-party travel agency or directly call the brewery. The brewery is open from Monday to Friday, and the tour happens four times every day: 9:30 a.m.; 11 a.m.; 1:30 p.m. and 3 p.m, each with a maximum of 40 guests.

Built in 1997, Hitejinro’s Hongcheon plant is where the company produces up to 500,000 kiloliters (132 million gallons) of beer every year, making it not just Korea’s largest beer brewery, but one of Asia’s largest. The plant brews and packages Terra, Terra Light, Kelly and Hite, along with Black Stout beer and FiLite low-malt beer.

Hitejinro's Gangwon brewery in Hongcheon, Gangwon [CHO YONG-JUN]

Upon entering the tour building — after a long drive from Seoul over highway and countryside roads — guests will be asked to watch a short introductory video showcasing the 100-year-long history of Hitejinro. The real tour begins only after the video, as the new version starts with a barley-farm-inspired entrance. As with many other brewery tours, visitors are taught how beer is made through a mixture of malted grains. hops, yeast and water.

What sets the Hitejinro factory tour apart is that the tour route takes guests straight through the production process of actively brewing and bottling beer, separated only by thick glass walls. First, the guests can see the massive brew kettles, followed by a view of the control center — which looks like a rocket launch center — and through to the bottling process.

Brew kettles at Hitejinro's Gangwon brewery in Hongcheon, Gangwon [CHO YONG-JUN]

While photos were allowed throughout the tour, taking pictures of the bottling and recycling procedures was strictly prohibited due to confidentiality, according to the company. On the day of the tour, Terra, with its signature green bottle-label combination, was being produced. The process starts with beer bottles recycled from all over the country and sent to the plant. The factory then sorts the empties, sending bottles from other companies back to where they belong, sanitizing the remainder for reuse. The entire sorting and sanitization process takes about 40 minutes.

After that, the bottles are sent through a massive, sterile room where thousands of green glass bottles move along a conveyor belt to be filled with fresh beer. You can also see how defective products are automatically checked and separated — I was able to see a half-filled bottle of beer screened out of the process.

Bottled Terra beers at the Hitejinro factory in Hongcheon, Gangwon [HITEJINRO]

The canned beer manufacturing process could be seen from a distance, behind the bottling station.

The brewery tour continues with the history of Hitejinro, showcasing previous advertisement models and beer types.

There is even a row filled with beers from all around the world, from Budweiser to Asahi and Guinness, and even North Korea’s Taedonggang beer. Who knows how they got a hold of one.

Hitejinro's Gangwon brewery in Hongcheon, Gangwon [CHO YONG-JUN]

And the highlight of the tour — the tasting session — comes only after a large vault is opened. The large tasting room features a gift shop, photo booths and a great view of the Hongcheon River, where the company sources its water from.

The reporters were served ice-cold pints of Kelly and Terra, poured into cups that were stored in a fridge. The beer definitely tasted better than the ones served in restaurants, but I, as someone who doesn’t have a strong preference when it comes to lagers, wasn’t able to pinpoint how the beers tasted different and better.

Hitejinro staff pours ice-cold pints of beer at the Hitejinro brewery in Hongcheon, Gangwon [CHO YONG-JUN]

“Beer, unlike soju, is a drink that is easily affected by light and heat,” Kim Tae-hwan, who oversees the quality assurance of the beer, said. Kim said his team would taste a sip of beer every day to see if the taste had changed, on top of all the scientific measurements they conduct at the lab. “Here, you can have the true taste of beer; it should feel clean in the mouth and smoother to swallow.”

BY CHO YONG-JUN [[email protected]]