Founded in 1876, Sapporo is Japan’s oldest beer brand, and it remains the best-selling Japanese beer in America. Sapporo currently has five breweries across Japan, the oldest of which is found in the city of Sendai. It was one of the earliest breweries to incorporate a computerized brewing system.

Heineken’s Göss Brewery in Austria is the world’s first large-scale, carbon neutral brewery. The brewery began its clean energy initiative in 2003, and is now completely powered by solar and hydropower energies. It is also the first brewery to have a grain fermentation plant that annually turns about 18,000 tons of production waste into biogas.

The inhabitants of the Shire from “The Hobbit” and the “Lord of the Rings” book series are known to consume plenty of wine, mead, and beer. In November of every year, the Hobbiton Movie Set Beer Festival lets fans do the same at a beer festival held at the Green Dragon Inn in New Zealand. In the books and films, the Green Dragon Inn was the local pub for residents of Bywater and Hobbiton.

If you want to enjoy a New Glarus beer, you’ll have to go to Wisconsin to buy one. Founded by married couple Daniel and Deb Carey in 1993, New Glarus is known for using 100% natural ingredients and for only selling within the state. The brewery, named for the village of New Glarus, is also employee-owned.

If a brewery says they are “Gruut,” they mean that they make their beer without using hops. Gruut is the name of a specific brewery in the Belgian city of Ghent, but it also refers to the practice of substituting herbal mixtures — including rosemary, gale, sage, yarrow, and bay leaf — in the place of cheaper hops. The practice began in the Middle Ages, when hops were banned in French-controlled Low Countries.

Germany’s most famous beer festival may be Oktoberfest in Munich, but Berlin’s Beer Festival is also one of Europe’s largest celebrations of beer. Held annually since 1997, the Berlin fest draws over 750,000 people each year over the course of three days in August. The fest features around 1,800 different beers from 240 brewers, who represent 80 different countries.

Since 1977, CAMRA (Campaign For Real Ale) has organized the Great British Beer Festival in London, one of Europe’s largest beer fests. “Real ale,” as defined by CAMRA, is “brewed by traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide.”

Since 2001, the Belgian Beer Weekend in Brussels has been held annually in La Grande-Place, a series of private and public buildings constructed in the 17th century that today comprise a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The festival usually takes place the first week of September, and it typically features about 500 beers from 50 Belgian breweries.

The Heineken Brouwerijen is Europe’s largest single brewery, located on nearly 200 acres of land in the Dutch city of Zoeterwoude. Alfred Heineken, grandson of Heineken founder Gerard Adriaan Heineken, wanted the land to be more picturesque than a typical industrial brewery. He ordered the planting of 1,000 trees and 42,000 bushes on the property.

The very first Oktoberfest was held October 12, 1810, as part of the celebration of the royal wedding between King Louis I of Bavaria and Princess Therese von Sachsen-Hildburghausen. The original Oktoberfest lasted five days, ending with a horse race. Oktoberfest became an annual event, and today Munich is home to massive wooden beer halls that hold up to 6,000 patrons at once.

The Coors Brewery was founded in Golden, Colorado, in 1873, and rapidly grew until Prohibition hit Colorado on January 1, 1916 — four years before the law went into effect nationwide. That day, the brewery had to literally pour out all of its beer reserves into a nearby river. To keep the business afloat, the brewery began making several alternate products, including malted milk.

China’s Qingdao International Beer Festival, Asia’s largest annual beer festival, bills itself as China’s Oktoberfest — even though it takes place over the course of four weeks in July and August. Held in the city of Qingdao in the Shandong province, the festival features 2,000 beers from over 40 nations. It began in 1991 as part of the 100th anniversary celebration of Qingdao.

Jim Koch founded the Boston Beer Company in 1984, and the first batch of Sam Adams was brewed in Koch’s kitchen, utilizing the recipe of his great-great grandfather, Louis Koch. The name Sam Adams was chosen because of the link to the fight for independence — Samuel Adams was one of the original Founding Fathers, and the beer company started as an independent craft beer operation.

The original home of Oktoberfest is also the home of the world’s first-ever brewery within an airport. Airbräu opened in Munich International Airport in 1999, and all beer served here is brewed according to the Beer Purity Law of 1516 — stating that only water, barley, and hops were allowed to be used for beer production. Including food and beer, 90% of all products served at Airbräu are locally sourced from Bavaria.

This festival’s location in Pilsen, Czech Republic, is a strong hint for the type of beer it celebrates. The Pilsner Fest takes place each October, celebrating the anniversary of the first brewing of the locally made Pilsner Urquell on October 5, 1842. Fans of the brand dress up in period costumes at the festival, and events are held at the brewery itself and in the town square.

The world’s largest single-site brewery by area is the Molson Coors brewing plant in Golden, Colorado, located 15 miles west of downtown Denver. The brewing site has a capacity for 22 million barrels of beer, and each barrel can fill 330 cans of beer.

Located near Toronto, the Canadian cities of Kitchener and Waterloo team up to put on the largest annual Oktoberfest celebration outside of the original in Germany. The Canadian neighboring cities have a significant German population, and Kitchener was even called Berlin until the city changed its name during World War I.

For three days every autumn, the Mile High City serves up the world’s largest collection of American beer at the Great American Beer Festival. The festival was founded in Denver in 1982, featuring 24 breweries and 47 different beers. Today’s version of the festival has grown to include over 800 breweries and 4,000 beers.

The end date of Oktoberfest always falls on the first Sunday in October — unless that Sunday lands on October 1 or 2, in which case, it ends on October 3. But because Germany’s Oktoberfest is a two-week festival, it always begins in September. The modern-day celebration draws more than 7 million visitors to Munich every year.

Arthur Guinness started his namesake beer company inside a small Dublin brewery at St. James Gate in 1759, and he began with an extremely long-term plan. Guinness paid £100 for the brewery, and secured a rent of £45 per month for the following 9,000 years. Sadly, when the property expanded beyond the original four acres, the original lease was voided.