Brewer's Market: The Great Vermont Adventure

With plans to head to Vermont for a weekend getting very close I set out to make a plan for my trip up that would not only get me to some great beer but to hopefully some brewpubs to sample some local fair. Star Date... Thursday January 27th 2011. My plans began in motion choosing the best breweries en route and in the surrounding areas of my ultimate destination. I ended up settling on 7 breweries I would like to visit, not only for the beer but for the stamps so that I could conquer the Vermont Brewery tour. Here were my destinations: Madison Brewing Company, The Alchemist, The Shed, Rock Art, Long Trail, Harpoon and finally McNeill's.

The game plan was to start on Friday and meet Dan for lunch at the Madison Brewing Company. First success. Sampler order, let's do this thing. The beer wasn't great, so it wasn't the best start to the journey but it was alright. The food was a little better, service a meh. Overall seemed like a pretty cool place. More of restaurant than a bar with plenty of seating and a relatively tiny bar. It was mid afternoon on a Friday so the service wasn't great, but who's complaining I was on vacation. I enjoyed my time there and it was time to pack up and head to the next destination. So we headed north on RT 100 toward Waterbury VT. When we walked in and took a look around this was the place to be in Waterbury (which isn't too far away from Stowe VT and their ski resort). While it was not easy getting a drink at this hour or finding a comfortable place to stand, I was making sure that it was going to happen. I grabbed a Holy Cow IPA on cask as well as a Beelzebub Stout. The IPA tasted great on cask I was truly impressed, as well as the Stout. Of the 4 other people I was with none of them had a bad thing to say about either beer. I really did enjoy the stout though which was a full bodied experience with a great malt character from beginning to end. Simply delicious. The saddest thing about this brew pub was that they did not serve growlers. I treat growlers like trophies, probably because I never won any sports championships as a kid but that's not important now, and I love bringing them home and off showing all the different breweries I have been too.

Day 2: After hitting up the log cabin for the remainder of the night. It was time for day 2 of the adventure and 2 more brewery destinations... Right after we stopped at the Ben and Jerry's factory (obviously). First stop for a late lunch/snack was The Shed, located in Stowe VT. Their bar area looked awesome had TVs set up plenty of people in there and a real cozy atmosphere in there. Unfortunately with the size of the party and the available space in the bar we went to the dinner room. Which is retrospect was pretty awesome. The dining rooms were truly beautiful. 2 different dining rooms that were separated with seemingly 2 different themes. Order up them Samplers (8 to be exact). Beer was good, not amazing but solid brews across the board and a new fun way of serving the samples, on a ski with mounted glass holders. It was pretty awesome. Food was decent but we were in a hurry and just got finger foods. Growlers were available for purchase as well; Amber Ale came home with me. 1 party member did not finish all of their samples, unlike the day before at Madison, I grabbed most of what was left and slammed it home, she did man up for 1 of the glasses that were left over. On to what was the most anticipated destination for me of the trip Rock Art Brewery. (Note: Rock Art is moving soon to a new facility right on Rt 100) We tried to get a tour but the owner was building something in the back, and didn't want people walking around. We understood and sat down for a sampling anyways. They were rocking 4 beers on tap in the tasting room. We were able to sample everything that was on tap and get a souvenir glass for our trophy case. Now since this happened a little while back, my memory may be wrong but I believe they had Ridge Runner, The Riddler, Magnumus Ete Tomahawkus and either the American Red or the Helles Bock on tap. All of which were delicious. I grabbed a growler of Ridge Runner, picked up a sampler 12 pack and a bomber of Vermonter before I left. Overall the employees were great, gave detailed descriptions of the beer as well as being very polite and ready to interact with customers. Since I did manage to spend a decent amount of scratch at the brewery I got a bunch of free stickers and stuff. I did get a chance to speak with one of the brewers as well which was a pleasant and surprising experience when she told me that she only brews once a week there. Our brewery adventure was finished for the day. With a big day of traveling back to our real lives ahead of us and 3 more brewery stops it was time to head back to the cabin for dinner and well more drinks.

Day 3: The journey home (more accurately to CT) We set forth from the cabin in the early hours and headed south toward Bridgewater corners. Thanks to Dan's GPS technology he took a short cut and beat me to Long Trail by exactly .2 seconds. Long Trail doesn't serve growlers but did give out samplers in cupcake baking trays which was a pretty awesome idea to be honest. As you can image another sampler went down in VT, along with lunch. Before we sat down we went on the tour of the facility, which actually is a walk down a catwalk but a tour nonetheless. The best part of this visit was that the brewers were right in the middle of the mash, so the entire building smelled wonderful. Once again another great meal with some great people. Once the meal was over it was off to Harpoon Brewery in Windsor VT. I didn't realize they had a restaurant here as well, for a sampling room. If I had known that we probably would have skipped that wait at Long Trail (which was completely packed) and grabbed some beers our stamps and headed out. Lesson learned for the future. Harpoon was very classy looking, wish I could have sampled some food there as well to give a review but the beer was great. Another fun thing about Harpoon was that it was right next to a dog sledding course. So the huskies were out running around while we were sampling beers. This could have definitely been an all day affair in Windsor if it was planned out better. Growler of Leviathan Series Imperial IPA purchased to finish off my 4 growler purchases, of the weekend. It was time to head south for 1 last brewery stop. That was McNeill's Brewery in Brattleboro VT; where I was lucky enough to get the Dead Horse IPA on cask, the ladies got the Oatmeal Stout on cask. Both were delicious and a great way to cap off the weekend in Vermont.

Thanks for taking this journey with me in my long winded story nature. I should be able to get a beer review up in the next couple of days after I find a delicious to give a review for.