In Vermont, you get used to the changing of the seasons. Some people say that we even have a fifth season up here: mud season. Along with the changing weather, we have hunting seasons, fishing seasons, and, perhaps best of all, beer seasons. In spring we get hoppy, medium-bodied ales that give us hope that the cold will end soon. In summer we e ...
Read More »Taste Test: Hermit Thrush Brewing at the Growler Garage
Hermit Thrush Brewing is focusing on Belgian inspired ales and tend to lean towards sour styles. Because of this, we’ve been wanting to try out their beers for a while now. We missed out on their tap takeover at the Farmhouse last month but got another chance the other day. The Growler Garage on Dorset Street in South Burlington had anot ...
Read More »Small BREW Act and Fair BEER Act Examined
There are two proposed bills through Congress right now and they are big news for the craft beer industry. Both bills bring revisions to the federal excise tax on beer produced by craft breweries. Under the current law, breweries that produce less than 2 million barrels (63 million gallons), must pay $7/barrel for the first 60,000 barrels they ...
Read More »Taste Test: Magic Hat (New Seasonal, New Can, and New Locations)
One day last week, a mysterious box arrived on our doorstep. (Okay, it didn’t just magically appear. Magic Hat sent us a Twitter message and asked for our address. But whatever.) What was inside this multicolored marvel? (Do you even know what this blog is about?) It was beer! Really fancily packaged beer! We decided to dive right in an ...
Read More »Taste Test: New Year-Round Otter Creek Beers to Replace Old Staples
From muted colors and reserved styling to a VW bus, a Bernese mountain dog and funky fonts, any Vermont beer drinker will notice that Otter Creek Brewing in Middlebury has been going through a rebranding. The imaginative new beers they’ve been releasing paired with colorful new labeling represent a distinct direction change for Otter Cr ...
Read More »Contest: Win this Growler Coozie!
We’ve reached 100 followers on Facebook and Twitter, and to celebrate, we’re giving away this brand new Fiddlehead Brewing Company growler coozie to one of our followers! This sweet prize can be yours if you do 2 simple things: Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, or both! Answer this question on our Facebook or Twitter pages: what&r ...
Read More »Brewery Visit: Stone Corral
Nestled to the west of Camel’s Hump in Huntington, VT, there’s a nano-brewery serving up great beers in small batches. In 1991 Bret Hamilton started homebrewing and in the summer of 2013, he opened up Stone Corral. His hobby may have started in 1991 but the desire to open a brewery began when his wife, Melissa, came back from the st ...
Read More »Brewery Visit: Bent Hill Brewery
If you think you’re driving to the middle of nowhere when heading to Bent Hill Brewery, you’re probably heading in the right direction. And if you think you’re about to pull into someone’s personal driveway, then you know you’re in the right spot. On the first day of their soft opening, we urged our heavily protes ...
Read More »Top 5 Vermont Beer Cans to Take to the Beach
It’s finally starting to feel like summer in the green mountains, and what better way to celebrate than by enjoying the sunshine at the park or beach! Since so many of Vermont’s parks and beaches don’t allow glass, we’ve compiled a list of our top 5 Vermont beer cans for summer, so you can enjoy some brew while keeping t ...
Read More »Our Vermont Craft Beer Dream Team Six-Pack
We were asked by VT Beer to come up with our Vermont beer Dream Team 6 Pack. We chose 6 beers that we felt were representative of the landscape of Vermont beer today, were fairly easy acquire, and would realistically be able to fit into a real 6-pack. See if you would have made the same choices! 1. The Alchemist: Heady Topper It’s impossi ...
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