Hill Farmstead hype

Will agree with most, it's well deserved praise more than hype.

However, from my limited experience with HF, I am also inclined to say that it's their hoppy beers that score a home run and more. Everett, Arthur, Mimosa do not blow the competition IMO. The Pale Ales and IPAs most certainly do.

 

When I start my own brewery I'm totally not going to sell the beer to anyone. Aw man, so many whales.

 

Having had about a dozen different beers (Abner, Edward, George, BoT, Daybreak, Anna, Arthur, Harlan, etc, etc...), there is no way anything ranks a C. Some Bs? Of course. But nothing is average.

 

The bigger question is why get worked up over people who don't agree with you...

 

A very fair question.

I was looking forward to my first Hill Farmstead beer and found a bottle of their saison at the local bottle shop. Disappointed would not begin to describe my initial impression.. I was then told to try a bottle of Dupont Saison (sp?) from Belgium I believe. Just as disappointed. The problem wasn't with the HF offering, I just don't like saison.

So I can't speak for most of his bottles as they just aren't my thing. The IPA's and DIPA's I can speak for.

I live in Vermont in a log cabin on a dirt road. Trust me, the HF middle of nowhere, gravel road vibe means nothing to me. I wish the gas mart down the road would sell HF out of the cooler with the Oscar Meyer cold-cuts - I'd be a damn happy man.

I can get Heady Topper anytime I want since it's available 24/7 where I do my local grocery shopping - I often do
buy it because it's fantastic. I consider myself blessed. But I make the 90 minute ride to HF a lot because no one works Magic with hops like they do. I've been running up gas bills and pissing off the wife for leaving her alone on Saturdays because their stuff is really special. The hype that many consider charming means nothing to me. Gravel roads in the middle of nowhere with no cell phone service is pretty much my everyday experience - a pain in the a$$ actually.

Many of these small brewers aren't making their products to sit around or bump and bake in the back of UPS trucks. Pretty sure that's not in the quality control section of their business plan. I've had many legendary beers shipped to me from the midwest and west coast that left me feeling like "huh?" I'm sure they'd be better if I got them locally.

Different strokes for different folks. I lived in the midwest for 25 years and had great stuff. Now I'm lucky to live near three fantastic breweries, and HF IPAs are the best I've ever had.

 

I haven't really chased after any Hill Farmstead stuff personally but from what I've come across during tastings or festivals, or just randomly on tap, everything Shaun makes has been incredible. His pale ales like SS, Ephraim, and Enlightenment compete for some of the best I've ever had and his darker beers like BA Everett, Damon, and Birth of Tragedy have also been top notch.

I can't speak for the sours/saisons like Mimosa and Ann (which, from the looks of it, are the main focus of hype these days), but if its anything like other offerings, I can't imagine that they're below average.

Shaun, despite his sometimes awkward/polarizing personality, is just a very talented brewer that's putting out beer that's of very high quality. I don't think that his middle-of-nowhere location has anything to do with the hype his beers have received.

 

It seems to me that your question is concerned more with location and distribution than quality, and I'm not sure that necessarily matters. True, Hill Farmstead does not get a wide distribution. But for that matter neither do a lot of great breweries in California, Colorado, and every place else. What makes HF stand out then? I would say that it's the quality their beers!

I've been up to the farm once, and believe me -- this place makes beer and that's about it. With the exception of a few small shindigs to celebrate new releases, there seems to be almost no marketing involved. They make a great product and they sell it. If people praise/hype it online, than so be it. "Word of mouth" is still one of the best forms of advertisement.

Returning to your post, I think that if HF was suddenly uplifted and placed in the middle of one of the markets you mention, they would still function the exact same way. Except if anything, their reputation would be worse. Given his dedication to quality, I don't foresee Shaun Hill changing his brewing techniques to suit a "macro craft" style of production. In consequence, with a greater nearby population and immediate demand, HF either have to raise prices or sell out of each batch in only a few days' time (thus infuriating BAs across the country who never get to try their brews). Neither prospect is potentially endearing.

So, yeah. As much as I would love to see Hill Farmstead placed alongside Magic Hat and Rock Art on the shelves of my local beer store, I cannot fault them for succeeding in their own way.

 

Could you maybe explain why you thought they were poor representations of the style? I haven't had BoT, but to my palate, Anna has all the characteristics a saison should have. Is it the best clean saison ever? Obviously not. Is it an excellent representation of the style? I think you could argue in the affirmative.

 

Only tried Edward, but among the 40 or so pale ales that I have recorded within last 6 months, it was ranked #1. I haven't tried zombie dust, but have tried some other highly ranked ones, and it was far and away the best pale ale I've had to date.

 

I've rated a large majority of HF beers, and I would have to say a "bad beer" from them is 3.5 or so. I've never had a "C" beer from them, and Anna is one of my favorite American Saison's I've ever had. Birth of Tragedy was a really nice beer, but I preferred the base beer (still gave it a 4.08). That's why beer is fun, we can all agree to disagree.

If HF was in Chicago, I would still rate their beer the way I do. Location and demand has nothing to do with how I rate a beer. I simply think HF makes some of the best beers in the country...and I've had a lot of highly rated beer in just about every style.

You only have 24 ratings, but you rate all your locals at A+ and gave the Smoke from the Oak variants 1's. While I don't think SftO variants are A+ beers, I wouldn't say they're 1's. Going by your 24 ratings, I'd have to say I would probably look elsewhere for opinions on beers I'm interested in trying.

 

In my opInion, Hill Farmstead is the best brewery in America, and no other breweries are even that close. I've had every beer on the top 100 and most on all the other top lists, so I think I have a pretty firm basis for making that judgment. Aside from that, Shaun makes extraordinary beers across a wide range of styles, which is something only a handful of breweries do.

 

The first paragraph is spot on. Our group has a joke about Shaun's beers being "Hill Farmstead Fs" if they're "only" a 4.0.

 

2 words. Double Galaxy, absolutely one of the best beers brewed.

 

I assume these are great beers, but I'd assume the overall impression made by a beer will not be wholly independent of what you've gone through to get it. If I were to travel way out to some remote, verdant, beautiful setting to get a great beer, I'm guessing the setting would have some positive influence on my reaction to the beer, however small. If halfway through my first glass I were attacked by a bear, perhaps my reaction wouldn't be quite so positive.

 

As the phrase " I've had a couple beers from HF and felt both were solid "C" beers" contains an opinion, I'll offer you mine - you are out of you're f'n mind!

 

Permit me to tell a Shaun Hill story. I have never been to the brewery but I got a chance to meet Shaun Hill at Teresa’s Next Door (Wayne, PA) as part of Philly Beer Week. My wife and I had a chance to talk to Shaun for 10-15 minutes. He is a very pleasant guy and very open in communicating. I am a homebrewer so I asked a number of technical brewing questions which Shaun patiently and cordially answered. I then made an honest statement to Shaun: “I have had a large number of your beers and every one of your beers has been very, very good.” Shaun replied: “That’s because we never let a ‘bad’ batch out of our brewery.” I replied: “You never had to dump a batch, did you? He responded” “Yes, and that is tough to do when you only have $5,000.00 in the bank.” So, apparently Shaun did experience a few ‘hiccups’ during his startup but he had the integrity to not sell what he considered to be subpar beer. Yup, Shaun Hill is an excellent brewer on many levels.

Cheers!

 

The people that don't live close to Greensboro that have tried Shauns beers have, for the most part, also had the best of the best from all over the country and it's recieving the same praise from all of them. Plenty of folks in Portland, SD, and many other top tier beer cities are singing the praises of HF... enough so that I think it's safe to say that's a good indication that it wouldn't matter where HF was located, it would still be one of the very best breweries in the States. Hype is hype, but underneath the hype are a huge number of experienced and trustworthy beergeeks from all over the world asserting that Shaun is a genius. Myself included. The hype and praise isn't coming from a bunch of Vermonters with no other claim to greatness or something... Shaun has plenty of competition right in his own tiny little state, but furthermore, there aren't really enough VT beergeeks that are regularly vocal in the media and online forums to create the type of talk we're exleriencing with HF. Not that some of them don't try, but it's not like there are a shitload of them out there constantly buzzing about this... This buzz is coming from fans everywhere.
With beer trading reaching the levels we're seeing now, there is no "only show in town". The "town" has essentially become the entire country and beyond.

 

The place. The purpose. The story. The people (all of them). The principles and standards by which they operate...

While I do believe the liquid HFB creates is always fantastic, it's the aforementioned things that, for me, make the HFB experience simply sublime.

If you don't get it, you just don't get it.

 

And for the simple reason of geography, a vast majority of us just don't get it. Literally.

 

To be honest, I haven't been keen on trading for HF beers because of the ridiculous stuff/amount of stuff I would have to put up to get anything done. I've had Everett, and it was probably the best porter I've ever had, FWIW.