What is it about Vermont?

Lol laugh all you want. I get it with his saisons and with Everett. Everett is out of this world good. But his hoppy beers are so unbelievably subpar. And all it takes is one style to be bad for the well roundedness thing to fall through.

As for other breweries. Cellarmaker. So good.. At least in my mind if I could choose one with the consequence of eliminating the option to consume the other ever again, I would choose Cellarmaker without even a millisecond of hesitation. Another would be Holy Mountain in Seattle. Their "saisons" are mind blowing and everything else they make is wonderful too.. Just two that come to mind and neither are very hard to get to!

 

Gotta go sometime. My folks always said to take a trip to NE, and be sure to go in the fall. That could turn into a massive and pretty sweet haul.

 

Holy crap I f'd that calculation up. Please disregard my San Diego numbers...they are completely wrong. Thanks.
Now that I think about it, it is hard to think of a real apples-to-apples comparison. Portland (10.8 breweries per 100K...unless I screwed up the math again) has a population closer to Vermont (~609K vs ~620K), but is not comparable in square miles. With enough data, it would be interesting (well, maybe not that interesting) to compare high-density brewery areas of like population and size, but I'm not sure it exists in any accessible form.

 

Cellarmaker only has one saison in rotation? They make a lot of hoppy beers. I love hoppy beers, but please, one brewery for my life but all they make is hoppy stuff? Good on them. Would love to try them.

BTW, which of HF's hoppy offerings did you get to try?

A lot of good saisons around, but I have never tried Holy Mountain, sure would love to, though. Guess a lot of folks would, but looks like they don't can or bottle?

To me Le Sarrasin, Nordic Saison, Brother Soigne, Anna, Arthur, and Flora all are world class. Tried all/any of those?

 

not sure but pretty much all new england/northeast beers are preferable for me because they drinik cleaner for me than any other beers

 

and the late, great Catamount.

 

I'll duck right there with him. I don't live in VT but am lucky enough to have a buddy who is up there multiple times a year as well as a little brother who lived there. Because of that I've been lucky enough to try all sorts of goodies from VT/MA. I've had some good beers from HF, but overall I found them a bit over-hyped, as I did the beers from up there in general. Don't get me wrong... I had some fantastic beers from that area (Sip of Sunshine remains one of my favorite hoppy beers of all time), but I guess they just didn't live up to the "these are the best you will ever try" hype they tend to get. As someone mentioned, there are amazing breweries all over the country. And for picking a brewery better than HF? I'll take SN's catalog of beer all day, every day.

 

Much has been said already and for me and many on here craft beer is a major pleasure in our lives and besides the great tasting beer, the Vermont culture adds a great deal to the mystique. I go to Vermont once a month to escape the congestion of the big city and indulge in the beer, the beer festivals, the conversation between beer lovers, the sparcely populated roads, the beautiful scenery, and the excitement of finding the next top creation of Vermont brewers talent. If I was to get a similar product and I had to deal with traffic jams, nasty servers, unpleasant surroundings it just would not be the same. I would say similar to other industries talent leakage, given the rich brewer talent in Vermont and their training of staff, this perpetuates new breweries as some of the talent goes their own way or joins another brewery. We are the beneficiaries.....

No disrespect to anyone here but Vermont as a hotbed for craft beer is not about the education status of the the population or even about the great water system; both are quite important but not variables that aren't readily available in most other states. I think what is keeping Vermont amongst the elite states in craft beer is the inability of the major breweries w/major distribution channels to treat craft beer properly. The biggies, and we know who they are, have executives who don't have the beer knowledge or thought process to treat the products as we all would like - meaning maintaining the quality. They are entering the market via acquisition and we all seem to think that once that happens product quality drops. This is probably true as the quickest way for an executive to make his/her mark is to increase the bottom line and I can tell you that working in Corporate America for a long time its a lot easier/quicker to cut expense than increase revenue. So unless some of the great brewers in Vermont or other states decide to apply the craft and choose to grow the business into a national conglomerate, Vermont will be a great beercation for all of us.

 

Well, that about makes the rest of your post unnecessary.

SN is a great brewery. If they keep trying maybe they will make a beer as good as Hill Farmstead, Alchemist, or Lawson's, but I doubt it.

 

I think Greg Noonan at Vermont Pub and Brewery also had a lot to do with it. He was John Kimmich's mentor, Sean Lawson was really influenced by Greg directly and his helping hand availability to many brewers who were starting out.

 

Holy Mountain bottles, check their facebook page they have them available quite often.

Cellarmaker makes many more than just one saison, though they are available less frequently than are their hoppy beers. They also always have at least one "dark beer" on. Their "coffee and cigarettes" is on now and is amazing. Their stouts have all been phenomenal as well. Typo pils is also a wonderful american twist to a pilsener.

Ive only had Soigne, Anna, and whatever the leaves of grass thing was. They are all great, but nothing mind blowing by any means. And I had single citra, single mosaic, mutual admiration, and double galaxy. I don't have anything very positive to say about any of them. Maybe I shouldn't have tried treehouse and trillium for the first time around that same period, they are infinitely better with hoppy beers. Again this is my opinion, no intention to offend.

 

Since par means average, and you called them subpar, I guess my problem was with what you said then, not what you are saying now, which is a different thing.

I agree, Trillium and Treehouse are making the best IPA in the country and I would place Hill Farmstead behind that. Congress Street and Julius are amazing, better than HF's hoppy bews. But subpar? They are soooooo much better than below average that I had to respond.

And for Cellarmaker I merely used the beers that had been rated here. There are 3 saisons listed, two of them retired, one rotating

 

I'm no Vermonter, but do have a second home there (technically in-law's) and visit often. My general take is that Vermont is old school and "crafting" anything is something it does well. That applies to cheese, maple syrup, pottery (and other arts and crafts sold throughout the state by local artisans), and burgers at Worthy Burger (from local grass fed beef, local rolls, local produce and local cheese). Before it went big time, it likely applied to Ben & Jerry's. And it applies to Beer.

Vermont makes small batches of things with great care, and those more "bespoke" items tend to stand out against more mass produced items. Stone, Oskar Blues, Langunitas, Founders, Bells, etc. are barely "craft" by comparison. Yet you do see Trillium, Treehouse, Toppling Goliath, RR (and many others I don't have experience with) "crafting" small batches beer as well, and many of those beers get the same acclaim. Of course, many small breweries aren't good at all. So the skill needs to be there, and when it does, the results are tremendous.

 

Could be a self-fulfilling prophecy situation where the power of suggestion made them think that the beers were that much better than what is available locally, which given how many excellent breweries there are throughout the northeast, is just not the case. Also, lets not forget how much of the beer from those extra long beer runs are just for trade fodder.

 

Is where a head brewer born really something that matters to people?

 

"Inventors" of drink fresh, drink local. Still rings true.

 

I believe when we are discussing regional beer culture and why some places are better then others- yes.

 

That makes no sense to me. What if someone was born in Hawaii, but moved to Vermont when they were 2 months old? What if someone was born in NY but moved to Vermont as an adult because that's where they wanted to start their brewery? Is the beer "less local" due to birth location of the brewer/owner? I just don't see how location of birth makes any difference whatsoever. Do you think that there are people who wouldn't be able to enjoy HT if they found out that Kimmich wasn't born in VT*




*I don't know or care where he was born.

 

I just think of it as New England's California.

 

We live closer to the land than people in many places; dig being DIY entrepreneurs; appreciate hard work that results in small-scale quality products; like to support the locals that do so. The hype didn't start here. People visit and fall in love with the lifestyle, quit their jobs, take pay cuts in order to find a chiller way to live & raise a family. Or move back here when they realized what they missed growing up here. We happily drink local, and wonder why others don't seem to want to.