Vermont Beer Updates (2026)

Yes indeed, a great contract brewery. One of the best.

Is this thread an AI bot replying to itself or am I missing something?

 

I love all three(HF, Alchemist and Lawsons) Might be able to sum it up for you. In my opinion.

Hill Farmstead - Hard to knock them and they play in a field other brewers just can’t. So the ultra neck beard and dismissive prick gatekeepers help fuel their fire(I kid) Shaun has always been their resident owner, weirdo, and enigma you don’t get to see or hear from often. First time I saw him I swear his pants were a few threads from falling off. He has put in his time and worked overseas under the best. He and crew earned their stripes on the funky stuff and wild side. People have varying opinion on their hoppy program these days, but I still like them. Their ancestral series and names would sound stupid for most brewers. But it just works for them. The site being a pilgrimage also adds to the experience. Essentially their total package was lightning in a bottle.

Alchemist - John is loyal Watebury’n/area since the early 2000’s and built up a great reputation at the Vermont Pub and then original Alchemist Pub. He put out excellent beers and Heady began to take off at his old pub(pre cannery). Plans to can it and reap the benefits were ready to go. The flood hits and fucks everything up. Luckily canning was up and running that week. Then the internet, beer reviews and YouTube exploded and Heady took on a life of its own. There was nothing like it, and you knew it was life changing the first sip you had. John is also a bit more in your face(as opposed to John) and vocal about his beer. As they grew speaking on sustainability, working with the community, and creating videos weekly about his beer releases, popularity exploded. He fucks around with the skadoosh line, but aside from that, he has always stuck to his roots. Heady Topper, quite literally was lightning in a bottle. Him and Jen have stuck to their Mission. Beer was only a part of it.

Lawsons - Sean made some incredible beer in his shack. Double Sunshine also was such an incredible beer. For sure God tier. The fact we had to drive up to the Warren store at opening and wait for a truck and hope to score a bottle or two. What a time to live. As popularity grew and he made more brands the sales at farmers market boomed. His labels were gorgeous. Clean, white and just their own style and aesthetic.

Then, Sip of Sunshine comes along. The beer world exhales a collective hmmm. There’s a new color now as well. Bright yellow and cartoonish. Again, hmmmm. The beer is great, but it’s not double sunshine. “Wait, this isn’t even brewed in VT?” “Wait, all the cans are going to be bright colors and sort of cartoonish labels?” “Wait now distro is happening?” And pretty quickly it goes to my local gas station has their beer. My super market sells it and it sits. What is Little sip? Is hazy rays gone yet?

They Saturated the market with decent to great beers. I did get some Double Sunshine recently in a drop which is awesome. But they kee their best beer brewery only. The distro core stuff, is what it is. I don’t find it to be god tier anymore. Their random releases are fantastic to world class. Which is always fun.

Overall, to me, Lawsons has just expanded their distro so much it’s become diluted. And the label art has always been a turn off to me. Hazy rays was also one where I lost a little bit of respect. There have been some other misses as well. I still love some of their beer and respect them. Hell my friend is their rep. But I just feel I see missteps and dare I say reaches at times just for sales.

 

While this may be true in an absolute sense, I also feel like somebody needs to stand up for Lawson's here, and it might as well be me.

TH and Lawson's don't make directly comparable beers in my opinion. Nobody does hazy IPA or dessert stout like TH. Nobody. Lawson's shouldn't try, and mostly, they don't, with the exception of Hazy Rays which is not very good.

But there's also nothing TH makes that gives the pine/citrus/tropical combination while also being extremely clean and drinkable like Lawson's IPAs do. Sip of Sunshine and especially beers like Double Sunshine and Chinooker'd can hit better than a TH beer if you're in the mood for something with bitterness and a malt backbone. And lately, I've been finding myself in that mood more and more often.

Also, Lawson's nitro stout is the best canned nitro stout I've ever had (I haven't tried TH's version of that which is only available around St. Patrick's day as far as I know).

Is TH the better brewery all told? Yeah. But there's still very much an itch that Lawson's scratches better than TH does. If Double Sunshine gets down here to MA again this winter I'll enjoy that as much or more as the TH hazies currently in my fridge.

 

Agree with this - they're by and large not competing in the same categories. I drink more TH than anything else given how easy it is to get living in/near Boston, but I still love Lawson's. They scratch a very different itch for me.

As for their fall in popularity, it's entirely the distro, for better or worse. It's less that Sip is very good but not great and more that scarcity drives hype as others have said. On quality, their best stuff is still up there with Alchemist for me, which is probably their most direct competition style wise. Alchemist has a higher batting average, but I think Double and Triple Sunshine still go toe to toe with Heady and Skadoosh. On the home run swing side of things, Maple Tripple is just as impressive as the more niche Alchemist stuff like the grand cru sour or Petit Mutant.

But once you can get Sip of Sunshine and Pils and Hazy Rays in a suburban mass grocery store, it doesn't matter as much that Double Sunshine is as good an IPA as there is, at least not as it concerns the hype.

If there's one place I think you can actually knock them, it's that Fiddlehead has eaten their lunch in the distro space. FIPA and Second Fiddle edge out Sip and Hazy Rays is not very good. I assume witholding their best beers for taproom exclusives drives better business at the source (which is valuable because the taproom experience is one of the best parts of 2026 Lawson's), but you have to wonder if it would be different if the shelfies were VT brewed DS and Sugarhouse or Hopcelot instead of what they are.

 

Think technically, Double Sunshine's head to head comparison is Crusher since that is The Alchemist's Citra based DIPA and Double Sunshine eats Crusher's lunch. I'm a huge fan of Lawson's. I do think, as @wehaveamap brought up, Fiddlehead is the better comparison. I haven't had much of Hazy Rays and reading my review of it, I can see why. I think Sip is still one of the best DIPAs you can get in stores which is not something I would say about Second Fiddle, though I have never been a fan of Second Fiddle.

Commercially. Fiddlehead IPA is one of the most incredible New England stories that we don't hear enough. They've really both locked in the regular bar IPA tap as well as being everywhere in grocery stores. I don't particularly care for Fiddlehead IPA either as I have had some rough around the edges batches that turned me off to it, but I do admire what they've done with the brand.

Lawson's really needed to do more with Little Sip IMO. It really should be in my wheelhouse, but the few times I've had it, I've just thought it was fine. They definitely had the potential to create a contender to Fiddlehead IPA. It is not and that ship probably has sailed too given Fiddlehead's stranglehold on the taps.

WRT to the Tree House comparison, how many breweries can you actually compare to Tree House in a way that's fair? May be Trillium? I would say Other Half is probably the most apt. I think the things Lawson's do well, they do really well. I think Tree House is a great brewery but I have always felt that they've been overrated and haven't really been talked about critically. By that I mean, any missteps has not led to any hits to their popularity or people buying their beer. There's a decoupling between anything bad you can say about them and their popularity.

Anyway, I love Lawson's. I have had the pleasure of hanging with Sean before. He's an awesome, chill dude. I love that they're a B Corp. I wish them all the success.

 

I guess I feel like Lawson's is underrated. Just my opinion. I don't know why we have to compare everything to tree house (im with Sheppard on the overrated train), but I feel like most things I've had from Lawson's is more in line with my tastes in comparison to tree house. Hopcelot is world's better than any IPA I've had from tree house, and I've always been Double Sunshine > Heady (tbut I love both). In terms of location ... I'm team Lawsons there too. Only been there once, many years ago, but it was great (but I was also newly in love so maybe that's it too)

 

Their Illumin-8 was one of my favorite IPAs I drank this year.

 

Why did you get mad at him?

 

When I first went to Vermont, Switchback Ale used to have a tap in every place I went. Now, wherever I go in New England, it seems like there's Fiddlehead IPA taps. $40 million in sales is pretty incredible with what some might say is a very boring strategy.

 

Double Sunshine might be the best overall hoppy beer made in Vermont, but I don’t really drink anything else from Lawson's.

Heady is Heady and it's always good.

Hill Farmstead still owns the wild ale/farmhouse ale game but their cans are just not great IMHO. Anything hoppy has to be on draft for me or it just isn't worth it. The lagers are great but same deal.

 

I never really loved HF's hoppy stuff, if I'm being totally honest. All of it has had a really grassy / vegetal flavor to me. Their lagers and farmhouse stuff can't be beat though.

 

HF has the best sub 6% hoppy beers in the world in my book. I don’t dislike the doubles, but I’d generally lean TH or Heady over the very sweet HF ones. Their pales are unreal, though.

 

I remember having Abner on tap at Three Penny like a million years ago (it was my first HF) and being blown away. I'm going to claim to be an early adopter to this take, but I had a bunch of their stuff in growlers and then having Arthur, Anna, Dorothy, etc. in the same time span and thinking those were the better styles that HF made.