I am wondering what the longest beer road trip you've taken is. I am planning vacations for next summer and thinking about the feasability of driving from Florida to Vermont and back. My wife and I could stop and see some sights on the way, stay 4-5 days in Vermont sightseeing, and get as much Heady, Hill Farmstead, and Lawsons as we can fit in the car for the trip back home. I have also considered flying there. But the hastle of renting a car and having to carefully pack/ship the beer back home with the possibility of it getting lost scares me a little. Has anyone taken a similar drive to Vermont before?
If you check the regional forums, you can probably figure out a nice route that connects you through with some great stops along the way. There's tons of stuff in the New England forum, for example, about road trips to Vermont, Maine, MA, etc. Happy hunting and safe travels.
Definitely drive. You have all winter to figure out places to hit up along the way. Plus if you stock up and plan accordingly you could probably pull off some In Person trades along the way. One thing to bear in mind is the town near Lawson's has a market on (I think) the first Saturday of the month and they are out there selling whatever they got. I would check into and plan around that. Also HF is only open certain days of the week.
That's why I was figuring on 4 or 5 days. Hopefully everything will be open and stocked at some point, and I know there are some great restaurants we'll want to hit.
I recommend a drive with a lot of planning. My wife and I drove from Michigan to northern California and then up into Oregon this summer, and then a different route on the return trip. We planned every night's stop in a city where there is a brewery/brewpub so we could have dinner and beer, and once we reached out destinations where we stayed at least a day we had lunch and dinner at pubs. The trip was 21 days (we're both retired now), and we hit 40 different breweries and a few beer stores along the way. After we got home and recuperated about 4-5 weeks we then took off on another driving trip to Boston and Vermont for 10 days, again with stops along the way each night. However, only 10 pubs were visited on that trip, but a key stop was made in Vermont at a good beer store for a case of Heady. (The timing was perfect for its delivery at the store.)
This wouldn't fall under "great" but they did have Double Sunshine on tap when I was there (plus Heady and a few others) and the Warren General Store isn't that far away. This is a must stop places for people hiking the Long Trail. http://www.themadtaco.com/index.html
That part of the country is absolutely beautiful. The other big logistic challenge would be the amount of cooler space you'd need to keep your bounty from cooking in the back of your car
Long Trail is a beautiful stop. You might want to check out Montreal, it isn't that much further and totally worth it.
I wasn't planning on a cooler, with the a/c in the car and hopefully cool nights it shouldn't be a problem. No worse than shipping would be.
