New England Beer Tour

There are dozens of similar threads about traveling around New England. Click on the New England forum and type in something like New England trip or Vermont Trip into the search bar and you'll find plenty of advice.

Also, since you have time off right away, I would plan a trip to a farther away place like Vermont (Alchemist, Hill Farmstead) or Maine (Bissell, Allagash, Oxbow)

 

Hill Farmstead.

 

Definitely take extra time beforehand to do a New England beer tour. Trillium, Night Shift, Tree House.....up into NH/Maine for Stoneface, Great Rhythm, Bissell Bros, Foundation, Maine Beer.....over into Vermont for River Roost, Alchemist, Hill Farmstead, Rock Art, Lost Nation, Fiddlehead, Foam, Pro Pig (and the other bars right there together in Waterbury), Burlington Beer Co, Frost. Am sure I left a few out. Live just north of Atlanta here (Suwanee), so if you want a trading partner once you get there, let me know.

 

Good stuff mentioned already, but I'll add a few suggestions.
Breweries:
RI/CT all pretty close
Proclamation
Beer'd
Grey Sail
Steady Habit

NH:
Deciduous
From The Barrel


VT that wasn't mentioned above:
Foley Bros.

MA:
Castle Island
Exhibit A
Bldg 8

 

Go to the Google and put in New England Brewery Map. I am sure it is incomplete, but it puts up a lot of pins for breweries and brewpubs. It will also give you an idea of how spread out things are geographically. You might want to do the more remote locations as a tour sort of thing, but you could also so something like head to the Portland, ME area, establish a base camp, and check off one area.

I would also figure out the ones that are OK to skip. There are tons of breweries, not all of them are good, unfortunately.

Some states also have a brewery passport thing. I know Maine and MA do. Kind of a pocket list so you can keep track and you get some free swag if you visit and have the list stamped at each brewery.

There have been some insane itineraries posted here from time to time, as well as some great ones that actually work. What people seem to miss when planning is travel time and brewery schedules. Some ideas are fantastic, just physically impossible to execute within time constraints. Rushing from place to place just to say you have bern there isnt my idea of fun. (and rumor has it there are more thngs to see than breweries...hard to believe, but have heard it said!). And there are six major sports up here - baseball, football, basketball, hockey, politics, and road construction. And as a NE lifer, I will say construction here seems to jack things up in a very different way compared to other places I've driven through.

Welcome aboard and welcome to the area.

 

Is Castle Island worth a stop if going to Trillium Canton?

 

Hartford is close enough to MA for a day trip so I would focus on VT and Portland for this longer trip. Definitely Hill Farmstead. Maybe even make your way up to Montreal from there since its not too far.
Portland is a great little city with a ton of breweries. A lot of the breweries and beer bars are close to each other so its great for a bar crawl. In the summertime coastal Maine is hard to beat.

 

Definitely. Just a short drive away, I think it's silly not to. I actually prefer Castle Island's porter over Trillium's. Not an apples to apples comparison but still.

 

Maybe not for this specific trip, but for when you live in CT, here is a Google map that shows the CT breweries, by area.

Link to CT Breweries Google Map

 

Thanks, they get some good reviews from what I've seen.

 

Hit these CT breweries:
1. Hanging Hills - Hartford
2 & 3. Stubborn Beauty & Forest City - Middletown
4. Outerlight - Groton
5. Beer'd - Stonington

NEBCO, Two Roads, OEC are the obvious go to places.

 

no.

 

No?

 

Fat Orange Cat is great.

 

I think their beer is mediocre. Of course YMMV. Personally I would not recommend them as first on any list for CT breweries. Nice place to visit? Sure. But not excellent beer.

 

Yes, good point. I have been trying to reach the person who created that map for updates to no avail. As you said, my point of posting is it's a good tool for newcomers to the state, to see most of the breweries laid out on a state map.