Vermont Beerventure help please.

Hop on over to the New England forum and post this. Plus a search of that forum will give you a lot of great advice on buying spots times, dining, etc.

 

If you only have a short time to buy I would suppose that standing in line at a remote Hill Farmstead would be out. But it's not a trip to Vt without HF. But we stayed in Waterbury to keep within a reasonable drive of most places and I'd call the places you want to visit and tell them your story, I'm sure if they know that your driving that far to visit them they'd be more than helpful. I've only done the drive twice but the people I dealt with were extremely gracious. To be honest only having to drive thru NY on I 95 stops me from doing it again.

 

Craft Beer Cellar in Waterbuy fits the bill. Honestly though. Local bottles and cans (Frost, BBC, Alchemist, Fiddlehead, Upper Pass, Red Barn, etc etc) get excellent distro throughout Chittenden county. If you were to stop at three random gas stations I bet you could find whatever you are looking for.

 

Haha, next time take Thruway to Northway, get off Glens Falls/Fort Ann exit 20(? double check #), take Rt. 149 to 4, 4 to Rutland, then 4 up mtn. to Rt. 100 N. and take that all way to Waterbury, or take 107 at well marked fork to Rt. 89, and that all the way to Waterbury (quicker, MUCH less scenic). Thank me later.

 

It wasn't so bad a drive when my son was at Ft Drum, it's a fairly easy drive around the lakes and lots of great scenery. The drive home was schlepping it thru NY and the GWB had to be a 15 mile backup. I used to work NY back in the day and still hate it. I'll keep the route in mind I could go 81 into PA and pick up the Thruway off the PA Tpke Extension. I'm still guessing a 13 hour drive.

 

Rutland has a couple of good stops on the way

 

Got the opportunity to do this trip in April 2017. Approx. 9 hrs from Hamilton, Ontario to Burlington area. Stops at Fiddlehead and Alchemist Friday night. HF in the "morning" then stops at Winooski Beverage, Foam, Switchback, Zero Gravity, Rock Art, and Prohibition Pig. Also went out in the downtown Burlington area at night which was great. Most places stock all of the local favourites you are looking to acquire! Enjoy!

 

If you had some extra time how far is Boston from say Waterbury? Lots of great MA beers too.

 

How is this not in the NE forum?

 

Hill Farmstead. It's about three and a half hours from Lake Placid, and pretty much every other spot you might want to visit is more or less on-route between the two.

 

3 hours one way, without traffic. Not going to fit into the OP's itinerary. Plenty of good beer in northern VT that he'll have access to that we can't get here in Mass.

 

@flaskman a couple questions:
1. What kind of beers are you into?
2. Are you saying 14 hours round trip or one way? How?

 

It's a little over three hours drive-time from Lake Placid to Hill Farmstead via Burlington and Stowe, another hour-plus down to White River Junction, and then three more hours to complete the circuit back to Lake Placid via 125 and 7 through Middlebury. So, on that roughly seven hour circuit you can find every single beer in Vermont that's worth finding. Draw it on a map. Go to 'Places' and sort by average beer rating and put X's on your map. Twelve hours is easy-peasy.

 

I guess it depends on your intent, too. Are we talking about a hero-level personal binge episode or are you buying for friends, family, trade and/or resale, too? In other words, are you shopping primarily for cans or are you filling growlers, too.

Because, if it were me - and disturbingly often it is, only from the opposite compass heading - I could fill the 4' bed and backseat of my small pickup truck with cans and growlers with stops at Foam (growlers and maybe a few cans) > Beverage Warehouse > Alchemist (5 cases lately) > Hill Farmstead (2 cases cans + growlers) > River Roost (slim chance of cans + growlers) and Big Fatty's (cans and crowlers) > then back up 89 to Hunger Mountain, just in case you missed anything important. Totally doable in ten hours with a leisurely lunch. Way more hoppy NEPA's than you can drink before they go rancid.

If you're just collecting cans for later, there really isn't a compelling need to stop at Frost, Foley, BBC, etc., because they're all pretty readily available in the stores at roughly the same prices as the brewery. And you'll run across plenty of SOS, whether you want to or not.

 

Seconded what @papposilenus said, regarding intent. It sounds like you want to grab as much to go beer as possible? It's not necessarily about visiting places.

Foam lists their can releases so if you're intent on getting some of their stuff, follow their website. You can get growler fills there too if they don't have cans.

Hill Farmstead is the only must visit brewery IMO. I'm not sure how much of the shelf saisons are making it to distro, but if you want their hops, you've got to get up there. Growler fills available there too along with specialty bottles.

River Roost is the only other brewery that I feel doesn't get distro. It's located in White River Junction, so you could go from Hill down to WRJ, then back up to Stowe/Waterbury or Burlington easily if we're trying to map up the marathon.

Like pap said, most of the stuff is distro'd so if you went to the previously mentioned Beverage Warehouse in Winooski, you will probably have a lot of what you want covered. You don't have to go to breweries to get most of the stuff available.

 

Right, I get so focused on the hoppy stuff that I forget about the farmhouse ales and stouts and stuff in the bottle shop. Must go to Hill. Not optional at all.

 

Double Citra cans with no limit this past week was.. a dangerous situation.