Vermont trip

anything worth doing is worth doing right!

 

As a frequent visitor with a vacation home in VT, it amazes me that people from more distant locales look at travel in New England and say "it's small, I'll just pop up to Waterbury from Boston, then run over to Hill Farmstead and get back to Treehouse by dinner". Getting anywhere in Vermont takes twice as long as you think it will. Boston in summer will have prodigious traffic. Nothing in New Hampshire is near anything else. Places like Portland Maine are a long, long drive from say Burlington. On top of that, if you want Heady or Lawson's you have to be in precise places at precise times. Others like Treehouse have weird hours.

 

It is doable and would be the time of a lifetime, but to plan this would take days. Places to eat (if you want to go to great places), places to stay (campgrounds, hotels, BB's), the breweries (what you said HuskyHawk), the route (again what you said). Packing would be easy though.

 

I apologize if I'm derailing the conversation, but I'll be one of the out-of-towners descending on VT in a couple weeks. I've been doing my research and based on our itinerary, am planning to go by Hunger Mountain Coop Thursday morning. If I show up at 9am for the Heady drop, am I fooling myself? Should I arrive earlier than that to guarantee getting some?

Also, does Lawson's show up at Hunger Mountain each Thursday at noon, or is that a more spotty occurrence?

Regardless, I'm really looking forward to my first trip to New England.

 

I live here so actually, getting around is a lot easyer then getting around in Boston, New York etc. You get the idea. Just enjoy the state for what it is and your trip will be the best. Have fun!!!

 

I just did a whirlwind trip to VT this past weekend leaving from Southern NY. Here's how it worked out:

Friday:

• Got to Hill Farmstead just after 12 to find no real line. Did a tasting which took about 25 minutes. Placed our growler/bottle order and waited about 35 minutes. This all seemed unusually quick.
• Left there and drove about 40 minutes to Lost Nation (worth a visit). Beautiful drive between here and HF.
• Left LN and headed the 1 minute down the road to Rock Art.
• Drove a half hour to Waterbury for Craft Beer Cellar (Heady find!) and Prohibition Pig (first Crowler buy!). Then met friends at The Reservoir (Focal Banger!) right next door to PP by 5:30 for dinner.
• Made it to our hotel in Burlington by 8 to fall down. At this point I had filled my two coolers.

Now that was a great day! The second day we walked to a few places in downtown Burlington then friends drove us around to a few other places.

Saturday:

• Started at the Burlington Farmers Market where I happened upon Simple Roots Brewing Co. for some tasting.
• Went to the VT Pub & Brewery (ehhh...)
• Zero Gravity @ American Flatbread (wish I could have tried more)
• Magic Hat (mostly for the art)
• Fiddlehead (Second Fiddle can release!) Lunch at the pizza place next door which was pretty great with a couple growlers from Fiddlehead.
• Queen City Brewing (decent brews from a very new place)
• Then back to our hotel for a little while followed by dinner at Hen of the Wood (Limoncello IPA on tap!).
• We had planned to go to the Farmhouse afterward, but we were tired at this point.

Sunday:
Rainy ass morning so we hit the road and stopped at Worthy Kitchen for brunch with a brief stop at Harpoon since it was literally on the way home.

So we hit 11 breweries in a little over 2 days. I'm counting Simple Roots since they said their table at the Farmer's Market is essentially their tasting room presently. This was my first visit, but won't be my last. Next time I have to hit up 14th Star, Four Quarters, and Switchback.

 

Wow, that sounds like an awesome couple of days. Me jealous.

 

Just got back from a short VT trip. Here was our itinerary:

5 AM - Left Brooklyn
9:30 AM - Popped into Norwich Inn for bombers
11 AM - Check out Lake Parker Country Store
12 PM - Arrive at Hill Farmstead, fill up 10 growlers between two of us, grab a bunch of bottles, drink our tasters, and enjoy the most beatific brewery I've ever encountered
1 PM - Leave Hill Farmstead, drive towards Montpelier
2 PM - Stop into Hunger Mountain, grab some local stuff (missed Heady and Lawsons, but lots of Burlington, Bent Hill, Foley Brothers, 14th Star, etc), get delicious to-go sandwiches
3 PM - Park in Waterbury. Hit up Blackback for a couple of pints (Lawson's Hopcelot, HF Harlan), Reservoir for Focal Banger, ProPig for crowlers (Multi-Grain IPA is off the hook) and CBC for more cans and bombers.
6 PM - Hit up Fiddlehead, grab a couple of growlers, again blown away by their IPA and Brett on the Dance Floor. Sad that we missed Double Fiddle by a day.
7:30 PM - Pull up to our Airbnb in Jericho, totally amazing space, where we hang out all of Friday night and Saturday and do our best (and fail) to drink through everything we bought on Friday.

Amazing weekend. Loved Vermont. Spent too much, drank too much, slept too little, and I'd go back again in a heartbeat. Alas, my wallet and wife will probably have much to say about that particular wish...

 

VT can be really low key and easy! I was there the weekend after the big HF events in Waterbury. We had a similar experience to MichaelHatter. We drove up on Thursday but got to Montpelier too late for the easy HT case at Hunger Mtn Coop. Asking around, we got directions to 3-4 other places in town. They all had 1-2 4pk limits pp and within a half hour, 3 of us together were able to score about a case and a half. Unlike CT, Sip of Sunshine was everywhere and might have been an even more satisfying get than HT. Off to Waterbury, Blackback, Pro Pig for dinner. Friday, we found almost no lines at HF. 8 bottle limit! Easy in Easy out. Parker Pie. The works. We spent the next 36 hours enjoying the fruits of our labor. It was a great time.

 

You should be. Vermont is the best. I was expecting to be pleasantly underwhelmed (meaning, enjoy a lot of good beer, but come away thinking it is over-hyped), but came away the opposite... totally blown away with what's going on in the state, beer-wise.

Side note: If you don't love hops and IPAs, the state seems significantly less exciting (aside from HF's farmhouse beers). YMMV.

 

Unless things change radically in the next few weeks, 9am is fine for the Hunger Mountain Heady drop. There's always a line of 20-40 people when they start the sale, but they go through it quickly and after that AFAIK it's no wait to pick up a case until at least 10am. Last week the "sold out" Tweet went out at 10:10, the week before it was 11:30. I guess there's some chance they'll break the 10am barrier this week with the 4th coming up, but I'd be shocked if it were sold out by 9:30.

Lawson's is pretty reliably out around noon on Thursdays.