Sometimes, fate has a way of making things up to you. Instead of a few days exploring wine in California in June, I got a long weekend tracking down as much beer as I could handle in Vermont in August. Who'd have thought? Certainly not me. And I'm not complaining.
The last time I was on any sort of beer pilgrimage, it was in Portland, Oregon in 2018, right after I spent those few days in Napa I referenced a couple of paragraphs ago. We visited six of the approximately 60 breweries in that city in three days or so that got us some amazing beer drinking experiences. Now we'd have to do the same thing in Vermont, a state that has approximately the same number of breweries as Portland just spread out over an area about 66 times the size. During a pandemic. I like to think that I can embrace the challenges life lays out for me. I was up for this!
Vermont's beer history is perhaps not so significant to the history of American brewing as the city of Portland but that doesn't mean that this experience needed to be any less awesome than our time in Oregon two years ago. But because of the area we were dealing with here, I'd have to be a little more selective. Research would be required.
I started with the Vermont Brewers Association webpage, which contains links for about 60 breweries and brewpubs in the state. I then checked the website of every single brewery and read all about every one of their beers to get a sense of where I wanted to go to drink what I wanted to drink. That got me down to a list of 10 or 11 breweries that had the kinds of beer I would be interested in. A lot of them happened to be clustered around Burlington.
Looks like we'd be staying in Burlington.
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| Fresh hops. Baird Farm, North Chittendon, VT. |
Now, ordinarily on a beer pilgrimage, I'd spend a good amount of time in bars or brewery tasting rooms sampling multiple different kinds of beer and talking with the folks working there about their product. This 2020 global pandemic forced me to alter that strategy and take beer to go. That meant plenty of cans, bottles and just a few growlers. Don't ever accuse me of not being adaptable.
I'll also point out that ordinary beer posts on this blog often feature photographs of gorgeous-looking glasses full of delicious beer in situ at whatever bar, pub or brewery we happened to be supping said beers. No such pics this time around. Instead, I've had to make do with images of (largely) empty taprooms supplemented with a couple of pictures of the actual brews taken in hotel rooms or right here at home. That means there are fewer pictures of beer than usual; there was no way around this, but I thought it was important to show some pictures of actual beer on this post.
We ended up hitting six breweries in our (almost) four days in the Green Mountain State. Here's what I liked and what I didn't like, in no particular order.
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| Little Umbrellas beer, disposable cup, Best Western Bennington. Classy, right? |
To kick things off, Four Quarters is officially my new favorite brewery.
Of all the Vermont beers that I tried on this trip, Four Quarters' beers were consistently the best. Now admittedly this is based on a super small sample size since I only tasted three of their beers but three out of three ain't bad. Or maybe it's like 2-3/4 out of three (we'll get to that soon). In addition to being consistently good across the board, the best two beers of this trip (in my opinion) were Little Umbrellas and Great Bear, and they were both brewed by Four Quarters.
Great Bear is a brown ale whose label lists the terms "lightly smoked", "chocolate" and "oatmeal" which I assume is either the process of treating the ingredients used in the beer or the ingredients themselves. This is the smoothest, creamiest, most flavorful brown ale I think I have ever had in my life. Think about drinking a chocolate oatmeal cookie and you'll be pretty much spot on here. Amazingly sweet and delicious. I took notes on all the Vermont beers I tried. I wrote "Wow!" when I tasted Great Bear. This would be an awesome dessert beer. And yes, there is such a thing.
We picked up Great Bear at the brewery itself in Winooski, VT. We found Little Umbrellas at the Bennington Beverage Outlet, and already knowing the brewery was out of this particular beer, picked up the last four pack at that store. It's almost difficult for me to discuss Little Umbrellas, brewed with lactose, pineapple and toasted coconut, as a beer. It was more pineapple juice than beer on the initial taste but it was super refreshing, especially with a low 3.5% ABV level. This is likely the oddest beer I have ever loved. I've had beer with pineapple before but nothing so forward or complex as this. I'd have this anytime. It would be a great breakfast beer (yes, there is such a thing) or a nice starter to an afternoon of some sampling.
If I ever make it back to Burlington, I'm heading to Four Quarters for a few hours and sitting outside at one of their barrel tables and going through as much of their tap list as I can. Great can design too!
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| Empty bar pic number one: the bar at Rock Art Brewing. |
One of the riskiest beers I bought on this trip was an ancient type of beer called gruit brewed by Rock Art Brewery in Morrisville, VT. Gruit was apparently brewed in the area of Europe where Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands come together today in a time when the use of hops as a flavoring for beer was not widespread. There's something about non-modern beer that fascinates me (see my banana beer post from Tanzania) so I figured it was worth splurging for a four pack of this stuff.
Rock Art's version of gruit is flavored with lavender, rose-hips, elderberry and chamomile and after one can the word that comes to mind most immediately after tasting this stuff is "medicinal". And that's not a good word to spring to mind when drinking beer. The yeast from the can floating around in the glass (it never settled for some reason) didn't make the drink any more appealing. I have three more cans of this beer at home. Anyone want to come over for some gruit?
What I Liked: Vermont Maple Wheat
Since I've just labeled one of Rock Art's beers as "medicinal", I thought I ought to make it up to them right away. Not that I'm looking to hand out praise that isn't deserved. This is.
One of my Vermont beer resolutions was to try at least one beer made with maple syrup. I absolutely had to do this, even though I expected that the taste of maple syrup mixed with beer would likely be an unpleasant experience. Not gruit unpleasant, but probably overly sweet and sickly unpleasant.
It wasn't. Not in Rock Art's Vermont Maple Wheat at least. This beer was actually one of the top probably four or five beers I had on this trip. Maple Wheat is a thick, dark colored beer which looks like cider (think cider mill cider, not fermented cider). It's a sweet, well carbonated beer that doesn't taste like maple syrup at all, although you can definitely get some burnt dark maple syrup which adds to the complexity. This wasn't the only beer brewed with maple syrup we picked up in Vermont, but it was the best.
This was a pleasant surprise. I have as many cans of this left as I do of Gruit. Maybe I can drown out the taste of the Gruit with the Maple Wheat? Assuming nobody's coming over to drink the gruit.
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| The outdoor patio at Four Quarters. Best Vermont saison based on our small sample size. |
What I Liked (but not as much as I'd hoped): The Saisons
I love saison beer. It was initially brewed as a low-alcohol content, thirst quenching beer to be drunk after a day of hard work tending the fields in summer. Fortunately, this style of beer is available to those who haven't worked a day in the fields in their lives. In terms of August in Vermont, saisons (or grisettes, which are essentially a cousin of the saison) were available at five of the six breweries we visited. We picked up some at four of those five.
The saisons we bought up in Vermont were a mixed bag. Four Quarters' Fleur de Lis was light with a tart finish and almost exactly what I wanted in a saison, albeit I would ideally have liked a little more flavor. Good Measure's Tread Lightly (brewed with strawberries and rhubarb) was good but oddly not carbonated. I still have a second bottle of this in my cellar so there's a second chance to see if this beer is actually carbonated.
But overall I didn't get what i wanted of the saisons. I thought Queen City's Barrel-Aged Saison - Brett "C" fell flat and Rock Art's Black Currant Saison was barely recognizable as blackcurrant flavored in addition to being a little bitter on the back end, which I don't associate with a saison.
Well done again, Four Quarters. Not crazy about the rest.
What I Liked: The Green State Lager Can Design
We picked up just a single type of beer at Zero Gravity Brewing and that was a 12 pack of their Green State Lager. And yes, I bought it for the can design. Sort of.
From a graphic design standpoint, the 1950s was probably the apex (for me) of graphic design in the United States, and any sort of product design that harkens back to that decade is an instant success. Beer cans are no exception. Green State Lager has full on 1950s going on in my book.
I love the gold and green (for Vermont) on the matte white can. I love the script "Green State" and the retro maple leaf. I love the clean-ness and verticality of the whole logo with the brewery name and mascot (the hummingbird) worked into the overall composition. This could absolutely be a product design I could see being on the refrigerator shelves some 70 or so years ago.
So I didn't deliberately limit myself to one beer at Zero Gravity and I didn't ONLY buy it for the can design. I would likely have bought more but Zero Gravity suffered from me wanting too many of their out of season beers (and too few of their in season beers). And I did want one American pilsner on this trip. Box checked!
I did, though, buy their Green State glass for the label. It was the only glass I bought on this trip. So they have that going for them.
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| Empty bar pic number two: Queen City. My order is on the bar. |
What I Didn't Like: Taking Beer To Go
Honestly, this sucked!
When I go to a brewery or brewpub, I want to sit down in the drinking space created by the brewer and taste some beer. I don't want it to go in cans, bottles or even growlers. I want small tasters, I want full pints that I can sip and get more if I want or switch it up when I'm not enthralled by what I ordered the first time. I want to relax. I want to hold the beer glass in my hand and drink deeply and lovingly from it. I want to eat brewpub food or food truck food if that's what they do. I want to sit and enjoy. I want the place to improve my drinking experience.
Drinking in a hotel room or drinking at home after vacation...not the same. Not at all.
Now, truth be told, I could have drank in some brewery tap rooms maxed out at 25% capacity. But stopping and drinking beer outside at Zero Gravity or Four Quarters or Queen City or Rock Art seemed to be tempting fate virus-wise and sitting inside at Queen City was a complete no go. If I had stayed somewhere based on our quick stops at six breweries, it would have been at Queen City. I would have had glasses of Yorkshire Porter and Landlady ESB and more than the taster of Steinbier that I asked for when I picked up the six pack, two bottles and growler to go. Stupid pandemic!
By the way, the ESB was legit. I would have loved to have some Landlady from a cask. And the Steinbier (made with hot rocks in the parking lot apparently) deserved more than a taster.
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| Good Measure Brewing, Northfield, VT. |
What I Liked: BLCK Vol. 15
It is rare that I find an English style mild outside of the United Kingdom. Travel to Northfield, VT and you'll find a good one at Good Measure Brewing right in their downtown space.
For me, a good English mild has to have a low level of carbonation (assuming it's not hand pumped out of a cask) and needs to have that tea-like taste that you find in good English pub beer. Good Measure has made sure the carbonation level is reasonably low and has guaranteed the tea taste is there by brewing the beer with actual tea. Now, sure, that sort of strategy is not totally traditional but the gamble totally works for me.
And then Good Measure one-upped their inspiration. Milds don't typically carry a ton of flavor but this version totally did. Good dark roasted malt along with the tea improved on the original. Something different. Good beer. I'd put it right behind (and totally different from) the two from Four Quarters.
What I Liked (although my research is incomplete): Burlington Beer Company's Fruits
So I'm not a huge fan of fruit beers. At the same time, I think there's a time and place where fruit beers belong.
Our visit to Burlington Beer Company represented for me the biggest risk in terms of what we'd pick up to go. Part of this was their pretty much totally inscrutable beer names (how do I understand what Seances and Sacrifices is as a beer?) but another was the heavy reliance on fruit in the beers I selected.
I walked away from BBCo with four packs of Strawberry Whale Cake, Double Roadside Bandits (somehow a beer made with blueberry pancakes and some other stuff) and a key lime and kumquat You Can't Get There From Here (or YCGTFH, which sounds like some kind of H.P. Lovecraft monster). And yes, there are other flavors of Whale Cake and YCGTFH. And yes, I also made off with a four pack of Seances and Sacrifices, which turned out to be an imperial stout made with maple syrup and a 12% ABV level and $32 four pack price!
I was impressed by the Whale Cake and Double Roadside Bandits. You could taste legit fresh fruit flavor in both, although I'd probably give the nod to the Whale Cake because of the incredibly bitter yeast sediment in the Bandits. But the YCGTFH was like juice with a sour kick at the end. It was really pretty awesome and yes, let's face it, another breakfast beer.
If anyone living remotely near me is headed to Vermont any time soon, please get me the rest of the YCGTFH series of beers. Please! I'll pay handsomely. I need more of this stuff. Strictly for research, of course.
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| Empty bar pic number three: Zero Gravity. The people in this pic work there. |
Fortunately for me, we drove to Vermont. That meant I didn't have to consume all the beers I bought up there in the Green Mountain state before we came home. We just loaded up the trunk with the excess beer and brought it on home. 56 cans and six bottles, if you are counting (I was).
Not only does this reduce the beer drinking stress level (yes, that's such a thing) but I also get to re-live one portion of our vacation every week for the next few weeks. Bonus!
We found some good stuff up in Vermont. I'm going to be sad when it's all gone. Going to have to stretch out some of this, although let's face it, there's no way I'm going to have any left by the end of October.
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