It’s been a great year for Vermont beer. Since January of 2010 Vermont has welcomed three new breweries including Northshire Brewery in Bennington, VT; The Brewery at Trapp Family Lodge in Stowe, VT and Hill Farmstead Brewery in Greensboro, VT.
In this video we meet Earl McGoff from Northshire Brewery. Earl and his friend Chris opened Northshire Brewery as a passion project. The both continue to hold their full time jobs, opening the brewery in a garage building right behind their current employer. Talk about taking your home brewing hobby to a larger scale. These guys scored a used 7 barrel setup from a brewery in Florida and are just putting beers into the market this month.
Their flagship beer is the Equinox Pilsner, which is kept in the fermentation tanks for a full 8 weeks. Earl realizes that this is not the most cost effective way to produce a Pilsner, but in his opinion it is the right way to produce a Pilsner. At 4.2% ABV this is the perfect summer beer. We hope you enjoy meeting Earl as much as we did and if you would like to try this beer, stay with us at Forty Putney Road B&B where we have it on draft. Or you could just try it at one of the other few lucky pubs to have it. But why not make a weekend out of it with us at our inn :)
Speaking of making a weekend out of it – this weekend we will have the opportunity to meet Allan Van Anda the brewer at The Brewery at Trapp Family Lodge and Shawn Hill from Hill Farmstead Brewery at the first annual Brattleboro Brewers Festival and Pub Crawl. Tickets are still available, we hope that you will join us there!
In honor of Halloween, we present this weeks “Beer Gear” segment – what could only be described as one awesome franken-brewery. The video isn’t great and goes for over 10 minutes – but it will only take a few seconds to get the gist of this thing. The builder, Duane Woytonik from Central CA says he is up for pulling it on a trailer to your place if you’re looking for a sure-fire way to impress your beer geek friends. You can email him at duanewoytonik@yahoo.com if you can help him to get this thing on the road.
In unrelated news, our twitter account was suspended for some reason after playing a little too hard with lists – so please spread this around on our behalf – and if anyone knows someone important at twitter, please tell them we miss them and to save @hereforthebeer…
From the hop freezer (which smelled so wonderful I wanted to move into it) to their lab, to their crazy bottling line (which in true form of the folks who built a 20 beer automated growler filler, is designed to operate with just 3 employees) we get a glimpse into Victory‘s incredibly streamlined operations.
We enjoyed our trip to Victory Brewing Company and really love their beers. We anxiously await their introduction in Vermont. Until then, we will have to settle for rationing the Golden Monkey we brought back with us! Cheers from all of us at Here for the Beer!
In this episode, we head to Terrapin Beer Company in Athens, GA. We meet with owners and co-founders John Cochran and Brian “Spike” Buckowski, who is also the head brewer.
We were lucky enough to be there on a Saturday evening, just in time to enjoy their beer tasting and tour. I must admit this was one of the most entertaining brewery tastings I had ever been to. The atmosphere was great, we were outside on a beautiful sunny evening, with games and live music playing. No surprise that there was a really impressive turnout. I felt like I was at a picnic in the park, but with access to much better beer! Every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 5:30pm – 7:30pm they open the doors for these beer tastings and tours. The only requirement is that you purchase an $8.00 Terrapin Pint Glass from the gift shop, this pint glass includes tickets that are good for 8 4-oz sample pours of beer. Tours run every half hour during the tasting. A great way to start off your evening.
This Georgia beer is not yet available in New England, but over Christmas we received a box in the mail containing two Terrapin Beers: Big Hoppy Monster (Imperial Red Ale) and India Style Brown Ale. One of our wonderful guests at our Vermont B&B, Forty Putney Road (they were from Georgia) had sent them as a gift. It only took a few sips to recognize the quality of these beers, Terrapin was immediately added to our must visit list. Luckily it wasn’t long before we were in the area for an innkeeping conference and were able to take the field trip. Of course, Other than the quality of these beers I of course really enjoyed the branding…I just love that turtle…he gets to do everything.
In the video John gives us some insite into the branding and that crazy turle while Spike gives us an inside look at some new beers he is working on. We enjoyed meeting both John and Spike and hope that you all enjoy our video. We will see you next time on Here for the Beer … Cheers!
We are excited to be heading down to Boston for this years Craft Brewers Conference. I am sure that we will get a bunch of great footage down there and it will be a nice way to say “hi” to some of the cool people we have met in our travels.
In their 26th year, the Craft Brewers Association puts on the largest beer industry gathering in North America. This will be our first year attending but based on the schedule and details we have read from others it promises to be much more than an ordinary trade show and conference. (No offense to the Professional Association of Innkeepers International PAII – whose also solid conference we just attended in Atlanta). But the bus tour of Boston area breweries, pre-party hosted by our friends at Harpoon and the promised special release and seasonal samplings really make this look like it has one up on the innkeepers…
If you are going to be down there, please let us know – we would love to hook up with some friends while we are in Boston! This will only be our second time in the city and we would love some travel advice…
In this episode, Mike Gerhart, Brewmaster for Otter Creek Brewery and Wolaver’s Organic Ales takes us on a “Beer Geek’s Brewery Tour”. This is not your typical “dumbed-down” brewery tour, so you won’t hear anyone explain what a mash tun is in this video. While not a super technical look, Mike shows us what it really takes to operate a moderate size brewery. We walked away filled with new found knowledge of the process and hope you are able to do the same.
For more about Mike Gerhart, Otter Creek Brewery and Wolaver’s Organic Ales checkout our other video “Otter Creek Brewery – Interview with New Brewmaster Mike Gerhart”. You can also visit them in Middlebury, Vermont. Of course, if you are making the trip up be sure to stay with us at Forty Putney Road B&B, the perfect spot to share a pint and relax from your trip.
