Dude.
I know what I'm doing next spring!
Anyone else up for a brewery tour?
... just did mine... SWMBO and I hit nine of the ones on that punch card in three days.
Good times.
The way we did it was we hit 'em in order geographically. We came up 93 N from Boston, took 89 West and then hopped on Rt 4
1) Long Trail: lunch GET THE YAKI WINGS... I'm tellin' ya!
Kept on 4 until we hit Rt 7 north
2) Otter Creek: grabbed a pint glass
A bit more up Rt 7
3) Bobcat Cafe: Definitely worth the stop. Fantastic food and good beer.
followed Rt 7 up to Burlington
4) Vermont Pub and Brewery
5) Three Needs
6) American Flatbread
Heading out of Burlington we swung quickly into South Burlington:
7) Magic Hat
Stayed on 89 and then a quick detour up to Stowe:
8) The Shed
and then stopped in Waterbury
9) The Alchemist
So it was basically one big loop up the west side of Vt to Burlington, and then back down the east side.
Top three:
1) Alchemist
1b) American Flatbread
3) Bobcate Cafe
Vermont Pub and Brewery would probbaly be right up there but the bartended was a 100% royal d-bag to the point we had one beer and left because his incredibly high level of suckitude.
Least Favorite:
Three Needs: It's a total dive bar, which I'm totally on board with. Some of my favorite places are dive bars... but... the beer was... ok at best I thought and for what I was expecting (a "beer bar"), I thought it kind of fell short. It's a block from VPB and Amer. Flatbread so you kind of have to stop... you're right there anyway, might as well hop in for one just to get the "bars hit" count up by one more.
Most Pleasant Surprise:
Magic Hat: I was really surprised. The brewery is kinda goofy with all of the hocus pocus-Magic Hat-artsy crap everywhere but they had something like 11-12 taps running and a couple of the beers were a lot better than I was expecting... and it wasn't just all #9. They had a dampfbeir, a black lager, a flemish red and one or two other styles that where actually pretty tasty and I was a bit surprised to see. I even ended up grabbing two growlers of the Flemish Red. The girl working the taps even knew quite a bit about the beers int erms of grains, hops and yeasts used.
little tips:
- check the websites of all of these places for what time they're open. A lot of them don't open until mid-afternoon so it takes a bit of planning if you're planning hitting a bunch of them in a row.
- American Flatbread: I said this earlier in this thread... go early. We have a close friend that lives in Burlington and is into beer. According to her, you will stand in line waiting to get in for really long times, pretty much, whenever they're open unless you get there really early. In walking around Burlington for two days, we saw this every time we walked by.... LONG lines.