The Brattleboro Brewers Festival will open the spigots on the beer festival season this Saturday at the VABEC fields off Old Guilford Road, beginning at noon and running until 4 p.m.
And on the following Saturday, May 21, in Pownal at the Green Mountain Race Track, the Green Mountain Brewfest will debut, also from noon to 4 p.m.
The Brattleboro Festival will include 27 producers of beer, five of hard cider, and one hard seltzer maker, Truly Spiked & Sparkling.
Along with returning favorites, a few breweries are making their first appearance at the festival, including the new Goodwater Brewery of Williston, the reborn Trout River Brewing Company of Springfield, and the Shmaltz Brewing Company of Clifton Park, N.Y.
The grounds crew at the Brattleboro Country Club was busily sawing away on a massive tree limb on the 12th hole last Friday afternoon as a caravan of golf carts went streaming by on a tour of the course. The limb had fallen of its own accord the night...
Yes, I would like to have a look at Ethan Allen's bar tab, thank you. And I'll be able to do just that at the Bennington Museum exhibit, running through June 21, “Alcohol in Vermont: Creation to Consumption, Tolerance to Temperance.” Even better, I'll be able to do it...
The business of brewing is thrumming right along in Brattleboro. McNeill's Brewery has a new Czech-style pilsner on the chalkboard, Doc Feelgood's Pils, that Ray McNeill put through traditional paces - Bavarian malt, 100 percent Saaz hops, Czech yeast, in a combination of upward infusion and decoction mashing. Whetstone Station recently hosted its second (and sold out) Tap That Brewers Dinner, matching four beers with a cheese plate and then a five-course meal with five other beers. And over at...
Brattleboro now has three operating breweries. Going by the 2010 census, that's one brewery for every 2,471 residents. I like the odds. The Hermit Thrush Brewery swung open its doors to the public for the first time at noon on Saturday, Nov. 22. I like to think it was my journalistic zeal that made me the first to walk through the door. But I might just have been thirsty for something a little different, which is exactly what the brewery...
My professional standing took a blow last year. I fell woefully short in my first attempt to fill The Wall, my Mug Club card at Whetstone Station Restaurant and Brewery in downtown Brattleboro. When I signed up on July 11, 2012, it seemed like it would be no effort at all to drink 99 beers there in a year's time, in 10 different categories, and then be privy to fabulous offers and discounts. Wrong. Though I was off to a...
Walkers gasping for breath as they trudge up the 11th hole of the Brattleboro Country Club may find it apt that the name “Stiles” derives from an Old English word meaning “steep uphill path.” For most of its soon-to-be-100-year existence, the Brattleboro Country Club was a Wayne Stiles design. The Massachusetts-born landscape architect redid the original layout - which opened for play on July 1, 1914 - in 1930, maintaining only one hole from Tom McNamara's original design: the par-3...
This year, I did it again. Last year on my blog, I started to pick a one-a-day holiday beer or winter warmer on Dec. 20 in a 12-day headlong rush to New Year's Day. This year, I tried a little earlier in a headlong rush to Christmas Day. I never meant the list to represent any kind of ranking order or even a guarantee of good drinking; the beers were just 12 I picked up and went through one day...