One week till Vermont!

Hello fellow craft beer geeks! I know we've been MIA the past month. Work has been crazy and we have been preparing for our trip to Vermont. We went to Vermont last summer and spent a week camping and searching for hard to find craft beer. We decided to do the same this summer! We leave in a week and are making a stop in Portland Maine first (mainly for lobster and Maine Beer Co.) Then we will make our way over to Vermont and are camping out near Lake Bomoseen (west side of the state near NY). We are also super excited about our trip because we got tickets to the Vermont Brewers Fest! It's a yearly festival held in Burlington right on the water of Lake Champlain. Only the best of the best Vermont breweries will be there and tickets sell out usually within minutes of going on sale. They have different days and times for you to choose from and thankfully we will be there on Friday night. We will get to see the sunset over Lake Champlain and hopefully none of the breweries will run out of beer!

Last year when we visited Vermont we went to a lot of the larger breweries like Otter Creek and Magic Hat. We've decided to change it up a little this year. We are going to a lot of smaller breweries (Foley Brothers, Frost Beer Works, etc.) These are ones that we've heard a lot of hype about on our craft beer geek Facebook groups but ones that don't get distributed here in Virginia. Of course we will be taking advantage of the Brew Fest and the fact that there will be some breweries there that we just won't have time to visit in person.

I think the number one thing we are looking forward to is the opening of the new Alchemist taproom which is located in Stowe. It's a huge facility where you can only sample Heady Topper, Focal Banger, and a random third beer, and then you can buy beer to go. If anyone has ever been to Vermont and tried to find Heady Topper...it can be a bit of a struggle. They only deliver to certain places on certain days. Usually you get two four-packs per person but some places limit it to one per person. In order to get a good haul and be able to bring beers home, you basically have to drive around to a bunch of different stores (delivery days and locations are listed on their blog) and pray that you've made it there before they are sold out. We got lucky to find the delivery truck last year and followed it around for a little bit which helped. We also waited in line for almost five hours at a random gas station that sells Heady by the case, only one per person. Hopefully with the opening of the new facility in Stowe, we won't have to spend all our time driving from location to location or spend five hours waiting in a line. Fingers crossed!

If you haven't done it yet, make sure you follow us on Facebook and Instagram at tillbrewsdouspart, and also follow us on Snapchat! (Unfortunately on Snapchat we couldn't fit "tillbrewsdouspart" so it's just "brewsdouspart", or I've included the snapcode below for easy adding). We will probably be posting a lot of drunken snaps for your enjoyment. You're welcome in advance :)

Cheers!

- Steff-