New Brewery Coming to Vermont
The folks at the Trapp Family Lodge, founded by Johannes von Trapp — whose family, made famous in the “Sound of Music” movie, came from Austria. The initial goal of the new brewery is to make a product which does not exist in Vermont yet; a real lager beer of the type found in the Bavarian region of Germany (borders Austria), and to create a niche product that is unmatched in quality in either Vermont or New England.
The new brewery will be located in a portion of the former Austrian Tea Room (the view from this mountain-side location is breathtaking), across the street from the main lodge. New equipment has begun to arrive and the current plan calls for the beer to start flowing in January of 2010. Allen Van Anda, a New Jersey native with years of experience as a brewer, will head up brewing operations. Anda says that he has been brewing beer since his senior year in high school. Locally, he has worked at the now-defunct Cross Brewery in Morrisville, and also at the Rock Art Brewery in Morrisville for four years.
Beer production at this facility will focus heavily on the quality of locally available ingredients… water will come from natural springs located on the von Trapp property which are fed from waters flowing directly off of Mt. Mansfield, the highest peak in Vermont. They also hope to eventually produce enough organically grown hops for the small brewery — Vermont used to be one of the nation’s top producers of hops. However, cultivating and growing enough of the type of organic hops the brewery wants could take up to 10 years to build that kind of capacity.
I can hardly wait…
