Steve Koenemann

The Vermont Brewers Festival

Last weekend was the 18^th annual Vermont Brewer’s Festival (VBF) in Burlington, Vermont. I had not taken this event in for a couple of years, so I was really looking forward to visiting with some of the new breweries that were to be there this year and to see if they had made any changes in the event to improve upon the experience of the festival attendees from years past.

Organized by the 21-member breweries of the Vermont Brewers Association, the VBF is held every year on the shores of Lake Champlain in Burlington’s Waterfront Park. It is a truly beautiful setting to hold such an event and last Saturday’s hot and sunny weather made it seem that much better. The proximity of the lake and a steady,cooling breeze coming off of the water made the day seem pleasant, in spite of the fact that the temperature reached 90F that afternoon.

As has become the “norm” for the past several years, all three tasting sessions for the event were sold out prior to the start of the festival; on-line ticket sales coupled with “print-at-home” capability make it very easy to get signed up for one or more of the sessions. Unlike some festivals that I have been to recently, the admission ticket is a relatively inexpensive $25, but that price only gets you 15 tickets for regular 3oz beer samples and the higher ABV samples require two tickets. This is in contrast to the increasingly common practice at bigger beer festivals of boosting the admission price while limiting the sample size to 2oz for an unlimited number of samples. I am still on the fence as to which format works better, but I am definitely leaning toward the slightly more expensive smaller/unlimited format. I found that I needed to be quite judicious in selecting which beers I sampled because of the limited tickets and there were many more beers that I would have liked to have tried given the opportunity. More tickets could have been purchased, but I did not feel like taking that route. For me, the opportunity to sample a larger variety of beers far outweighs the quantity of the beer I would get during the event.

The number of tickets sold for each session had been an issue for me at past VBF events, as the number of attendees was far too many and access to the brewers’ tents and other facilities was limited by the sheer number people present. I am very happy to report that they have learned from past events and not only did they expand the venue slightly, but organized the layout of the tents and facilities in a much more sensible way. It is possible that the same number of tickets were sold as for the VBF event I attended two years ago, but it seemed far less crowded and the lines at the brewers’ tents seemed much less long to me. Cheers to that!

The VBF event has taken on a much more “regional” feel to it and nearly all of the brewers present were from greater New England or Eastern Canada. The Abita and Brooklyn breweries were there too, but they stuck out amongst the other, more local brewers. I had heard that other breweries, like Stone Brewing, would have liked to have attended this year’s VBF, but were denied access by the organizers of the event. By my estimation, the larger and better organized venue would have provided plenty of room for perhaps another ten or more brewers, so it should not have been a problem (in my opinion) to allow more brewers access. Personally, I missed not having some of the brewers, like Stone, that have been at past VBF events. I am not privy to the logic used in determining which brewers could attend, but if the goal is a “regional” event, then Abita from Louisiana and Brooklyn from NYC stood out even more as “exceptions” to the other brewers present.

While I did not attend the VBF event with a fixed plan or a theme in mind for my explorations, one definitely emerged for me during the afternoon. One of the good things to happen with this event over the years is the increasing number of Canadian breweries that attend this event. As I moved around the venue visiting these foreign brewers, what struck me was that all of them were offering at least one type of Saison-style beer for sampling. This was in stark contrast the the more common types of beer being offered by most of the domestic brewers. Many/most of my 15 sample tickets ended up being used to sample these Saisons from the north and I have to tell you that I was very impressed with the very high quality beer that these brewers are producing. I was fortunate enough to be able to talk with most of the owner/brewers of these breweries and I am pretty sure that I will be arranging a trip north to visit some of them in the near future. Montreal is only about a 2-hour drive from my house… plus the time I will sit in the line at Customs waiting to cross the border. The four Canadian breweries that attended this year’s VBF are geographically close enough together to be taken in during a 2 or 3 day trip. Sounds like a plan might be coming together…

Some of the other beers/breweries that stood out for me included:

• The Zero Gravity Brewery from Burlington was serving a “Solstice Gruit Ale”. You can read more about what a “Gruit” is in a great article by my fellow HopPress writer Brian Cendrowski called “Gruit: Beer Gone Hopless”. Though I am, without any doubt, an unrepentant hop head, I did not miss the hops one bit in this very interesting and fruity beer.
• The Benelux brewery from Montreal was serving a triple rye Saison, called Ergot, that was probably the “best of show” for me. Unusual because of the rye component and the higher ABV of 9%, it was definitely one of the best Saisons that I have ever had in spite of the fact that it was not true to the exact Saison style of beer.
• The Flying Goose Brew Pub from New London, NH was serving a type of beer not commonly found these days, called Armenian Steam Beer. It was both tasty and true to its style.
• Dieu du Ciel from St-Jerome, Quebec was serving a triple, called L’Herbe à Détourne, made with Citra hops that provided for a truly excellent example of the use of one of my favorite hops.

I could go on about all of the beers that I sampled, but I won’t. Since I had to be selective and because I am a beer collector, the beers that I chose were all some that I had not had before. Beer festivals are an excellent means of building your collection and, in spite of the limitations because of the sample tickets, I still added plenty to my beer list during the event.

The combination of the better organization and the, apparently, smaller crowd at this year’s VBF event will definitely bring me back next year. The VBF is a perfect opportunity to sample beers from the many great brewers of our region. Those of us that live in Vermont are fortunate to have clean air, clean water, beautiful scenery and great beer. I don’t see how it could get much better than that.

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