BeerThis

Ahhhhh VT.  For us New Jersey kids, it’s such a treat to be able to walk into a gas station store or 7-11 and a bunch of choices of great VT microbrews to pick from for a quick run.  And every winter we get this treat, along with a few of our friends on our annual snowboard/ski trip to a mountain in VT.  This year we hit up Mt. Snow!  Great mountain to hit up for a long weekend, not too far from NJ, and large enough to keep you busy checking out trails for a couple days.  But on to what this blog is about…. the beer!  So our first day of apres ski, we rounded up our crew at the main bar in the lodge called Cuzzins.  Tables and bar can get easily packed towards the afternoon, but is great to come in to for a quick brew in the middle of the day.  There they had a pretty good selection of Rock Art, Sierra Nevada, Magic Hat, Otter Creek, and some other standard beers you’d find at a bar.  But there they made some mean hot drinks like hot toddys and spiked ciders!  The second day, we ventured upstairs and went to the new bar that opened, The Station Tap Room.  Holy jackpot Batman!  This bar has 15 lines for microbrews!  We found Allagash, Dogfish Head, Hills Farm Brewery, the micro brews they had available at the other bar, and a bunch of others that we can’t even remember with out taking a picture.  We had no camera on us and our phones were dead from riding all day. :(

Also, we had a stock at our rental house.  Our friend Karl had brought a sixtel keg of his homebrew dunklewiess, we had bottles and bottles of Otter Creek Imperials, Stoud’s, Breckenridge Brewery, a couple growlers from Madison Brewing Co., Magic Hat, Troegs, and a 30 pack of Miller Light just in case (thanks MJ!).  Seems like a lot, but with a house with 12 beer drinkers, beers go real quick. 

Sadly, our trip had to come to an end, and we all parted ways.  We had decided to stop at what we thought was a brew pub on the way home for a quick bite and a brew called The Maple Leaf not even 15 min away from where we were coming from.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t a “brew pub” but rather a “beer bar”.  Still had some good beers and even had a beer that Long Trail brewed exclusively for them called Maple Leaf!  According to the friendly bartender, it’s a brown similar to the regular Long Trail brown ale.  Pretty effin delish.  And along with that we tried their vegetarian chili.  WOAH spice!  Lots of cumin and hot spices, but not too overwhelming.  Hearty and delicious.  

After our fill of chili and a beer, we headed back southward toward NJ.  And then a though…. wait… aren’t there a bunch of great breweries in upstate NY?  Of course there is, we go to Tap NY!  We know this for fact!  So on Tim’s trusty Droid X, we bring up the Beer Mapping Project to look at a map of breweries along I-87.  There’s a bunch!  But we chose to go to Keegan Ales since they won the F.X. Matt Memorial Cup at Tap NY in 2009! Oh and also because according to their website we get to travel on the shortest Interstate in the U.S. (FACT! don’t blink, you might miss it!)

Keegan’s has a great atmosphere, very chill, friendly people, with simple decor and a few picnic tables to sit at.  We had their Jo Mama’s Milk, which woah…. amazing.  Brown sugar, chocolate, coffee…. it IS all of that. Intense in flavor and at 8% could get you in trouble if you’re not careful.  So we had 1 and got a growler.  We also had a pint of their Hurricane Kitty IPA and a pint of the 10 gallon batch they had on tap.  They mess around with ingredients they have and they had left over Sorachi hops and made brew featuring it.  Very Sorachi hoppy.  Interesting, but wasn’t a fave, but def worth the try. 

So after a couple great pints, and faces full of freshly made tortilla chips with guac, spinach and artichoke dip, and fresh pico de gallo (yes… we ate AGAIN), we set off one more time to our homeland of NJ and made it home just in time to watch the 2nd playoffs game and share our awesome growler with some other friends :)

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