Vermont Brewfest was awesome.... it will now be an annual thing for me
For galzria - here is a list of all of the beers that I tried:
The Alchemist
Heady Topper - American Double IPA - 8% - There is a reason why these guys had the longest line and this beer is the only one to receive a perfect 100 from beer advocate. Better on tap than it is from the can.
Fiddlehead Brewery
Fiddlehead IPA - American IPA - 6.2% - Uneventful - but I love IPAs
MotherGoose - Collaboration with Angel City - Wheat / Honey / Gooseberries - 6.4% - High Gravity wheat beer -> gross
Harboon Brewery
Leviathan Imperial IPA - 10% - Too much
Imperial Red Squared 9.2% - This one was much better
IPA - 5.9% I can get this normally in bottles - its fine
Rich and Dan's RYE IpA - 6.9% - This was surprisingly good
Hill Farmstead Brewery
Edward - American Pale Ale - 5.2% - After all of the IPAs - this just tasted bland
Lawson's Finest Liquids
Double Sunshine IPA - 8% - This was another brewery with a ridiculous line - and this IPA was gone before the end of the night. It was fine - but it didn't warrant the line IMHO. This was actually the first beer that I had - so I know that my reaction wasn't tainted. If anything, I should have liked it more after standing in the hot sun for an hour.
McNeil's Brewery
Dead Horse IPA - 6.5% - Pretty conventional IPA. I wish I had tried the sunshine IPA - which allegedly had hints of mango and pineapple.
Otter Creek Brewing Co
Black IPA - 6% - Didn't stand out as much as you'd expect.
Rock Art Brewery
I wanted to try their pumpkin imperial spruce stout - but it was gone. Had their IPA (6%) instead. At this point in the evening I could confirm that it was indeed an IPA
Non Vermont Brewers
Captain Lawrence Brewing Co.
Captains Reserve Imperial IPA - 8% - one of my last beers - but I enjoyed it
Founders Brewing Company
Centennial IPA - 7.2% - Just fine
Curmudgeon - 9.8% - I sipped some of my wifes. Delicious
Devil Dancer - Triple IPA - 12% - They didn't open this keg until halfway through - so I wasn't exactly unbiased reviewing at this point. It still made a strong impression.
IPSwitch
IpA - 6.3% - This was one of the only things that I didn't enjoy. They advertised it as a cross between English and American IPAs. It has a frowny face next to it.
Portsmouth Brewery
Bottle Rocket IPA - I had a choice of getting the normal, or a cask version collabortion with another brewery. I naturally elected for the cask - and while I could taste the vanilla notes that they told me I would experience - and I noticed the difference in natural carbonation - If i could do it again, I would have had the regular.
Stone Brewing Co
They were just down to the Stone IPA and the Stone Cali-Belgique IPA. I had the regular stone IPA, which I've had plenty of times - but never on tap. It was just fine.
I probably had some others that I didn't mark down - and I sipped a bunch of beers that other people had, but only one other stood out
Bobcat Cafe and Brewery
saison de cassis (6.2%) - Tranlation: A Season of Blackcurrants. The guidebook says: This belgian-inspired farmhouse style is brewed with barley from belgium, hops from the usa and germany, and yeast cultivated from a difficult-to-obtain belgian yeast. A crisp and very dry beer with esters/aromas of earthiness and fruitiness and a suble tart finish from Vermont grown blackcurrants
This beer tasted like the water that drips out of a ripe trash bag that's been under your sink for a week. Sounded pretty good based on the description though, right? One sip was enough - and my wife threw out about 2.5 oz out of her 3 oz. pour. Yes - for those who just read the above and thought that I had downed 20 beers and am still alive - they were 3 oz pours... I was happy at the end - but not enough to post a 3 page diatribe about my kickball prowess.