Brewing on a Small Scale Is Getting Big in Vermont
Vermont is becoming a brewing center while refusing to adopt the Joe Sixpack way of life.
Just eight years after the Legislature passed a law that allows brewers to sell their beers on premises, there are 13 microbreweries in the state. Most started out as one-man shops. Today they employ more than 100 people.
But Vermont is not in any danger of losing its image as a haven for hippies, not for beer-guzzling rednecks. In Brattleboro, where McNeill’s Brewery sits in a red wood-frame one-floor building, tie-dye is not a fashion statement but a way of life and the local radio station still plays Simon and Garfunkel.
“I don’t own a shirt with a collar,” said Ray McNeill, the 33-year-old proprietor and brew master as he plopped into a seat at one of the long wooden tables near the picture window. “This is an old-fashioned pub. There are no video games. This is not a sports bar. This is a place to come and have a good beer and good conversation or read a good book.”
He brews prize-winning beers with names like Big Nose Blond, a golden ale with a floral hop aroma, and Exterminator Dopplebok, a German-style lager with a dark malty sweet taste, in the pub’s basement. Using tanks British brewer WhitBread supplied to pubs in the United Kingdom in the 1930s and ‘40s, but later discarded, McNeill has found a way to brew on the cheap. His distribution is limited to Vermont and parts of western Massachusetts.
One of his brews, Bucksnort Barley Wine, which is aged one year in McNeill’s cellar, tastes more like a brandy than a beer. It is dark, fruity and strong and available only on tap in the pub.
Duck’s Breath, a very hoppy brew, is available at the pub and in bottles--all hand-labeled--at the local food co-op. In part, it is the hand-labeling that limits McNeill’s distribution, but mostly it’s that he does not want the brewery to grow much bigger.
“You can go down to the local food co-op here and get Duck’s Breath in bottles but you can’t get it in Manhattan. And let me tell you, you’re not going to be able to any time soon,” he said.
He has seen sales grow from 200 barrels a year to more than 1,500 and expects that fiscal 1996 will see 2,000 barrels. “But I don’t want to grow any more,” he said. “I barely have time now to do what I enjoy, which is playing the cello. Everybody is making a good living here and nobody’s working too hard and I’d rather play the cello and remain a small brewer. I’m doing what I like, so why change it?”
