The Best Breweries, Brewpubs & Taprooms in Vermont
From Brattleboro to Burlington, Vermont Breweries are well stocked with beermakers crafting foamy stouts, tasty double IPAs, and some of the finest liquids in New England.
Written by CraftJack | Updated | 3 min read
Interesting Tools
- Beer BrüMate Hopsulator
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- Wine Wine Decanter/Aerator
Vermont is home to 60+ breweries, brewpubs, and tasting rooms that pour thousands, if not millions of pints of ales and lagers annually. You can find beer halls and craft beer breweries on the road to Killington from White River Junction, and up and down long Lake Champlain.
Craft beer breweries like Stowe's The Alchemist and events like the annual Vermont Brewers Festival in Burlington make the Green Mountain state sip sunshine.
Not only does the Green Mountain state enjoy a deep appreciation for its own craft beer, but some of Vermont's microbreweries are regarded as some of the best breweries in the United States (and the world). Among those are The Alchemist Brewery in Stowe, known for the luminous NEIPA, Heady Topper. Then there is Hill Farmstead Brewery in Greensboro Bend, a small-batch brewery that crafts hoppy pale ales and a plethora of experimental barrel-aged beers. And, Lawson's Finest Liquids, a perennial attendee of the Vermont Brewers Festival that is hosted in Waterfront Park in Downtown Burlington. Lawson's is probably best known for their Sip of Sunshine, a tropical IPA.
Regions of Vermont
There are probably a few ways to break up Vermont by region, using Lake Champlain, the Green Mountains, or the Northeast Kingdom as your dividing markers. To give Vermont some beer regions, we've decided to just keep it simple, using Northern, Central, and Southern Vermont as craft beer areas of interest for your next vacation.
Northern Vermont
Fill up your growler at veteran-owned 14th Star Brewing Company in St. Albans, just a half hour from the Canadian border. Next Trick Brewing in West Burke is an ideal stop for Burke Mountain skiers. And then there is Burlington.
Clustered around Vermont's most populace city are some of the finest craft beer taprooms in the state. A college craft beer town if there ever was one, Burlington and the surrounding towns, like Colchester, Winooski, Vergennes, and South Burlington, house 10+ microbreweries, brewpubs, and taprooms. Burlington is also home to the Vermont Brewers Association.
Is Northern Vermont's Hill Farmstead Brewery the best brewery in the world?
Hill Farmstead Brewery is ranked as the best brewery in the world, according to RateBeer. Like Tom Brady, Hill Farmstead pretty much owned the entire decade from 2010-2020 as the best in the world. Aaron, Hill Farmstead's barrel-aged barleywine, was considered Vermont's best beer in 2019. That's like TB12 winning the Super Bowl and the League MVP in the same year. Strong work, Hill. Strong work.
Central Vermont
If you're traveling down Route 7 to get to Rutland from Burlington, drop in to the Drop-In Brewing Company. Long Trail's acquisition of the Otter Creek Brewery in Middlebury in 2010, after 19 years of independent brewing, changed the indie Central Vermont beer landscape a bit.
Southern Vermont
Surrounding the Green Mountain National Forest are quaint New England city-towns such as Bennington, Brattleboro, and Rutland. With colleges and workforces, and a local-first attitude, craft beer companies are popping up along the roads and highways that lead to not only these towns, but the ski resorts that adorn them, like Okemo, Stratton, and Bromley, to say nothing of major New England ski destination, Killington, a 20 minute ride from downtown Rutland.
Southern Vermont is home to Brattleboro's Whetsone Station Restaurant and Brewery, Bennington's Madison Brewing Company, and Weston's Backacre Beermakers.
Still waiting on Bennington's Northshire Brewery to move to their new Manchester locale. Vermonters must be glad they didn't hop the fence to Massachusetts. For the spirited, New Hampshire's craft beer scene around Keene State is only a 30 minute drive from Brattleboro.