CITY GUIDES | VERMONT
The Vermont Breweries Worth Planning a Trip Around
Hey, hon, what if we just had a vacation that was entirely about finding more beer?
By Eric Barton | July 6, 2026
Zero Gravity
AUTHOR BIO: Eric Barton is editor of The Adventurist and a freelance journalist who has reviewed restaurants for more than two decades. Email him here.
Vermont isn’t full of the hard-chugging dive bars they have in Detroit. Or the old-school brick taprooms you’ll find near Bud’s HQ in St. Louis. But what it does have is some serious craft beer cred.
Vermont helped turn hazy IPAs into a national obsession, built a cult around farmhouse ales, and somehow made standing in line for shortie cans feel like a scenic activity.
But the best Vermont breweries are spread across lake towns, ski towns, old mill villages, back roads, and working farms. Which means the drinking is only part of the trip. The rest is covered in mountain views, cheese, muddy parking lots, and the steady realization that somebody in your group should probably be the designated driver.
So I set out to find the best breweries across the state to answer the question: What if we built a Vermont vacation around beer? Honestly, what could be better?
The Alchemist, Stowe
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The Alchemist could have built a whole business on Heady Topper and watched the faithful keep showing up with coolers. Instead, the Stowe brewery gives you full pours, tours, events, and a civilized way to drink one of the beers that helped turn Vermont IPA into a national style argument. Heady Topper is still the thing to order first, if only because drinking it at 100 Cottage Club Road feels like the assignment. Then move on. Focal Banger, Crusher, and whatever else is pouring make the case that the brewery has more going on than one very famous silver can.
Best for: Heady Topper at the source
Bent Hill Brewery, Braintree
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The road to Bent Hill runs through the kind of rolling Vermont hills that make the drive feel like part of the stop. The tap list moves through hazy IPAs, dark beers, pilsners, barrel-aged farmhouse ales, bourbon-barrel stouts, and fruited sours. The kitchen is meatless, which makes it especially useful for a group that has already eaten its weight in burgers, barbecue, and road-trip snacks. Come when you want Vermont to look like Vermont while you drink a beer.
Best for: Hillside beers and a meatless kitchen
Burlington Beer Company, Burlington
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Burlington Beer Company moved into the former Burton Snowboards flagship store on Flynn Avenue, which is about as Burlington a sentence as a brewery can get. The South End space is big, colorful, and built for staying awhile. The restaurant menu goes well past brewery filler: maple Buffalo wings, poutine with house gravy and cheese curds, and pizzas like the Queen City, with crushed tomatoes, mozzarella, basil, and garlic oil. The beer list is just as comprehensive, running through hazy IPAs, lagers, fruited sours, stouts, and barrel-aged releases. This is the Burlington brewery for people who want a full meal, a few beers, and the option to leave with cans before remembering they still have to find room for them in the car.
Best for: Dinner, cans, and big South End energy
Fiddlehead Brewing Company, Shelburne
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Fiddlehead shares its Route 7 address with Folino’s, which feels like somebody solved a real civic problem. Second Fiddle is the one to order first, an 8.2 percent double IPA with citrus, tropical fruit, and pine, and Folino’s lets you carry that beer into the pizza side for wood-fired pies. It’s an easy stop south of Burlington, especially if the day also includes Shelburne Farms, Shelburne Museum, or the quiet admission that pizza and a double IPA were always the real plan.
Best for: Second Fiddle and wood-fired pizza
Foam Brewers, Burlington
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Foam sits across from the Burlington waterfront, which means Lake Champlain and the Adirondacks are already doing half the work before the first pour shows up. The brewery opened in 2016 and still feels like Burlington’s art-school beer hangout: hazy IPAs, saisons, mixed-fermentation beers, live music, can releases, and labels that look like someone gave a very good designer too much caffeine. It’s an easy first stop in town because the location is almost unfair. Have a beer, walk the lake, then pretend you made the timing work on purpose.
Best for: Lake Champlain and IPAs
Four Quarters Brewing, Winooski
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Four Quarters sits close enough to Burlington to fold into the same trip but far enough across the river to feel like its own night out. The beer list moves through IPAs, sours, stouts, and lagers, but the taproom also has food and a full bar, which changes the math for anyone traveling with a non-beer drinker. There are smash burgers, fried chicken sandwiches, poutine, and wings, plus cocktails like the old fashioned-esque drink with a toasted marshmallow that I had there, a small bit of campfire theater in a town that already knows how to make dinner stretch into another round. It’s the stop for beer people who brought non-beer people along and would rather avoid making a whole thing of it.
Best for: Beer, cocktails, and dinner in Winooski
Freak Folk Bier, Waterbury
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Freak Folk Bier is not the brewery you stumble into because you saw a giant sign from the road. It’s a small 21-and-over taproom on Stowe Street in Waterbury, open Wednesday through Sunday, with the kind of quiet confidence that usually means someone inside is taking beer very seriously. The list moves through draft beer, bottles, and cans, including barrel-aged and blended releases. Go here when you want the rarer, smaller-batch, more obsessive side of Vermont beer. Then walk to dinner and act normal for a while.
Best for: The small Waterbury detour
Hill Farmstead Brewery, Greensboro Bend
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Hill Farmstead is not on the way to much unless you’re already the kind of person who says, “We should go to Greensboro Bend.” But that’s part of the reason to seek it out, a true beer pilgrimage into the Northeast Kingdom. Shaun Hill built the brewery on family land, and the drive still feels like a slow test of commitment before you get to the beer people have been treating like scripture for years. The saisons and farmhouse ales are the reason to linger, though the IPAs and barrel-aged releases have their own devoted following. Check the hours before you go, because this is not a place to wing your way into at 6:45 p.m. on a Monday.
Best for: The beer pilgrimage
Lawson’s Finest Liquids, Waitsfield
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Lawson’s turned Sip of Sunshine into the kind of double IPA that made people rearrange errands, vacations, and in some cases personalities. The Waitsfield taproom is the grown-up version of that obsession: bright, busy, polished, and planted right in the Mad River Valley, where the mountains make even a beer run feel like a reasonable use of a day. Sip of Sunshine is the obvious first pour, but Little Sip, Double Sunshine, and the rotating taproom beers keep the visit from becoming a one-can nostalgia act. It’s also one of the easiest brewery stops in Vermont to pair with a full weekend, especially if someone in the group insists on calling it “getting outside.”
Best for: A Mad River Valley beer stop
Lost Nation Brewing, Morrisville
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Lost Nation sits in Morrisville, close enough to Stowe to make sense on a mountain weekend and far enough away to feel like its own stop. The brewery has long been known for Gose, and the current tap list still keeps things grounded with Vermont Pilsner, Mosaic IPA, Porter, and a few guest beers. In warm months, the biergarten does exactly what a Vermont biergarten should do. In colder months, the taproom takes over. Either way, Lost Nation is the place to go when you want good beer, food, and a little breathing room after the Stowe crowds.
Best for: Gose, lagers, and a slower afternoon
Prohibition Pig, Waterbury
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Prohibition Pig has the brewery on Elm Street and the barbecue restaurant across the street on South Main, with food on both sides of the operation. The brewery pours house beers like Bantam double IPA, Little Fluffy Clouds pale ale, and Burn the Ships smoked helles, with a smaller menu for drinking through the afternoon. Across the street, the restaurant goes heavier: chopped whole hog, brisket, pork ribs, brisket tacos, hushpuppies with honey butter, and mac and cheese. Waterbury makes this easy to overdo, with Freak Folk nearby and The Alchemist up the road in Stowe, but Prohibition Pig is the stop that keeps the day from becoming just a sequence of tasting-room pours.
Best for: House beer and barbecue in Waterbury
Red Clover Ale Co., Brandon
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Red Clover Ale Co. is a small brewery in downtown Brandon, run by brothers-in-law Andy Lowell and Erik Birnie. The three-barrel system keeps the beer list moving, with recent pours like Soul Mate, a mosaic and citra IPA; Stubborn Love, an imperial stout with cocoa nibs and maple; and Wild, sour, and fancy, a golden sour aged in rosé barrels with cherries. The taproom, with live music and open-mic nights, is the right size for Brandon: a few seats at the bar, a few more at tables, and the feeling that anyone who walks in twice might reasonably be remembered.
Best for: A small-town Vermont taproom
River Roost Brewery, White River Junction
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River Roost is a small taproom in White River Junction with a beer list that gives the Upper Valley its own proper stop. The brewery is best known for hop-forward beers like Glimpse, a double IPA with Citra, Mosaic, and Vic Secret, and Doubtful Guest, an IPA hopped with Mosaic and Sultana. It also works well as a Vermont entry point if you’re coming in from New Hampshire or looping toward Woodstock, Quechee, or the rest of the Upper Valley. This is not a sprawling brewery campus, but catch it on a nice day when there’s a band playing on the patio, and you’ve got yourself a fine Vermont afternoon of beer drinking.
Best for: Upper Valley IPAs
von Trapp Brewing, Stowe
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This Stowe brewery’s dedication to Austrian-style lagers makes sense considering the hills-are-alive family that gave von Trapp its name. It also makes perfect sense once you’re at the Bierhall in Stowe with a helles, dunkel, Vienna lager, or pilsner in front of you and the mountains handling the scenery. The Bierhall is attached to the brewery and leans fully into the Alpine setup, with lunch, dinner, pretzels, sausages, schnitzel, and enough Sound of Music proximity to make everyone behave a little goofy about it. Let them. The beer is crisp, and the Bierhall works beautifully after skiing or hiking.
Best for: Lagers with a view
Zero Gravity Craft Brewery, Burlington
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Zero Gravity is the Burlington brewery for groups that need more than a flight and a bag of chips. The Pine Street beer hall opens early, serves a full food menu later in the morning, has outdoor seating, and pours the kind of range that keeps both IPA people and lager people from turning dinner into a debate. Green State Lager is the clean, reliable move. Conehead and Little Wolf cover the hop side. The food makes it an actual stop, not a pre-dinner situation. In a city with plenty of beer, Zero Gravity is the one that most easily becomes lunch, afternoon drinks, and the place you end up staying longer than planned.
Best for: A beer hall that solves several problems
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