Vacation time!
June 14- If we didn't leave once and awhile, then we'd never know how much we miss you....so we're going away for a bit. We will be closed the following days:
Sunday June 22
Sunday June 29
Monday June 30
Friday July 4
Saturday July 5
Maybe on Sunday July 6: call 802-655-2070,
if no answer between 11-3, then we're closed
While we're gone, the store will be in some very good hands. Terry, D.J., Malcolm and Niels are all our friends and good brewers. They are doing us an extreme favor by offering be here. Please, be understanding if they need a little more time to find things. Our systems sometimes defy logic.
Rhizomes are out!
June 12-We just sold the last of the rhizomes. We've planted some as well and they are coming up nicely. 
Green Mountain Homebrew Competition:
April 10: Deadline for entries is Friday....check out the website mashers.org for entry forms and bottle labels.
Rhizomes are in!
March 28-We just received our shipments of hop roots yesterday. They are sorted and ready to go to a good home. $4.99 each.
Varieties include:
Cascade, Fuggles, Hallertau, Sterling, Magnum, Brewer's Gold, Glacier, Horizon, Nugget, Tettnang, Chinook, Goldings, Liberty & Santiam.
First come, first served. We ordered more rhizomes this year. Hopefully the weather co-operates and the snow stops sometime soon. But they will keep in the refridgerator till planting time and you can even start them in a pot if you have to.
It's Maple Beer time...
March 13-Days are getting longer (not necessarily warmer yet) so it's time to start thinking about brewing with maple. Lots of beer styles are easily turned into maple beers. Usually maltier styles like Octoberfest , Bock & Munich Dunkles are good choicing if you are lagering. Scottish ales, English Browns and American Amber ales can be good choices too. If you want to use sap instead of water you'll just bump up the starting gravity a bit. It's not going to add maple flavor/aroma to your beer. I've wanted to try some of the sap after it comes out of the reverse osmosis process but I haven't had the opportunity yet.It's a more concentrated product, but not syryp. Adding syryp to the recipe gets you a more mapley beer. Remember, it's fully fermentable so it's like using 1-1/3 pounds of malt extract. Replace some of your malt with syryp to keep the same starting gravity, or just add some to make your brew stronger. Since syryp is fully fermentable it will thin the body of your beer. You can add more crystal malt to the grain bill to compensate for that. When you bottle you can also use maple syryp.
Happy New Year!
Many, many thanks to our brewers, winemakers, cider, mead & soda makers for a great year in 2007. We had our busiest year ever. But that pales in comparison to what happens at Vermont Homebrew everyday. Matt & I get to have fun, meet some of the nicest people around and talk about beer all day long. It wouldn't be the same without all of you so, really, thanks to you all. We are looking forward to a challenging year ahead. Homebrewers will need to be creative and willing to try new things (talking about hops here), but we'll still make some of the best homebrew in the world, right here in Vermont.
Holiday Ale 2007
Our holiday ale is here....but I'm giving it away fast! It's a rarely brewed English ale: a strong dark mild. Not strong in the American way, but a session ale: dark color, rich malt flavor, low alcohol and lightly hopped. You can drink more than one and still make sense.
Un-hoppy News about Hops
Maybe you've already heard the news...the hop crisis is real and it's here...
November 2--Winooski
Hops have been in the news lately and if you are unaware of the situation or haven't brewed in the last month you might want to read on.
The brewing industry, from the mega-breweries, micro-breweries, brewpubs and all the way to homebrewers, is experiencing a shortage of hops this brewing season. For a variety of reasons, from shortages, crop failures, farmers growing bio-fuel crops and increased demand for craft brewed beers, brewers are finding hops more expensive than ever before. That is if you can find them at all.
We are working very hard to make sure we have enough hops for you. Prices are higher but that's better than no hops at all.
Here are some ideas to help us through this:
Bring in your bulk malt bucket. You'll save $2.79 which is almost an ounce of pellets
Try brewing a pale ale instead of an IPA. Discover "session ales", low alcohol/lightly hopped brews. English Browns & Milds, Scottish ales, Brown Porters, Cream ales, Munich Dunkes & Helles, Irish pub style Stouts are all going to be much less expensive to brew than IPA's.
Please don't ask us to sell you just hops. We can't. The hops in the store are for the brewers buying malt & yeast, in other words, brewers getting a recipe. We are trying to make sure there will be enough for all of us, so please try to understand.
Gruit ales, anyone?
We're homebrewers and we can adapt. Homebrewed beer will still be a bargain compared to premium micro-brewed beer. All beer prices will be going up, if not this week then very soon. I can't see myself buying Spud no matter what....I'll just brew differently. You can too.