Clearing My Head(y)

I always find it interesting how every person deals with adversity, and where they turn to. Growing up in a small town in the upstate New York, I’ve always been able to find clarity when I breathe fresh air and get out in wide open spaces. The reality of my adversity happened about three weeks ago, when I had found out that our sites were closing, and I would potentially be out of a job. Of course, my initial reaction was one of panic, fear, and frustration. Then, I did everything I could to start thinking about what’s next, how can I solve this problem? I couldn’t focus, I needed to get away. Somewhere where I could breathe fresh air, get out in wide open spaces, and crack a beer. Instead of heading upstate, I headed with my fiancé to my home away from home, to Vermont.

It’s almost 10 AM, we’re about an hour from hitting our first brewery, the IPA wizards at Foley Brothers, and the rain we drove through sporadically throughout the morning turns to snow as the temperate drops. About 15 minutes from the brewery, google maps takes us down an unpaved dirt road that seems never-ending, in a rental not necessarily equipped for snowy hills in the mountains of Vermont. I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. While we made it through (slowly), this little adversity was the perfect metaphor to start the trip, and possibly for the coming weeks of my job search. Aside from a few points where I fully expected us to stall the car and be stuck on the phone with AAA for the entire afternoon, we successfully pull into Foley, albeit with enough mud and snow on our tires and lower half of the car to look like we went off-roading. I couldn’t help but think, it’s not supposed to be pretty it’s not supposed to be easy, it’s about where you end up, and the journey it takes to get there.

With almost a dozen beers on tap, and eight of them IPA’s or pale ales, this was the way to start a Vermont trip. Foley does a tremendous job of making beers that are distinctly unique to each other. For example. I’ve been to some breweries where I’ve tasted 3 or 4 IPA’s or stouts that all blended together. Foley’s use of different hop profiles, ingredients, and addition of fruit when appropriate, gives each beer its own identity, and nothing blends together. The brewery is also perfectly Vermont, housed in a barn that also serves as a winery and has a house on premise that offers rentals in the Summer through Fall. I leave with a few bottles in hand, a smile on our face, and a perfect start to a weekend away to clear our heads and get back to the basics.

It’s not a true Vermont trip without a stop at the infamous Alchemist Brewery for the original New England Style IPA, Heady Topper. Once upon a time, finding this juicy devils required memorizing delivery truck schedules and arriving just as the bottle shops opened. Now, they have a state of the art production brewery and crank out as much beer as possible, while still focusing on quality and providing beer to their local accounts they have been so loyal to. Weekend lines are still commonplace, as the larger production size of the brewery has not decreased the quality by an ounce, no, every ounce of Heady is still as tasty now as when I first got it through my old roommate over 3 years ago. As I sip on a sample of Focal Banger, their other IPA which some would argue is better than Heady, I look around at the towering tanks, cases beyond cases of beer, and the line still out the door. When the Alchemist was a thriving brewpub, Hurricane Irene basically demolished their entire facility. They continued to push the envelope through the adversity, and still today their hazy masterpiece is sought out by beer geeks from coast to coast. Since I first got into the craft beer world, I’ve been sure to keep my eyes and ears open, because so often an experience in the industry will humble me and put things into perspective. Getting away for the weekend not only was giving me the opportunity to drink some amazing beer and just enjoy the world that was in front of me, but I would finally have a chance to clear my head, and move forward, no matter the obstacle.

Cheers,

Ryan