At The Farmhouse just now, sampled an especially nice double IPA called Hill Farmstead Society and Solitude #5 (for the name alone…) The first linked review there does it justice I think. There’s no actual grapefruit in it, but it does smell remarkably like. The hops are from New Zealand.

And brewed in Greensboro, home of Caspian Lake, Willey’s Store, and the very special Greensboro Garage. (Strange to contemplate, but the late Chief Justice Rehnquist owned a summer home in the town also.)

It’s only been recently that I started drinking beer again. One of the treats of travel in England when I lived there was sampling the local brew, and I got into continental beers there also — primarily Belgian Trappist Ales. But on returning to the States, for some reason it took awhile to realize just how good and extensive the local beer scene has become in Vermont.

The Farmhouse carries around 20 rotating draught beers, many of them local, and then quite a few dozen more in bottles. It’s an amazingly successful place, always packed, as is the other new(ish) restaurant opened by the same owners, El Cortijo (“The Farmhouse” en español). The latter I’ve come to appreciate since a) it serves genuinely out-of-the-ordinary Mexican-inspired food, with mostly locally sourced ingredients, and four different vegetarian options, all nice and creatively thought-out; b) the menu is flexible, with individual tacos about $4, so you can have as many or as few as you like; and c) it’s open late–till 12 or 1–which is welcome in a town that largely goes to sleep mid-evening.