A Long Weekend Of Cows, Hops, and Laughs In Vermont

North America

Oct 26

(There are no original shots from the trip to accompany text in this article. The Minolta Freedom III that had been my trusty sidekick up until this point decided it wanted to take a break. The film winder got stuck, so the camera can't advance a frame. I haven't found a suitable repair shop, but I will update this post with photos once I do! Ok now let's get started.)

October is the prime foliage month, so me and a few girlfriends from college took a day off and packed into two cars for a leaf-peeping weekend in Vermont. Brutal is trekking from Brooklyn to Newark Pennsylvania Station at 4am in the morning, but if that’s what it takes to escape from the city for a little bit, so be it.

To me, the two most important things on a road trip are 1) solid playlists to suit any mood and 2) coffee. Hunting down the latter before we pack into a car becomes almost a personal mission for me. Right as I was about to slip my card into the card machine at Dunkin, I came to the harrowing realization that the “pocket” I had hastily stuffed my wallet into was indeed not a pocket but a band to hold your duffle bag onto the luggage handles. Damn you, innovation! Here I am, two bodies of water from my apartment, about to embark on a road trip, bank card=NULL, cash=NULL. Thank god for friends who got you, plus Apple Pay and Venmo. What - and who - would I, a technology-reliant millennial, be without my phone?

Without any delays, we pulled into the Ben & Jerry Factory for a tour and the famed Flavor Graveyard as our first stop. Everything and I mean everything, is cow-themed. The tour begins with an animated video introducing the founders Ben and Jerry, how they met in 7th grade, renovated an old gas station in Burlington, and developed their ice cream business to become an American classic. We're then ushered onto flights of stairs and into hallways to reach an enclosed outlook of the packaging floor.

Someone on tour asked if Ben & Jerry's has ever brought any discontinued flavors back from the Flavor Graveyard. There were two, but I'll tell you the story with the White Russian. From 1986 to 1996, Ben & Jerry's carried a flavor in partnership with Kahlua. It was selling at such a rate it depleted the supply of the coffee liqueur, so Kahlua said, "hold up" and requested to discontinue the cocktail flavored ice cream. In true Ben & Jerry's tradition, the staff erected a dedicated tombstone in the Flavor Graveyard. Letters and emails requesting to resurrect the flavor flooded in, and a mysterious local woman even began laying white roses at the flavor tomb. Ben & Jerry brought the flavor back momentarily (just like every classic fairy tale trope) until Kahlua knocked on the door again. White Russian was discontinued for good, and the roses stopped coming.

During the George Floyd protests, both founders and many employees were arrested by law enforcement. This type of activism isn't new - Ben & Jerry's has championed same-sex marriage, criminal justice reform, and environmentalism ever since its founding in 1978, through transparency into impact on its supply chain or altering sources for certain ingredients entirely to highlight an issue. Its ice cream even made its way to the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference in Paris (this Bloomberg article is an insightful read.) Mind you, Ben & Jerry's is not free of sins - it sells ice cream to one of the most diabetic and obese countries in the world, founded in the second whitest state in the US. What is charming about Ben & Jerry's is the consistent activism throughout decades as a large, visible business rather than rainbow washing one month per year or one black square on social media.

Bet you didn't know Ben & Jerry's still has an independent board of directors despite being owned by Unilever. Deliciously thrilled to see a black woman, a South Asian woman, a black man, and a white woman holding these positions. The independent board and freedom to advocacy under a larger corporate umbrella were negotiated into the acquisition contract.

Oh, just in case you're wondering, each Ben & Jerry's employee can take home three pints of ice cream per day. Enough said.

“I’m gonna get chip-faced” scene from Miss Congeniality — “I’m gonna get chip-faced” scene from *Miss Congeniality*

Our sugar highs sent us straight into grocery and liquor stores until we arrived at the Airbnb in Warren. The local channels provided infomercials of fishing equipment and no one thought to bring an HDMI cord, but I don't think any of us particularly missed Netflix as much as we missed being in the same room together.

The next morning we woke up to head straight to Burlington; Vermont is one of those states where everywhere you need to go is in the next town over. On the drive over we had to pull over for these sweet sweet black dairy cows and witnessed a tender moment of curiosity between the cows and a jogging black lab. The air was so cold and fresh that each breath felt like taking a hit.

A fun little tidbit I found while doing post-trip research - in 2015, Vermont adopted a second state motto in addition to the original "Freedom and Unity." The new Latin phrase, "Stella quarta decima fulgeat", means "May the Fourteenth star shine bright" as a nod to Vermont's order to join the Union in 1791. Angela Kubiche, a high school freshman at the time, didn't expect her proposal for Latin motto to anger fellow Vermont residents who confused Latin for Latino. Small chuckle.

Passing by the University of Vermont, we arrived for brunch at Penny Cluse. Portions are huge and the dishes are mostly comfort food, which is just another way of saying they are VERY generous with butter and cheese. Between mimosas and irish coffees and skillets of this-and-that and mac-and-cheese and loaded potatoes, we couldn’t fit another glass of water on the table. We had to be rolled out of there, but god it was so delicious. Downtown Burlington is really just one strip of Church street starting from its namesake, the First Unitarian Universalist Church. We walked around the blocks, dipping into different stores and sampling chocolates and cheese.

More driving until we reach The Alchemist Brewery in Stowe. It's the holy grail of this trip and I'm not even ashamed to admit that that was my primary motivation for visiting Vermont. To be honest, I found out about this brewery by chance from someone's fridge magnet in the Lower East Side, but thank goodness for that closet of an apartment (iykyk). Make your arguments, but it's considered a mecca for beer enthusiasts. It's extremely rare to find their beers selling outside of the state, and the brewery publishes a weekly stocking schedule to the major retail locations in the state.

Alchemist Brewery actually began as a brewpub in Waterbury, VT. Owners John and Jen Kimmich would offer Heady Topper as a rotating special and eventually began bottling the beer after customers were found illegally taking it out of the pub. In 2011, the Kimmichs started a brewery production in the basement of the pub but their efforts were completely flooded by Hurricane Irene in 2011. After the hurricane, the couple went back to retrieve the recipe and say their goodbyes to that location. Now, the Heady Topper IPA comprises half of the brewery's annual production and is rated as the 5th best beer in the world. It's recommended to drink straight from the can in order to preserve the hop aroma trapped inside the can. Because it's unfiltered, the beer is perishable and therefore should be consumed immediately after opening. It's refreshing, piney, a truly well-balanced treat. I ended up taking home two 4-packs of Heady Topper, one 4-pack of Kenny Kolsch, and one 4-pack of Lucious, a British Imperial Stout.

I was impressed by the sustainability efforts put into the entire factory operations. Everything that comes into the facility is basically either composted, treated, recycled, or reused. Here is an excerpt from John and Jen's interview with Forbes, during which John also breaks down the mathematics behind the wastewater treatment facilities if it piques your interest...

The wheels are on the bus go round and round. The rolling hills in Vermont seem to go on forever. Any lost moments during the afternoon we probably just pulled over somewhere and did one of two things:

Purchased cheese
Snapped nature pictures

Walking around in Stowe, there were numerous signs for psychiatric hospitals. Apparently, this town has a lengthy history with mental asylums dating back to the 1860s, when Vermont state purchased 500 acres of land as a result of Battleboro Retreat. At the time, the method of treating the mentally ill was simply to warehouse them in general medical hospitals, prisons, and poorhouses. Thus, the Vermont State Asylum was built. Looking at where we are on this topic in 2021 (mental health and illnesses are, although no longer as taboo, still uncommon and sensitive issues in most institutional settings), think about the misconceptions medical professionals and larger society had about those who were mentally ill. Stowe has a dark history with the mentally ill so we won’t go into too many details here, but I linked two resources at the end of this article for those interested.

All physical "activities" that don't immediately involve our jaws and esophagus were preserved for Saturday. The day began with us wandering Burlington Farmers Market and tending tasting flights at Citizen Cidery. Then, we packed into the car for Shelburne Farm, nationally recognized as a well-preserved, still functional example of a Gilded Age "ornamental farm." Now, it's a farm/education center that still houses a herd of Brown Swiss cows who help make cheddar cheese sold at the gift shop. We took a stroll, laid in the grass, pet some otherwise unbothered goats, and milked some cows alongside a crowd of 1st graders.

Last full stop in Vermont - Huntington Gorges. There are tons of beautiful gorges and quarries in Vermont (including the Rock of Ages Granite Quarry) but at this point of the weekend no one wanted another extended car ride. Distance and experience do not necessarily have a linear relationship because we spotted a double rainbow from the car. We opted for a shorter ride to Huntington Gorge and took some topless back photos. Nipply, dare I say?

Sunday morning, we woke up, made breakfast out of whatever we had left the Airbnb fridge, checked out, and drove back refreshed from a slower weekend and ready to take on the city.

*While writing this entry, I did some research into the strongest beer in the world. I thought it would be somewhere around 15% ABV but I am very, very wrong. The strongest beer in the world currently is Brewmeister’s Snake Venom at 67.5% ABV. One bottle wonder.

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