The Darling of The Craft Brewing World: NYT: Craft Beer, the (Very) Limited Edition [View all]

[cali]

Two weeks ago, a beer drinker in Fresno, Calif., called Hill Farmstead Brewery in Vermont to ask where he could buy its craft beers. “You have to drive to the airport, get a ticket, fly to Burlington, rent a car and drive an hour and a half to the brewery,” the owner, Shaun Hill, replied with a laugh. But he wasn’t joking.

Hill Farmstead, in the hamlet of Greensboro, produces just 60,000 gallons of beer annually. The beer is available for purchase only at the brewery and in roughly 20 Vermont bars. In addition, Mr. Hill sends 12 kegs to distributors in New York City and Philadelphia a few times a year.

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Several months before these accolades, Mr. Hill returned to Vermont to begin construction on Hill Farmstead Brewery on a former dairy farm that he and his brother, Darren, a woodworker, inherited from their grandfather. “I wanted to make beer, I wanted to live in this place and I wanted to help my family and make sure I had the finances available to take care of this land in perpetuity,” Mr. Hill says.

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Demand surged last February when users of the beer-review site Ratebeer.com deemed Hill Farmstead the best brewery in the world — after having anointed Mr. Hill as the best new brewer in 2010.

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Now Mr. Hill says he fields questions like the one from the Fresno caller every day. He estimates that thousands of people have made long-distance beer runs to Hill Farmstead Brewery, some traveling from as far as New Zealand, Norway and Japan.

Customers wait in line for one to four hours to buy bottles and two-liter growlers of the beers, many of which are named for Mr. Hill’s ancestors (Edward, Abner, Florence). The brewery once sold an entire batch of beer — 500 gallons — in one day.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/19/business/craft-beer-the-very-limited-edition.html?_r=0


http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2013/04/shaun-hill-brewmaster-hill-farmstead

http://narrative.ly/drinking-buddies/the-wonderbrewer-of-nowheresville/