What’s there to say that hasn’t been said? This place is making the best beer in the world and is charging very fair prices for it. If you like IPAs or saisons, they are unequaled, and they’ve got an excellent sour ale program going on as well, though it doesn’t quite match the quality of the standard stuff.

Expect long waits.

CASH ONLY! Timed the 4 hour ride to get there around 12:30 on a Friday to beat the lines I’ve heard about. Maybe 10 people in line moved right along, able to watch Shaun stirring tanks, hoseing stuff down, working his magic. Crazy drive on dirt roads (couple miles) and there’s a new barn with cars parked on the middle of no where. Tasting tent outside, $4 for 4 pours. If you can make this trip, do it.

Finally made it to Mecca (at least the US Mecca) with a group of students and profs from my work trip. There were a dozen people in line at about 3PM on a Thursday already, but they ran them through the line pretty efficiently. A very interesting setup - it really is a barn, with an HF flag identifying it for what it is. Sean was walking around in stained clothes on the phone and inspecting the beer. Hard to believe so much goodness comes out of so few gallons of production capacity! It was kind of weird hanging out in the parking lot with all these folks who were there to stock up to the hilt - one guy must have had twenty cases of Heady in is truck and was cycling through the line getting five growlers a crack. Weird, but then again when I got to the front I ordered enough to fill a 12-bottle shipper, and then headed to the Alchemist :)

2013-04-26. Fairly quiet when we arrived around 1:00. We sampled our way through the taplist before putting in a growler order, which was a mistake in hindsight as it got busy right around then. The girl behind the bar was great, super friendly, seemed knowledgeable about the beers, the brewery, and the local area. She was quite patient and got us through a large order of 750ml fills despite being on her own with an increasingly large crowd. I kept expecting her to tell us we were asking for too many but she worked us in while taking care of other folks too. We greatly appreciated that since we won’t be back for a while and wanted to maximize our visit. There was a nice selection of HF beers on tap, and a couple of bottles, as well as a small but excellent selection of guest bottles. The brewery itself is fairly small, I imagine it must be crazy on event days or for special releases. We were glad we got there on a weekday. We essentially planned our Vermont visit around this and it was well worth the trip. Hopefully they will start bottling more, especially the saisons and less delicate brews, since as an out of stater I would have loved to have bought more bottles with a longer shelf life than fresh growlers. I suppose that just encourages drinking them sooner rather than later though :) If you go to Vermont without stopping at HF you probably don’t like beer very much.

I drove on a non-paved road for 10 minutes, didn’t see any cars the whole time, arrived to the brewery 5 minutes before open, and still the line was about 25 people outside. There’s one line whether you’re coming for growler fills, bottles, or samples, so you need to plan ahead. This is more of a get-your-stuff-and-go place. You know what you’re getting with HF beers. I’m not as diehard a lover as most HF fans, but they are always very good, clean, memorable beers. You have to go to at least experience it.

The location is beautiful. It is in the middle of nowhere, which is somewhere special. I drove on gravel and dirty up a large hill or small mountain and when I was at the top I could look out for miles and miles. As for ambiance I was not fond of a small barn that can hold 20-30 people. I did enjoy seeing the silver tanks but the place was kind of raw. It was not meant to be a retail shop. It is what it is. Before entering I stood out in line for an hour and a half to get in. Being my first time here I didn’t know what was really going on. To me it seemed like the place has not opened yet and we were in line to get in. Many minutes later the door opened and I knew this was going to be some time until I could warm up from being in the cold. After an hour and a half my group made it in. But as soon as we made it in a kind woman approached us and said "we are swamped and if you want growler fills it would be another two hours." I was a little disappointed but hey I could still buy the bottles that were for sale. I was not going to wait hrs to fill one or two growlers. So the kind woman helped us get our bottles and had us go on our way. Overall expect lines and issues if you go here on a release or an event. I attended the Lawson’s Finest release at the farmers market. So many ppl made the journey to here. With all that said I still enjoyed my visit.

Yes HF is in the middle of nowhere, yes it is well worth the journey, yes the beer is world class, yes you should make this trip. Seriously, the people are great and sometimes there is quite a line, but honestly good things are worth waiting for. This is a must .

Rating this based on non-release day crowds. On normal days, it’s easy to show up, get beer and leave. HFS is a great place to hang out at and to buy beer. The folks working here are amazing and awesome. Events are well run, it’s a great drive and very relaxing. Some of the best beer in the world. Shout out to Phil for being patient and awesome.

I made the three hour journey out to Hill this past Saturday to pick up a keg for my home brew clubs’ holiday party, and lets just say it’s the capital of nowhere. My gps had no issues finding the place, but I helped a couple with faulty map quest directions find their way. Dirt roads seem to confuse technology. Anyhow, the tasting room/retail shop/brewery are in what looks like a barn attached to a house on a dirt road. Inside you’ll find a friendly helpful staff which seem to be trying to fight off a zombie hoard of beer geeks muttering beeeeer beeeeeer. But I digress. Several Hill bottles for sale and 6 taps for sampling and growler fills. 4 samples for five bucks worked for me, but I’m told VT law limits the samples to 4. Remember to bring cash, no plastic up here, I guess visa hasn’t infiltrated northern Vt yet. I enjoyed hanging out sampling beer and giving Shawn all my money, I hope to return one day and do it all again ;)

Why the low review? This is for the place - NOT the beer. The beers are amazing. The retail place can be a nightmare. We drove 3 hours to get there to get some bottles to bring back home while on vacation. We arrived at 12:30, 30 minutes after they opened and I’m in a line with at least 50 growlers waiting to be filled (from slow pouring taps that are also being used for samplers). Some people had multiple coolers and huge plastic bins of empty growlers and 750ml bottles waiting to be filled. I asked around and was told by several people it’s "one line for everything". After about 20 minutes, the line had not advanced one single person and I gave up and left. A quick estimate and it would have been a several hour wait to get to the counter, when if they had just had a separate line for bottles only it would have been a 2 minute transaction. Never even got to get a sampler because it was pretty much a disorganized free-for-all of hand raising "who wants a sampler". Fantastic beers - potential nightmare retail operation.