Before we give you our Brewer Sneak Peek #2, if you haven’t purchased your SIPtemberfest tickets yet, what are you waiting for?? They are on pace to sell out once again so don’t waste any more time – get your tickets right now!

In our latest Brewer Sneak Peek we feature some of our brewers who do more than just brew. These guys are dedicated to providing their respective communities with  quality craft beer but they pair it with their own delicious food. Their establishments are beloved in their communities and at this year’s SIPtemberfest, you’ll get a chance to find out why.

• Trout River Brewing – Nestled over yonder in Lydonville in the Northeast Kingdom, Trout River Brewing is a locally own and operated microbrewery that creates and serves fresh, all natural, premium ales and lagers. Their beers are made with pure Vermont water, the best imported and domestic malts and hops, and quality yeasts and they are all unfiltered to allow for a more flavorful and complex taste. Their pub is open Wednesday through Saturday evenings from 5:00 until 9:00 p.m. when you can try their gourmet, hand-tossed, sourdough pizzas made with eleven-year-old sourdough culture, and topped with eclectic toppings including scallops, three kinds of mushrooms, and onions caramelized in their stout.
• Norwich Inn & Jasper Murdock’s Ales – They may be new to SIPtemberfest, but the the Norwich Inn has been around for a while. President James Monroe dined there in 1817 while on a horseback tour of the New England frontier. Today Jasper Murdock’s Ales and Lagers are crafted from the finest malts and hops and are only sold only at the Inn located in beautiful Norwich, VT. They offer two dining options: their Pub and their dining room, both of which offer fantastic atmosphere and wonderful food at wallet-friendly prices.
• Vermont Pub & Brewery – Greg Noonan, one of the Craft Brewing pioneers, opened Vermont’s first brewpub in Burlington on November 11, 1988 after lobbying the state legislature for three years to allow pub brewing in Vermont for the first time since Prohibition. Over the years VPB has been honored with numerous international awards, but they’ve also taken home a lot of local hardware, having been voted “Best Place to Have a Beer” by every Burlington Free Press Readers’ Choice Awards, “Best Place for Couples” and the perennial winner of the Seven Daysies Awards by the Seven Days readers’ poll for the “Best Place to Drink a Vermont Beer”. They also serve a large variety of tasty food that pairs well with their unique beer menu. This is the first time they will be at SIPtemberfest and we are thrilled to add them to our lineup!
• Bobcat Cafe & Brewery – For ten years, the Bobcat has supported and enhanced their community of Bristol, Vermont, by hosting benefit dinners and by providing a comfortable spot where local people can meet and socialize. Their 100 member Mug Club is a testament to the dedication of their regulars and the quality of both their food and their ever changing beer list!

Three days and half our tickets are sold! If you don’t have yours yet, check it off your list right now.

Good. Now that that’s taken care of, let’s talk about some of the brewers that will be at the 2012 SIPtemberfest, shall we?

We’re only going to show you a little itty-bitty sample in our first brewer sneak peak but have no fear – there’s a lot more to come! Here’s sneak peak #1:

• Vermont Beer Company – Proudly the smallest brewery in Vermont, these guys brew on a 10 gallon system and only pour exclusively at the Perfect Pear Cafe in Bradford, VT – oh, but since they’ll be at SIPtembefest you only have to schlep your way to Mad River Glen to try their delicious brews along side the rest of the brewers at the SIP!
• Switchback Brewery – These guys aren’t the winners of Seven Days Daisies Award for Best Vermont Microbrewery for no reason! The team at Switchback Brewery are no strangers to brewing a delicious, refreshing beer and they are no strangers to SIPtemberfest! We are excited to have them back again this year, serving up their tasty libations!
• Lawson’s Finest Liquids – Well of course Lawson’s is at the SIP! With gems like Double Sunshine, Chinooker’d and his award winning Maple Tripple, LFL is quite easily one most sought after and hardest to find beers in the State. He will not only be at SIPtemberfest, but he will be co-hosting our Meet the Brewer’s Dinner & Tasting on Friday, Sept 28 with Otter Creek Brewing. So if you can’t get enough of LFL, you should most certainly get your tickets to this bonus event before it sells out and enjoy four courses of incredible food paired with incredible beer. Plus you’ll get the chance to hob-nob with the man himself! There are still tickets left for this event, so get them before it’s too late!

We are all beer geeks here. Let’s be honest.

We are very likely to struggle with decisions like whether to drink a Lawson’s Double Sunshine or a Heady Topper from the Alchemist. We don’t mind drinking beer out of pretty glasses, and we only buy golf packs of cheap domestic beer if we are under serious duress, and/or are channeling our inner hipster.

And that geekiness most likely spills over into other realms of our lives. For example, here at SIPtemberfest Headquarters, our insomniacs in the graphics department dialed in their techno-geek energy and added a QR code to our coasters!

Somewhat geeky explanation of  a QR code:  Not to be confused with the Quadratic residue code, QR stands for Quick Response. It’s a type of matrix barcode used similarly to your standard UPC code with fast readability but with a much larger storage capacity. The information encoded can store virtually any kind of data, not the least of which, for example, could be the URL for the ticket sales web page for SIPtemberfest. QR Codes can be scanned easily with one of many apps for smartphones, (not all apps are created equally though!) These will then take you directly to the information encoded in the QR code.

So now you can geek out about beer at Three Penny Taproom in Montpelier, Mad Taco in Waitsfield or Montpelier, or Hostel Tevere in Warren, and with the aid of your smartphone and a coaster,  buy your tickets to SIPtemberfest before ordering your next round! Cheers!