STOWE, VERMONT
Consuming an entire red clapboarded Colonial-styled Victorian grange, Stowe-based IDLETYME BREWING COMPANY maintains an exquisite downhome appeal from its sylvan wood-furnished pub room to its luxurious Old World dining sections. A large paver deck with metal furnishings sits alongside several ash trees.
Though the historic Shed Restaurant & Brewery closed in 2011, Idletyme began renovations a year after and quickly picked up the slack. A founding brewer of New Hampshire’s Moat Mountain, Will Gilson has been Idletyme’s guiding light ‘concocting brews of all variety since 1995.’
While vacationing in Vermont, November ’22, discovered seven available brews – including two Bavarian pilsners, a Munich-styled lager, two pale ales, an IPA and porter. There were also two sours I missed out on, wild yeast cultured blueberry- Sour Blue and tart Lemondrop-hopped Sourtyme.
‘Mocktails,’ wines, ciders and mixed drinks were also available as were sandwiches, burgers and salads.
Dry Bohemia Pilsner lent wheat-chaffed barnyard acridity and rustic herbal spicing to fleeting powdered fruiting in light-bodied setting.
Musky raw graining and leathery hay dryness tempered the spritzy lemony hop of Munich Pilsner, a straightforward moderation.
Crisp helles lager, Helles Brook, brought sweet honeyed cereal graining to grassy Noble hop herbage, Seltzer-like lemon spritz and wispy sulfuric acidity.
A traditional American-styled pale ale, Pink n’ Pale, let zesty pink grapefruit juicing infiltrate piney hop briskness and a pink peppercorn prickle as ancillary pineapple and guava tropicalia glanced its spicily citric thrust.
Vibrant dry-hopped pale ale, Zog’s, splashed lemony grapefruit zest against pungent cannabis hop dankness and retained a mildly creamed vanilla froth.
Just as creamy on the surface, Imperial IPA, Ideltyme, worked zestful orange-peeled grapefruit bittering and spiced pineapple-peach tanginess into sugary pale malting (leaving vegetal cucumber crisping).
On the dark side, vanilla bean-embittered black chocolate malting, dark-roast hops and charred nuttiness saddled Vanilla Porter, a soft-tongued (nitrogenated?) delight.
