2015 VT Beer Trip - Part I: Hunger Mountain Coop

5:00am my phone alarm vibrates under my pillow. Its Thursday. Beer Day. I grab my clothes and do my best to quietly sneak out of the tent, without waking my wife and two kids. (The tent's door-zipper is so loud at that hour!!) I take a quick shower and meet the other men by my brother's SUV and we are on the road by 5:20. It takes about 25 minutes to get to Montpelier, plus 15 minutes to grab breakfast at Dunkin Donuts. By 6:00am we get in line at the Hunger Mountain Co-op, with only 9 people in front of us.
The 5 of us (my brother Eric, my dad Steve, my uncle Tom, my cousin Andres, and I) found a wall to lean on and quietly sipped our coffee and ate breakfast sandwiches. The longer we stood, the more I realized that though we were early, we were definitely Heady Topper line-standing rookies. People were settling in behind us with chairs, books, knitting, coolers, munchies, and lots of beer stories.

• I chatted with a gentleman in front of us who drove about 2.5 hours that morning from Lake George. In past years, he had been able to sample Alchemist's Focal Banger and another called The Rapture that they apparently don't brew any more.
• We overheard people talking about empty Heady Topper cans selling on Ebay. EMPTY cans
• We heard debates about the top beers in the world: Heady Topper, Pliny the Elder, Bourbon County Breakfast Stout.

All of this just increased the anticipation for what was behind the doors just feet from us.

10th in Line

The line grew, and began to wind through the parking lot. A gangly, grimy dude in a Co-op tie-dye and an Alchemist badge around his neck came out a few times to correct the line, so as to not block through traffic and ensure every parking spot was free of line-standers. Finally he came back out with a stack of cards, holds them high and shouts "Is anyone from New Jersey?" The 5 of us shout and holler thinking this is a good sign... only to be deflated by a litany of rude comments about how no one from New Jersey is able to count. He says the rule is one card per person, up to 120 people (meaning there are 120 cases of Heady Topper inside and one case per person), and that apparently everyone from New Jersey thinks they can cheat and get more than that. We all grumbled. My uncle yelled something in reply. My dad actually looked like he was going to punch this granola tyrant. Eric and Andres reeled them in--we still had to get in the door. After all, this power-hungry-hippie could deny us the very thing we were waiting for. We bit our tongues as he began to pass out the numbered cards. I was #10.
We were #10-15. A guaranteed case for each of us. People walked up to take pictures with the man with the #1 card. Soon, we began to hear subtle booing and grumbling from the parking lot. The 120 cards were gone. Roughly 30 to 40 people were turned away, empty handed.
The NJ-Hater announced the line would be let in the store in groups of ten. This meant I'd go in before the rest of my group. At exactly 8:00am, my line of 10 people shuffled inside and through the aisles to the center of the store where I saw 4 towering carts full of silver and black cans.

I had half-expected balloons or music or some other bit of fanfare. Instead it was quiet, solemn, and extremely organized. Two or three people passed out cases and collected the cards. I followed the neat little line to the register, checked out and that was it. After 2 hours in line, I was in and out of the store in under 5 minutes. I stood alone with my heavy case of cold, 16 ounce, silver and black Heady Toppers in the sun, expecting someone to maybe want to take a picture with me or to at least hear a "Congratulations, can I have one?"

Shortly after, the rest of the guys filed out. Andres also had a bag in hand with snacks for the road.

We stacked up the cases in the back of the SUV, climbed in and headed out of Montpelier; our first stop in the books. 

Next stop: Rock Art Brewery in Morrisville.