It has started “Experimental Mondays” where the staff and guest brewers create small batches of whatever suits their fancy, with flavors like Lake Champlain Chocolatestout(which took three tries to get just right), Blueberry Muffin Hefeweisen, and Peppermint Blonde. “It took nine months for all of us to turn the corner, just to keep things at a status quo.”īut the business has gone on to find new ways to satisfy Vermont’s locals and visitors, and to keep themselves and their customers engaged, too. We had 60 employees, all impacted by losing him,” Polewacyk recalls. All of a sudden I had lost my best friend, and I had to do everything I had been doing, plus everything he had been doing too. “We had been friends for 41 years, and business partners for 21 of them. He made things like Blue Nile beer with actual lotus flowers and the ‘spicy and floral’ Ambergris.”īut in 2009, while working on a research project about Irish history - one of many pet projects that kept his attention while he wasn’t in the brewery - Noonan told his partner that he had been diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. “In 2007 Greg stepped things out of the box again. What could we do? It went back on.” (It remains on the menu today.)īut Polewacyk remembers that Noonan wasn’t content to just produce good, small-batch beers that had a popular following. “You wouldn’t believe how people acted and how mad they were. “We took Dogbite Bitter off the menu,” he said with a laugh. Their relatively small space didn’t allow them to stock the many flavors that had developed loyal fans, so they cut back - or tried to. “Eventually we had created a problem by developing so many beers with mainstream appeal.” We made the beer and we had to educate the bartenders and the servers about what was involved, and then they educated the customers,” Polewacyk said.Īnd as their customers learned what they liked, business grew, and those loyal drinkers educated the establishment, too. But no one knew what it was all about back then. ![]() “We were the original brewers, with me assisting Greg. ![]() “In 1988 no one understood what craft beer was,” he said last week.īut Polewacyk and his friend, business partner and pioneering craft brewer Greg Noonan did understand - and the duo believed in Burlington’s potential to support a local brewery. Vermont Pub and Brewery owner Steve Polewacyk easily remembers when Burlington wasn’t a haven for specialty beers.
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