Welcome to For The Win Bracket Madness. In our fourth Bracket Madness contest of the month, we want you to decide the best craft beer brewery in the country.
The voting period for the opening round will run until 10 a.m. Friday.
You would never notice The Answer Brewpub as you meandered your way out of Richmond, Va. unless you were looking for it; go too far and you’re left to turn around in the parking lot of The Home Depot. Tree House’s sprawling new brewery, wedged back among the trees about an hour southwest of Boston, is marked by a small gravel lot that holds overflow parking on the days when hundreds of people line up to tote cases of canned beer back to friends and family — sometimes traveling hours to do so.
Monkish’s website includes detailed instructions (there are pictures with arrows and everything) on how to find the brewery, since it’s located within a nondescript business park in Torrance, California. Hill Farmstead is nestled, as the name suggests, amongst the farmland that interrupts the forest in northern Vermont, not far from where the U.S. gives way to Canada.
In a way, our four finalists are perfect refutations of the negative stereotype that has emerged around craft beer: that it is too pretentious, too fine, too preoccupied with image and gimmick.
The Answer — as in “beer is the answer” — grew out of a family business started by Vietnamese immigrants. Hill Farmstead was started by a brewer who learned the craft for a science fair project and went on to open his own operation on the land his ancestors had worked since the early 1800s.
These are the four finalists, according to our voters. All are worth a visit … two will move on to the championship round.
