United Nations of Beer

The Alchemist, Waterbury, VT

by Tom Warin
(Salem, MA)

The Alchemist, Waterbury, VT is a well-regarded brewpub. My wife and I were recently up in Waterbury for a weekend getaway.

Not coincidentally at all, this coincided with the Alchemist's 5th Anniversary celebration. Their usual selection of beers was bumped up with the addition of some special brews and barrel-aged curiosities.

This was our fourth trip to the Alchemist over the last five years. On our first trip, when it had been open for less than a year, we were impressed with the food and the beer, but not so much with the service and the welcome.

Over the years the beers and the food have gotten even better and the service and atmosphere have been completely transformed. On this latest trip, even though the place was packed, the service was excellent throughout and the staff made even visiting flatlanders like ourselves feel like valued regulars.

Between us we managed to sample a healthy portion of the beer menu. They have plenty of beer-geek bait in the form of strong stouts, double IPAs and sour beers, but they also have a good selection of straight-ahead brews such as an almost-sessionable IPA and a true to style Porter.

I had the cask-conditioned Beelzebub (a well-hopped strong stout), the Holy Cow IPA, Nightstalker(a dark Wit inspired by their head chef), Uncle Daddy (a pumpkin Hefeweizen) and El Jefe (a dark IPA). They were all excellent, but the standouts for me were El Jefe and Holy Cow. The Holy Cow is a year-round offering and the El Jefe is a winter regular.

The only beer that I didn't like, which I ended up swapping for my wife's El Jefe, was Wellness. This is a fruit beer fermented with Brettanomyces and aged with a mix of bacteria. To my taste it was like drinking fruity pickle juice, but my wife really liked it. Sour beers have an increasing cachet in beer geekdom, but they're not for everyone.

For dinner, we started out with a small order of the sweet potato fries, which were suitably crunchy and delicious. I had a smoked andouille sausage sandwich, which was hard to eat, but spicy and good.

My wife had the red beans and rice with pulled pork, which was outstanding. Cornbread purists will be pleased to note that the cornbread was not sweet or cakey like most cornbread found in the Northeast.

Overall, our latest visit to the Alchemist was very pleasant. They seem to have found themselves a good balance between catering to regulars and visitors, and between stronger, experimental brews and classics. All of the beers are brewed with care. The food goes far beyond what we have come to expect from a brewpub and is a good reason to visit by itself.

The Alchemist in Waterbury, VT is highly recommended.