Suarez Family Brewery gets another major honor

The latest release of results in the annual RateBeer Best judging -- they release them in dribs and drabs over a week by certain categories -- has a little Columbia County brewery honored once more.

On Monday, the Suarez Family Brewery of Livingston was named one of the 10 best "New Brewers in the World." Today, it was ranked No. 5 and a gold medalist in the pilsners category for its Suarez Family Palatine Pils.

Brewery Ommegang of Cooperstown was awarded a bronze medal in the Belgian-style ales category for its Abbey Dubbel Ale.

Regional pride apart, the part of the announcement today that really caught my eye was the number of honors for the Hill Farmstead Brewery of Vermont.

It was named "Best Bewery in the World" and, obviously, "Best Brewery" in Vermont and in the U.S.  This is the third year in a row and the fourth time in the past five years that the brewery has been honored as "Best Brewery in the World." Twenty-six of its beers were honored with medals, 11 of them Gold, during a ceremony in Santa Rosa, CA, after the judging.

The original inn logo

Hill Farmstead Brewery describes itself as "the culmination of many years of travel and insight -- of experience and education -- of friendships and explorations. The brewery is the revival and continuation of 225 years of Hill heritage and handcrafted history ... . Its logo is retrieved from a sign that once hung in Aaron Hill's (our great-great-great-grandfather) tavern, just up the hill, in the early 1800s."

The brewery is located in Greenstead Bend in northern Vermont, about an hour-and-a-half drive east of Burlington.

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• Go here to visit the Capital Region Brew Trail
• Go here to visit Dowd's New York Wines Notebook
• Go here to visit Notes On Napkins 

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