BURLINGTON, VERMONT
November ’06, revisited Burlington for a few nights. First stop, loud and crowded AMERICAN FLATBREAD (opened around ‘04) made awesome organic wood-fired pizzas in a brick cauldron to go with 30-plus quality bottled beers and several finely handcrafted ‘Zero Gravity’ tap brews. Its right side wood bar had a beautiful oak mantle, exposed ductwork lined the ceilings, and brew tanks were located in the rear.
Alongside delicious Punctuated Equilibrium (wheat-based pizza with olives, red peppers, goat cheese, onions), quaffed mild yellow-fruited hop-spiced white breaded Munich Helles, dry-fruited hop-tingled Villiers ESB, dry spice-hopped fig-date-tinged Dwayne’s Dunkel, wispy dry-fruited raw-honeyed Liquid K’nish Schwarzbier, and middling rye-dried malt-toasted fig-dabbed Black Cat Porter.
More rewarding were sticky anise-laden cinnamon-spiced vanilla-backed squash-aided Stick Season Ale, boisterous grapefruit rind-embittered orange-peeled pineapple-tart piney-hopped TLA India Pale Ale, and baked bread-y prune-dried pumpernickel-finishing Bakers Little Helper.
January ’09, tried fig-date-sugared black cherry-dried chocolate-powdered Mr. Black’s Scwarzbier, creamy cappuccino-fronted coffee-roasted cocoa-backed nut-smoked licorice-tinged Extra Stout, and phenol perfume-hopped red-orange-fruited Old Ale.
