In the early 1980s, when David Fried, founder of Elmore Roots Nursery, was just a young man with a budding interest in fruit trees, he came to Vermont and sought out Lewis Hill.

At the time, Lewis, Shaun Hill’s great uncle, was one of the region’s leading experts on fruits, flowers, and all things gardening. The author of over ten books about horticulture, including Fruits and Berries for the Home Garden and Pruning Simplified, he operated a fabled nursery in Greensboro, Vt. (at the same homestead where Aaron operated his tavern), just around the corner from where the Brewery now stands, where he and his wife Nancy cultivated world-famous berries.

“I wrote him a letter saying, ‘I want so much to learn how to grow fruit trees. I’ll come and work for free. I just want to be there with you and learn,’” David remembers now. 

David wasn’t the only one. Lewis wrote back, saying that he received hundreds of similar requests each year. Since he couldn’t take on that many apprentices, he decided not to take any—he didn’t think it would be fair to choose.

“So, I didn’t get to work there,” David says, “but we did become friends.”

Over the years, after David started Elmore Roots in nearby Elmore and gradually became a renowned fruit grower in his own right, Lewis served as a mentor and close collaborator. When David applied to be a certified professional horticulturist, the older grower wrote him a letter of recommendation. In the mid-eighties, when Lewis came into possession of some rare black currants from Russia, he gave some to David to experiment with (David returned the favor by later naming one of the varieties from these experiments the “Lewis R.” currant). When Lewis died in 2008 at 84, Nancy gifted his collection of horticultural reference books to David.

“I think he saw me as someone who was carrying on his legacy,” David says. “It made me very proud to be continuing his work and to have been his friend.”

Just a few years after Lewis’s death, Shaun opened Hill Farmstead. When he began to experiment with aging his beer on fruit, he didn’t have to look far for a source.

“We’re right over the hill,” David says. “You can’t really get more local than that.”

For over twelve of its sixteen years, Hill Farmstead has continued to source the fruit for its beers, primarily from Elmore Roots. In that time, the brewery has aged its ales on everything from plums and pawpaws to currants and crabapples—most of which come from David’s 10-plus-acre orchard near Lake Elmore, just half an hour away from the brewery.

The produce at Elmore Roots is all certified organic and handpicked. David and his team will usually harvest hundreds of pounds of various fruits throughout the summer and fall using little more than ladders and their hands. The fruit is then brought to the on-site freezers, where it’s quickly frozen to keep it fresh.

Meanwhile, at Hill Farmstead in Greensboro, Farmstead® ales have been aging in oak. As members of the brewery’s production team continue to monitor the various barrels, tracking each one’s development as it interacts with the wood and changes with the seasons, they single out barrels that might be best complemented by a specific fruit from Elmore Roots.

The production team confers with David and tries to match the flavors and quantities of his offerings to the beers that seek a fruit accompaniment. 

“There isn’t necessarily one formula for what we do. It’s mostly by feel,” says Phil Young, who leads the mixed-fermentation beer program. “If David has, for example, 312 pounds of pears and we can use them, then we’ll work backward off of that—how many barrels of beer can we do with that?”

With the fruit selected and the beer ready to be transferred from barrels, David delivers the produce—usually in the winter, traversing the snowy roads of the Northeast Kingdom to bring the fruit to Hill Farmstead’s door.

When the fruit is delivered to the brewery, it’s immediately weighed and placed in sanitized brite tanks, where it’s left undisturbed to thaw for several days. The selected beer is then transferred from barrels into the tank, with the fruit sitting at the bottom (this is why we often say an ale is aged “on” fruit). Gradually, then, the beer and fruit begin a delicate dance during which complex yeast strains break down the fruit’s sugars, slowly transforming the mixture of fruit and Farmstead® Ale into something that’s greater than the sum of its parts. As this process continues, the production team monitors the beer until it has achieved its desired flavor and assesses that most of the sugar has been fermented. In some cases, this can take two months; in others, it might take two seasons.

Whenever it’s deemed ready, the beer is put into bottles alongside additional yeast and sugars, and it’s allowed to condition for at least six to twelve months, after which it emerges as a complex, elegant embodiment of Elmore Roots and Hill Farmstead’s longstanding relationship.