Burlington Beer Company

Commercial Loan Program

After home-brewing back in 2006, Joe Lemnah moved around the areas where the breweries were hopping, including to Delaware, the home of Dogfish Head. At Dogfish Head, Lemnah converted his love of home-brewing to the art of commercial brewing. 

His goal, though, was always to bring his talent back to Vermont. After completing the 10,000 or so hours it takes to master the skill, that’s exactly what he did by starting Burlington Beer Company in 2014.  

The company has a 22,000-square-foot production facility in Williston and a brew pub-slash-event-space-slash-hip-hangout in Burlington’s South End, which opened in 2021.  

Lemnah said that with his family’s savings tapped to start the brewery, it was a struggle to find a lender willing to take the leap, particularly a decade ago when the brewery market was quickly becoming saturated.  

“I just went all in,” Lemnah laughed. “It was a pretty rough business plan. I was a brewer by trade and have had to become a business person" 

Thankfully, he said, VEDA and its partners at the Bank of Middlebury believed in what he wanted to do.  

“VEDA taking chances on people that have that passion means a lot, after getting so many ‘nos’ from the bank,” he said. “VEDA is creating business and jobs in Vermont — it’s very noticeable and appreciated, so when we were growing over the years, we went back to VEDA.”  

This has included the brew house, more tanks, a canning line and so on. It makes for great conversation, Lemnah said: sharing the need for new equipment and projecting the revenue that will come in return.  

Plus, Burlington Beer Co. gives back to the community in myriad ways, including special brews for important causes, like the Vermont benefit beer, created in response to major flooding in 2023. 

Now, as it prepares for its 10th anniversary, Burlington Beer Co. continues to celebrate what makes it special — and buck trends.  

“We were doing a lot of things through the years that I think the more traditional and even some of the up-and-coming breweries that are making some different styles of beer looked down upon like, ‘Oh, what do you put it in your beer? That's gross. That's not beer anymore’” he said. “But it's fun. Beer was meant to be fun.”