One Keg of Lager Beer: An Underdog Story

Doc Ponds is wedged in the junction of two byways carving through the Green Mountain range. Welcome to Stowe, Vermont. In one direction sits looming Mount Mansfield, and in the other, the arced back of Camel’s Hump, the first and third tallest peaks in the state. The lodge-style restaurant is a tucked away gem of a craft beer hub, with an all-embracing menu spanning from obscure imports to wild ales and hard-to-find Vermont brews that rarely make it beyond state borders. Doc Ponds is named for a 19th-century doctor, Erasmus A. Ponds, who provided testimony for a single keg of lager beer in an 1876 court case against the state. The keg of lager won. But it wasn’t the defendant—yet—that made Vermont a beer state.