Find information on homebrewing beer and its increasing popularity.

Breweries and bars turn Leesburg into the craft beer capital of Northern Virginia

The craft beer scene is hopping in the heart of Virginia’s wine country, thanks to a new collection of breweries, brewpubs and beer bars.
It’s a great time to be a beer  lover.
And all of this is just in Leesburg.
Loudoun County’s seat is better known for its antique shops than for its night spots, and the county itself is a destination for wine, not lagers. But the historic town has a growing concentration of beer-centric establishments. MacDowell Brew Kitchen and Crooked Run Brewing both include nanobreweries that produce just enough beer to sell on site. Leesburg Brewing Company, a joint venture from the owners of the Leesburg Vintner wine shop and the nearby Corcoran Brewing Company, is due to become a brewpub in December. In the meantime, it’s just serving great local beer.
A few miles from downtown, in Lucketts, Roger Knoell’s Barnhouse Brewery sells beers from his back yard one weekend a month. He hopes to begin supplying bars with his products soon.
Loudoun County isn’t the first Northern Virginia suburb to create a bustling beer scene. Nearly every other month brings an announcement of a brewery in the works. Just in the past 15 months, we’ve heard about Corcoran Brewing and Adroit Theory in Purcellville, Old Ox Brewery in Ashburn, Old 690 Brewing in Hillsboro, Portner Brewing in Alexandria and Prince William Brewing in Gainesville. Manassas’s BadWolf nanobrewery opened in June, and Lovettsville’s Mad Horse Brewpub had its “Grand-er Opening” to welcome a new brewer this summer. These join such established breweries as Lost Rhino in Ashburn, Port City in Alexandria and the Sweetwater brewpubs in Sterling, Merrifield and Centreville.
Jake Endres, an award-winning homebrewer, used Kickstarter to fund the Crooked Run nanobrewery, which had its grand opening in Leesburg’s Market Station on Nov. 9. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post)
The mix of breweries and beer bars in Leesburg, however, is richer than in most other towns. One factor behind the growth is the number of breweries and beer bars that already call Leesburg home, such as Tuscarora Mill (lovingly referred to as “Tuskies”), which has been selling craft beer since 1985, and the six-year-old Vintage 50 brewpub.
Brewer Jake Endres says that when he was looking for places to open Crooked Run, “having such good craft beer bars around me” was part of the attraction of coming to Leesburg’s historic Market Station. “You can go to five different places in one night,” he adds. “That’s unusual in western Loudoun, where everything is usually spread out.”
“It’s like gravity,” explains Shawn Malone, a co-owner of the beer-centric Tuscarora Mill and Fire Works Pizza, which sit next to each other at Market Station. “It just attracts other [craft beer] businesses, and it shows no signs of letting up. When you look at Fire Works and Tuskies, you think they’d cannibalize each other, but they’re both selling buckets of beer.”
And once visitors get used to good beer, they only want more, making Leesburg ripe to continue its sudsy growth, Malone argues.
“Every day, I’m trying a great new beer that I haven’t had before,” Malone says. “We always say that once you get hooked on something good, whether it’s food or wine or beer, you can’t go back to what you had before. People are trying more good beer, and it’s opening their eyes.”
It’s time to open yours, too. Here are six stops for your very own Leesburg beer crawl.
Breweries
Crooked Run Brewing
205 Harrison St. SE, Suite B (Inside Market Station). Leesburg. 571-918-4446. www.crookedrunbrewing.com. Open Tuesday-Thursday 4 to 10 p.m., Friday 4 p.m. to midnight, Saturday 1 p.m. to midnight, Sunday 1 to 6 p.m.
Jake Endres didn’t set out to be a brewer. The 26-year-old majored in political science at James Madison University, but fate intervened. “I graduated in the middle of a recession,” he says. “I spent six months applying for jobs and got nothing.” Instead of relying on his degree to make a living, Endres turned to his homebrewing hobby.
Endres started making his own beer when he was 21. With hundreds of batches under his belt, he won medals in competitions as far afield as South Carolina, Indiana and Pennsylvania.
Last year, Virginia passed a law that allows breweries to sell full pints of their beer on site without the need for food service, which is required at bars. Endres has no desire to open a restaurant, but he loves beer, especially artisanal Belgian and American ales. So he decided to give brewing a shot while he had “no wife, no kids, no mortgage.” He wrote a business plan and posted a pitch on Kickstarter in February. In a month, he’d raised $11,000. “There are people clamoring for any kind of beer you can imagine,” he says. “People are really stoked to have craft beer coming from Virginia.”
The space that Crooked Run occupies in the rear of Market Station is about the size of a finished basement. It’s a charmingly bare-bones operation: The tasting room contains a bar, six barstools, a couple of picnic tables and a fireplace and hearth (covered with fermenting vessels). Hops are strung along the Christmas lights overhead.
Crooked Run regularly has four beers on tap, drawn from a list of 21 recipes that Endres felt were “nailed down.” The name of his Summer Night raspberry saison may be unseasonal, but the swirl of sweet chocolate and rich raspberry flavors seems perfectly suited to cool weather. The Hellfire black IPA has big tropical fruit flavors and a smooth, malty bitterness, while the Wishing Well dry stout is a classic example of the style. Endres says he’s stoked about Stoicism, a “white Belgian quadruple” he’s making this fall that’s cold-steeped in lightly crushed coffee beans, and Seek Truth, a strong Belgian-style tripel aged with cherrywood.
Customers are welcome to hang out over a few pints, which sell for $5 to $6 each, and bring their own food from nearby restaurants. Grab a sampler ($6 for a flight of three beers) and find something you want to take home. Endres sells 32-ounce growlers instead of the usual 64-ounce jugs (“You don’t have to drink five beers back to back, especially if you open it by yourself”) for about $8 per fill. Everything is 20 percent off from 1 to 5 p.m. on Saturdays during the growler happy hours.
The grand opening was last Saturday, but Crooked Run remains a work in progress. “I’m still trying to get things together,” Endres says. “I just got barstools in a few weeks ago.”
Barnhouse Brewing
13840 Barnhouse Pl., Leesburg. 703-675-8480.  www.barnhousebrewery.com . Open one weekend a month. Next open days: Nov. 23-24. 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Roger Knoell is living every homebrewer’s dream. Until a year ago, he was experimenting with pale ales, porters and pumpkin ales, making 20 gallons at a time at his home in Lucketts. “We were providing kegs to friends who had kegerators or were having parties,” he says. “Then people I didn’t know and had never heard of were calling me and saying, ‘Hey, I had your beer at so-and-so’s house. How could I get more of it?’ Brewing is a passion of mine, but then we realized we might be able to do something with this.”
“This” is a new 1.5 barrel brewing system, which makes about 47 gallons of beer per batch. Knoell is taking the recipes he’s tweaked the past 18 years of homebrewing using local products, such as hops grown in his back yard, or honey and corn from Loudoun farms. The Good Gourd Almighty pumpkin ale gets its fresh flavor from pumpkins picked at the nearby Temple Hall farm, so while there’s some spice, there’s less of that sweet pumpkin pie taste that so many commercial brews have. Additionally, some porters and stouts are also aged in whiskey barrels from the Catoctin Creek distillery.
Now there’s no way around this: It can be a bit weird to visit Barnhouse, which is essentially in the basement of the Knoells’ home. In the summer, visitors could picnic on the vast lawn behind the house, or play horseshoes and bocce. But in the winter, the taproom can be a little cramped, though there’s a fire pit outside. Loudoun County zoning laws mean that Barnhouse can be open only one weekend a month, using a “special event” permit. Knoell says recent open houses have brought in anywhere from 50 to 100 people to sample beers and fill growlers. “People love coming out to the country,” he says. “It’s more like a winery experience, rather than just sitting in a tap room.” Knoell charges $10 for most growler fills and sells custom ceramic swing-top growlers for $17.
That winery experience is what he hopes to capture more of in the future: He hopes to build a separate tasting room on his property, and the goal is to eventually open a “farm brewery,” similar to Loudoun’s farm wineries. Knoell also is collaborating with other small brewers on a Loudoun Brewery Trail, similar to the county’s Wine Trail. “Wine has been the king for a long time in Loudoun County,” Knoell says, but his visitors show him that’s changing. “People come out to wineries one day, but they do breweries the next day.”
Brewpubs
Vintage 50 Brewpub
50 Catoctin Cir. NE, Leesburg. 703-777-2169. www.vintage50.com. Open Monday-Thursday 3 p.m. to close, Friday-Sunday 11 a.m. to close.
Since opening in 2007, Vintage 50 has employed some impressive brewmasters, including Bill Madden, who now runs the award-winning Mad Fox Brewing in Falls Church, and Kristi Mathews Griner, now overseeing production at Capitol City Brewing Company. The man in the hot seat today is Bret Kimbrough, formerly of Growlers Brew Pub in Gaithersburg.
Twenty-five beers are listed over the bar. Only about a third of those are available, though, so look for the ones with a “Now on tap” tag hanging underneath. Start with the sampler, which gives you five ounces of any four beers of your choice for $10. Make one of them the Velociraptor Rye IPA, which mixes citrus and caramel notes with a good bitterness, and the hoppy Point of Rocks Pale Ale.
The place itself is rather plain — it’s on the first floor of an anonymous office building near the Leesburg Corner Premium Outlets, and decorated to match the setting. There’s a small patio with heaters for smokers, but this is a place you come for food and drink, not to party. (The food is filling pub grub.; for snacking, try the pretzel with beer cheese or, if you’re starving, the large platter of house-made potato chips smothered in beer-braised pork, gravy, mozzarella and melted cheddar.)
Vintage 50 is one of the most affordable brewpubs you’ll run across: Most house beers are $4.50 a pint, with one or two higher-alcohol options for $5.50. Everything is far cheaper if you can get there from 3 to 5 p.m. daily, when everything is $2. The price rises to $3 from 5 to 7 p.m. Growlers are $9 or $10 per fill, though one “brewer’s choice” beer is half-price on Wednesday.
MacDowell Brew Kitchen
202 B Harrison St. SE, Leesburg. 703- 777-2739. www.macdowellbrewkitchen.com. Open 11 a.m.-10 p.m. Tuesday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-midnight Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday.
The Friday after Thanksgiving will mark the one-year anniversary of MacDowell Brew Kitchen’s first house beer, brewed on-site by the Mud Hound Brewing Company. It’s also the bar’s third birthday. But if you drop into the bar, you might not see any Mud Hound beers among the 25 taps. “We have such a small system,” laments co-owner Nils Schnibbe. The brewery makes only a half-barrel, or 15.5 gallons, at a time. “We put it on Facebook when [the beer] goes on tap, and then it goes so quickly.” Schnibbe is hoping that a three-barrel system will be in place by February, allowing five or six house beers to be on tap at all times.
Even without the “Brew,” MacDowell is a worthwhile beer destination. The 25 draft lines are loaded with choices from such Virginia breweries as 3 Brothers, Devils Backbone and Starr Hill, as well as hophead favorites Stone, Lagunitas and Flying Dog. Tap takeovers hosted by such smaller breweries as Natty Greene’s or Perennial are a regular occurrence. Don’t see a handle you like? An additional 125 choices are available in bottles. The building’s second floor is being renovated to expand the dining room and add 50 more taps. (Schnibbe is hopeful work will be finished before Nov. 29.)
The inside is nice, if bland. I’m drawn to the patio, an odd place that feels like the set for a Jimmy Buffet video. A thick layer of sand blankets the ground. Palm trees soar overhead. T
Two halves of a fishing boat called the Sea Witch are the centerpiece: Its rear serves as a three-sided bar counter, surrounded by stools, as a bartender pours from taps in the middle. A few feet away, the ship’s cabin contains tables for dining. A thick layer of sand blankets the ground. An enormous alligator, carved from a tree trunk by local chainsaw artist Patrick Burns, occupies another part of the lot, near a couple of toy dumptrucks that children play with in this giant sandbox. The patio was almost removed this summer because of a zoning dispute with the town, but more than 2,000 people signed a petition demanding it stay put — so it did.
During the winter months, the Key West vibe is slightly diminished, as customers sit around large fire pits. Musicians play Tuesday and most weekends. “Life moves pretty fast here, so we wanted to have a beach feel, where people could just kick back,” Schnibbe says.
Beer Bars
Tuscarora Mill
203 Harrison St. SE, Leesburg. 703-771-9300. www.tuskies.com. Open 11 a.m.-11 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 11 a.m.-midnight Friday-Saturday, 11 a.m.-9 p.m. Sunday.
Tuskie’s, as it’s known to everyone in town, is the godfather of the Leesburg beer scene. When the restaurant opened in 1985, “we had Bass, Anchor Steam and Pilsner Urquell on tap, which was pretty cutting-edge at the time,” remembers Shawn Malone, who owns Tuskie’s with his brother, Kevin. They expanded the draft beer selection to 21 taps in 1992, and the following year, they held their first beer dinner with Sierra Nevada. The dinners, in which beer is paired with wild game or strip steaks, have been monthly fixtures ever since.
The Malones have since opened three other restaurants with a craft beer focus: Magnolia’s at the Mill in Purcellville and Fire Works Pizza in Leesburg and Arlington. The Leesburg Fire Works, which has 12 taps and 100 choices in bottles, is next door to Tuskie’s and across the street from MacDowell Brew Kitchen, making it a regular stop on the town’s beer crawl. But for me, Tuskie’s is the one to visit. On my last trip, the wide-ranging draft beer selection included big Belgian quads, hoppy West Coast IPAs and refreshingly mild brown ales. Bartenders recommend great flights of beer (pick three drafts for $7). And the beer dinners offer a combination of hearty local food and rare brews. The next one, with Bell’s Brewery on Dec. 3, will pair five courses with a selection heavy on stouts and seasonal brews. (All-inclusive tickets are $90 and will sell out in advance.) The bar snacks are great, and the atmosphere — dark wood, staff in white shirts and dark ties — feels classy.
Leesburg Brewing Company
2 C Loudoun St. SW, Leesburg. 571-442-8124. www.leesburgbrewing.com. Open 4-8 p.m. Wednesday, 4-10 p.m. Thursday, Noon-10 p.m. Friday-Saturday, Noon-5 p.m. Sunday.
When Leesburg Brewing Company opened in May, the two couples behind it — Jim and Lori Corcoran, owners of Corcoran Winery and Corcoran Brewing in nearby Waterford, and Mike and JoAnne Carroll, the longtime owners of the Leesburg Vintner wine shop — promised that it would be a neighborhood brewpub. Almost six months later, those plans are going out the window.
Kevin Bills, the head brewer at Corcoran, says the plan was to move Corcoran’s small “pilot brewing system” to the basement of Leesburg Brewing Company. Unfortunately, “with a building that old,” Bills says, “the more you start to [work on it], the more you find.” The building can’t support all the equipment. “We’ve abandoned the brewery, and it’s going to be more of a craft beer destination,” he says.
The new business, which Bills says will be renamed Leesburg Beer Company next month, won’t be much of a change from the way Leesburg Brewing Company has operated so far. There will be more draft beers — Bills says 18 taps will flow in a basement bar — but it should remain a place to enjoy craft brews in a relaxed atmosphere.
Since the bar opened, “tap takeovers” on the half-dozen draft lines have been frequent occurrences, with Maryland’s Evolution Craft Brewing and Virginia’s 3 Brothers and Devils Backbone among recent participants. But you’ll also find Bold Rock Cider, DC Brau’s IPAs or even a selection of pumpkin beers from across the country.
Leesburg Brewing Company’s menu is loaded with comfortable bar food: A gooey grilled cheese with gouda and pesto; a burger that gets heat from chorizo in the patty and chipotle in the mayo; crispy beer-battered onion rings. The friendly bartenders are quick to offer samples of beers and to suggest other places you might want to visit, making this feel like a true neighborhood spot, regardless of whether brews are made on-site or on the other side of Loudoun County.


Homebrewing beer has been legal in the United States since the 1970's. It's popularity increases each year. Some brewers have been using locally grown ingredients and have increased their output so much that they have turned their former hobby into profitable businesses. The Capitol region is a thriving area for homebrewers and microbrewers.  Find information on the growth of homebrewing. Keep the results limited to American only, any mention of a non-American brewery/beer is irrelevant.

Research the expansion of a specific hobby into a business for this question.

Find out which beer is made closest to you with this crazy map

You know what's great? Beer. And the only thing better than a great beer is a great local beer. Wouldn't it be nice to know which of America's literally thousands of breweries is closest to you?
Well now you can! A dedicated community of GPS enthusiasts maintains a list of every brewery and brewpub in North America over at poi-factory.com. I took all the listings for the lower 48 -- all 4,750 of them -- and plotted them on a map. Then I overlaid a grid on the map called a Voronoi diagram. What it does, basically, is for any point in the lower 48, it shows you which brewery is the closest.
Check it out below. If you're not on a mobile device, you can mouse-over to get details about a region's "home" brewery, and you can click on the map to zoom in for more detail in dense urban areas. The little white dots when you zoom in are the actual brewery locations. Want to just see a giant image of the map instead? Here you go.
Every brewery in the lower 48
The first thing you'll notice is that the pattern of breweries typically follows population patterns -- more densely populated area have more breweries, hence the cells "belonging" to each brewery are smaller. Check out, for instance, the crazy-quilt of breweries in the San Francisco Bay area, below.

But in far-flung rural areas, breweries (and people) are spread farther apart from each other. In Southwestern Utah (below), for instance, the Zion Canyon Brewing Company is the only one for hundreds of miles around, according to poi-factory's crowdsourced data. Whether you live in say, Panaca, Nev., (pop. 963) or 236 miles away in Page, Ariz., (pop. 7,326), you can think of Zion Canyon as your home brew.

Conversely, if you live in a city, there are probably any number of breweries within a few blocks of you. If you live on one side of Baltimore, for instance, Full Tilt Brewing is probably the closest to you. On the other side, Union Brewing is probably close. And so on.
But in some places you find geographic clusters of brewing in places where you wouldn't expect it based on population alone. Check out Western New York (below), for instance. The many breweries there are a reflection of the region's rich beermaking history with breweries like Genesee in continuous operation since the late 1800s.

If nothing else, these maps should give you a good sense of what people are talking about when they talk about the "craft beer revolution" in the United States. The number of American breweries has risen sharply in recent years — up over 70 percent since the late 1990s, according to business statistics maintained by the Census Bureau. The Brewers Association, a trade group for craft beer makers, estimates that over 1,000 craft breweries, microbreweries and brewpubs popped up between 2012 and 2014 alone.
"The majority of Americans live within 10 miles of a local brewery," the association wrote last year. "That percentage is only going to climb in the coming years."


Here’s what you need to know about Handsome Beer Co., D.C.’s newest brewery

Handsome Beer Co. owners Graham MacDonald (left) and Matt Humbard. (Photo courtesy of Handsome Beer Co.)
Washington's beer market is increasingly crowded, but it seems like there's always room for more local beer. Handsome Beer Co., D.C.'s newest brewing company, launches its first three beers Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. at Glen's Garden Market in Dupont Circle, followed by a week of events that will take co-founders Graham MacDonald and Matt Humbard to bars in D.C., Baltimore, Frederick and Annapolis. (A full schedule is on Handsome's website.)
MacDonald and Humbard met in 2010 through mutual friends, and bonded over a love of beer. But it wasn't until 2013, when MacDonald was working as a manager at Right Proper Brewing Company, that they considered launching their own brewery. "Matt came in with a growler of his homebrew – a saison fermented with brettanomyces and dry-hopped with Nelson Sauvin – and once I had that beer, it clicked into place," MacDonald says. "I thought, 'Oh my God – this could be sold.'"
How does Handsome differ from the other options on local taps? I sat down with MacDonald and Humbard at Meridian Pint – where they're hosting a party at 5 p.m. Wednesday with four beers, including a cask – to find out.
They don't have a brewery.
In short: There's no tasting room, so the best place to sample the lineup is at this week's launch parties.
They don't have an IPA. (Yet.)
Handsome will have three beers at first: Medium and Message, an earthy pale ale that marries Belgian malt and yeast with Moteuka hops; Galaxy Saison, a summery saison with huge tropical fruit notes; and Strange Charm, a rich, appealing brown ale with notes of leather and pitted fruit that seems tailor-made for drinking outdoors on a fall weekend. Brown ales from D.C. area breweries are rare, and this is not your typical dark beer. "It's not a porter because it doesn't have that roasty character, and it's not a Belgian brown because it doesn't have that candy sweetness," Humbard says. Instead, it's designed to highlight the characteristic flavors of Humbard's favorite malt, Special B. In every beer, "you have your malt, your yeast, and your hops," he says. "My approach is, here's a malt that I like. How far can I take this flavor without changing its character?"
Allowing certain flavors and ingredients to shine is a common theme throughout Handsome's beers. The Galaxy Saison, for example, is really about demonstrating the awesome flavors of that particular hop.
Handsome is one of the only local or regional breweries I can think of that doesn't have an IPA in its initial lineup. And when one arrives, it won't be the typical West Coast hop bomb: The IPA they're working on now is made with brettanomyces yeast for a rustic, funky flavor. Since IPA is the most popular craft beer style in America, MacDonald anticipates they're going to get questions about its lack thereof over the next week. "I don't want to say 'That's not what we do,'" he says.
"We haven't ruled anything out," Humbard adds. "If we made an IPA, it would have to showcase an ingredient that was really special, or made in an interesting way."
A sample bottle of Handsome Beer Co's Galaxy Saison. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post)
They don't have flagship beers.
"If we had a permanent location, then flagships might make more sense: 'Come to our brewery and find these four beers,'" Humbard says. Instead, they'll gauge market reaction and adjust accordingly. If one beer isn't selling as well as they hoped, they can simply stop making it and move on to brewing batches of something else. If Humbard wants to make a dandelion saison – he homebrews one with fresh yellow flowers every year – he can drop that into the rotation.
They're not just in D.C.
Handsome inked a deal with Maryland-based distributors Legends Limited earlier this year, and is leveraging that to build relationships with beer bars across the state, as well as in D.C. They don't expect to be in every bar right now – they're only making 30-barrel batches at a time at Old Bust Head, and their contract-brewing situation means "the beers have to be at a certain price point, which rules out a $6 16-ounce" pour, MacDonald says. (He adds later that he thinks Handsome's beers will likely sell for $7 to $8 in most bars, which he calls "mid-range for the market.") As an aside, they'll be a bit cheaper at the launch party at Pizzeria Paradiso in Dupont Circle on Thursday, Sept. 24, where all three draft beers and a special cask will be half-price from 5 to 7 p.m.


Why one of the nation’s premier beer festivals seems to have lost its luster

Savor, at the National Building Museum, features beer and food pairings. (Eddie Arrossi/Courtesy of Savor) For years, Savor has been the gold standard of beer festivals in Washington, and one of the most important beer festivals in America. Every May or June — with the exception of 2013, when it went on tour to New York — more than 70 craft breweries have descended on the great hall of the National Building Museum for the classiest such event I’ve ever seen. Most beer festivals celebrate the beers of a certain state or region, but Savor is an opportunity to sample beers from all over America, each paired with gourmet snacks. Attendees get the chance to chat with superstars such as Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione and Boston Beer’s Jim Koch, and to attend educational seminars on specific trends or styles. The week leading up to the festival is a parade of tap takeovers, dinners and meet-and-greets with visiting brewers at bars around town. Savor’s popularity has led to complaints about how hard it is to get tickets, with the 2,000 tickets for each of its two nights generally selling out in less than an hour. (In Savor’s third year, 2010, tickets for the one-night affair sold out in 10 minutes.) But some of the luster seems to have rubbed off: More than two weeks after the $135 tickets went on sale, many of the salons with brewers have sold out, but general admission is still available for both June 3 and 4. It’s a strange turn of events for what was once one of the hottest tickets on the beer calendar, especially because interest in craft beer and brewing is at an all-time high. Is Savor on a downturn, or is this just a blip? Of course, none of those events occupies the same rarefied air as Savor. For a hardcore beer fan, DC Beer Fest is a comparative yawn: You won’t find Allagash founder Rob Tod pouring White at his brewery’s stand. Your Great Lakes beer won’t be paired with a snack of braised rabbit and herb spaetzle. And, most important, the majority of the beers can be found in any craft-centric bar on a Saturday night: The lineup is heavy on locals such as Denizens, Hellbender or the Ocean City Brewing Company, and it’s tough to get excited about “national” representatives Magic Hat or Shiner Bock. Would you rather

Savor, at the National Building Museum, features beer and food pairings. (Eddie Arrossi/Courtesy of Savor)
For years, Savor has been the gold standard of beer festivals in Washington, and one of the most important beer festivals in America. Every May or June — with the exception of 2013, when it went on tour to New York — more than 70 craft breweries have descended on the great hall of the National Building Museum for the classiest such event I’ve ever seen.
 Most beer festivals celebrate the beers of a certain state or region, but Savor is an opportunity to sample beers from all over America, each paired with gourmet snacks. Attendees get the chance to chat with superstars such as Dogfish Head’s Sam Calagione and Boston Beer’s Jim Koch, and to attend educational seminars on specific trends or styles. The week leading up to the festival is a parade of tap takeovers, dinners and meet-and-greets with visiting brewers at bars around town.
Savor’s popularity has led to complaints about how hard it is to get tickets, with the 2,000 tickets for each of its two nights generally selling out in less than an hour. (In Savor’s third year, 2010, tickets for the one-night affair sold out in 10 minutes.)
But some of the luster seems to have rubbed off: More than two weeks after the $135 tickets went on sale, many of the salons with brewers have sold out, but general admission is still available for both June 3 and 4.
It’s a strange turn of events for what was once one of the hottest tickets on the beer calendar, especially because interest in craft beer and brewing is at an all-time high. Is Savor on a downturn, or is this just a blip?
What has changed since Savor began in 2008 is the level of competition. Although Savor was once one of the few really big festivals in the D.C. area, there are now many more throughout the year — and, more important, none of them approach Savor’s price tag. For example, the DC Beer Festival at Nationals Park on Saturday includes unlimited samples from 83 breweries. Admission for a three-hour window is $40. At least 60 breweries will be in Leesburg, Va., for the Americana Beer Fest in June, which carries a $45 ticket price. The Maryland Craft Beer Festival in Frederick in May includes unlimited beers from at least 40 breweries for its $40 ticket.
You could attend all three of those events for less than the cost of entry for 3

 1/
 2
hours of sampling at Savor.
Of course, none of those events occupies the same rarefied air as Savor. For a hardcore beer fan, DC Beer Fest is a comparative yawn: You won’t find Allagash founder Rob Tod pouring White at his brewery’s stand. Your Great Lakes beer won’t be paired with a snack of braised rabbit and herb spaetzle. And, most important, the majority of the beers can be found in any craft-centric bar on a Saturday night: The lineup is heavy on locals such as Denizens, Hellbender or the Ocean City Brewing Company, and it’s tough to get excited about “national” representatives Magic Hat or Shiner Bock.
Would you rather spend three afternoons out drinking in the sun with friends, or one night inside a landmark museum with some of the biggest names in craft brewing?
But even for the hardcore, Savor doesn’t have the kind of buzz it once did. And that’s because of the breweries involved.
Of the 76 participants in 2016, there are plenty of faraway breweries I’m looking forward to sampling, including Country Boy, Austin Beerworks and Strange Craft. Then there are numerous breweries I’ve never heard of: Boone Valley Brewing from Boone, Iowa; Lewis & Clark Brewing from Helena, Mont.; Mitten Brewing from Grand Rapids, Mich. That is what sets Savor apart from the region’s other beer festivals: the excitement of discovery. Sampling the unfamiliar and stumbling across a great new sour or IPA is, to me, the point of going.
A quick scan of the Savor menu shows 41 breweries whose products aren’t regularly available in the Washington area. By Savor’s own count, half of this year’s breweries have never been featured at the event, and only 30 percent were included last year.
The hankering for new flavors and beers should be a good thing, right? Sure, if they’re the right new flavors. Hardcore and casual beer geeks alike would leap at the chance to try the biggest, buzziest breweries they can find. Think Tree House, Toppling Goliath, Three Floyds or Russian River. All of those are likely to have multiple entries in any list of the World’s Best Beers. All are Brewers Association members. None will be pouring beers at Savor.
Unlike most beer festivals, Savor doesn’t curate the list of participants. Sixty of the 76 breweries are chosen by random lottery, with a certain number representing each of eight regions of the country. The remaining 16 places go to breweries that sponsor the event. This year, supporting breweries, including Devils Backbone and New Belgium, paid $6,000; supporting partners, including Dogfish Head and Hardywood Park, paid $15,000 for better table spaces and more prominent display of their logos. Those are not sums that most small, growing breweries can afford to pay for the right to give away their beer at a festival.
If the Brewers Association wanted to make Savor one of the most exciting beer festivals in the country, it could turn the field into a mix of random draw and invitations. As much as a spot at Savor will raise the profile of a tiny brewery in the Great Lakes region, the people buying tickets for the tasting would be more interested in trying something from Minneapolis’s well-regarded Surly Brewing, which was one of the first breweries to run out of beer in 2015 but didn’t get in this year.
This is a choice that will satisfy no one: The Brewers Association has more than 3,000 brewery members and only 60 non-sponsored slots. Members can argue that the right to go to Savor — or the association’s Great American Beer Festival in Denver — is a benefit of membership. The choice is whether Savor’s organizers want to create consumer buzz, or let all participants have a chance to show off their beers.
One is good for prestige, the other is good for ticket sales.
More from Food:
Beer Column archive


The Veil, Triple Crossing and The Answer are putting Richmond on the craft beer map

Triple Crossing Brewing, which opened in 2014, has two locations in Richmond. (Triple Crossing Brewing)
When An Bui opened his Vietnamese restaurant Mekong in a Richmond strip mall in 1995, he served only wine and no beer. “There was no beer scene,” Bui says, noting that the city had a brewpub, Legend Brewing, but that was basically it.
Two years later, Mekong dumped the wine and started focusing on beer. “It was just a gut feel,” Bui says. “We started getting the Belgian stuff in, started giving free tastings to people, built it one person at a time. Eventually, we had a small beer community of supporters.”
He hosted homebrewing meetings at Mekong to get people into brewing. “If other cities can do this, why can’t Richmond have a beer scene?” Bui recalls thinking.
Today, Richmond has more than 20 breweries — including California craft behemoth Stone Brewing’s new East Coast facility and Bui’s own The Answer Brewpub — and the number keeps growing, thanks in part to a 2012 Virginia Senate bill that allows breweries to sell their beers for on-site consumption.
“There’s been an explosion of craft brewing in Richmond,” says Greg Engert, beer director for Neighborhood Restaurant Group, which owns D.C.’s ChurchKey. “The three brewers from Richmond that I think are unbelievable and really just extraordinarily exceptional [are] The Veil, The Answer and Triple Crossing.”
If you’re a craft beer fan in D.C., you’ve had the opportunity to try all three — Engert often pours their brews from his taps — but since beer tastes better from the source, here’s a guide to three of Richmond’s best breweries.
Triple Crossing Brewing opened a second location in Richmond’s Fulton neighborhood in December. (Quentin Penn-Hollar)
Triple Crossing Brewing
Triple Crossing
Shortly after, Scott Jones, who grew up in Richmond with Worcester, called to tell him about his new kegerator. Jones had dreamed of opening a bar, so Worcester invited Jones to get drinks with him and Wirtes. All three were into the Northeast style of super-hoppy, juicy, hazy beers. “At the time, that scene wasn’t here in Richmond so we felt we’d be doing something new,” Worcester says.
Triple Crossing Brewing’s flagship IPA Falcon Smash was inspired by “Super Smash Bros.” and Nintendo 64. (Ellen Collier/Express)
In April 2014, the trio opened Triple Crossing Brewing in a small space in downtown Richmond. Last December, Triple Crossing expanded to add a much larger brewhouse in the city’s Fulton neighborhood, about a mile from Stone Brewing’s new space. (The two breweries recently teamed up on a double IPA called Fulton Rising — a nod to the developing area they share.)
“[The downtown location] allowed us to start off real small, test out these recipes, see how we felt they did and how people responded to them,” Worcester says.
Triple Crossing began canning beers using a mobile canner last fall, starting with flagship IPA Falcon Smash (the name is a “Super Smash Bros.” reference, and the label notes that the beer pairs well with Nintendo 64) and the Radiohead-inspired pale ale Paranoid Aledroid. (A rotating roster of cans is available in Fulton every other Friday.)
Though Wirtes brews a variety of styles, hoppy beers — especially low-alcohol session ales — remain Triple Crossing’s specialty.
“We like to do the beers people want to sit down and drink more than one of,” Worcester says, citing their hoppy golden ale, pilsner and English bitter. “We do have the hop bombs — those are our favorites — but we also want to have stuff for people who are not into that style.”
The next frontier for Triple Crossing is sours, like Waxing Poetic, a tart and fruity Berliner weisse.
“It’s a passion project for us,” Jones says. “There’s so many ways it can go.”
Every Tuesday, customers line up to purchase cans of beer at The Veil. (The Veil Brewing Co.)
The Veil Brewing Co.
The Veil Brewing Co.
“I make the beers that I prefer to drink,” he says, “and I cross my fingers that everybody else likes them too.”
When The Veil first opened its doors last April, customers were already waiting in line to buy cans. These days, there’s still a line that stretches dozens (and dozens) of people deep for every Tuesday can release.
The Veil’s flagship double IPA Crucial Taunt is soft, juicy and hazy. (Ellen Collier/Express)
“It’s fun, it’s bewildering, it’s humbling,” says co-owner Dave Michelow, who handles the business side with co-owner Dustin Durrance. Michelow credits the hype behind Tarpey’s beer — most often soft, juicy and hazy IPAs and double IPAs like Master Shredder and Crucial Taunt — for the constant lines. Fans trade Veil beers across the country, and ratebeer.com recently ranked it the No. 3 new brewery in the world.
Though Tarpey previously worked at acclaimed Vermont breweries Hill Farmstead and The Alchemist (and interned at Belgium’s iconic Cantillon), this is his first head brewing job. Tarpey used to sing in metal bands and only got into brewing on a lark when he started volunteering at O’Connor Brewing in Norfolk, Va.
Tarpey recalls his thought process at the time: “I like beer, I don’t know much about brewing, it seems like it would be cool if I volunteered — maybe I’ll get some free beer out of it. Once I was there, I fell in love.”
Walk into The Veil on a random day and there’s a chance you may see only IPAs (though of the 120 or so beers The Veil has brewed in its first year, there have been plenty of sours and stouts — including one, Hornswoggler, that they sometimes brew with Oreo-style cookies).
“For us, it’s important to create a beer that is flavorful, aromatic, complex, has tons of hop character but is also approachable,” Tarpey says. “We try to cut back on the bitterness as much as possible because there’s a lot of people when they think hoppy beer or IPA, they think bitter. They don’t think this beer is going to taste like a blend of orange juice and grapefruit juice.”
The Answer Brewpub pours a rotating stable of house beers alongside a robust list of guest taps. (The Answer Brewpub)
The Answer Brewpub
If Richmond craft beer has a forefather, it’s An Bui. By the time he opened The Answer in 2014, his restaurant Mekong was already known as Richmond’s best craft beer bar.
Opening a brewery “was never my thinking,” Bui says, but a space opened up a few doors down from Mekong and he thought, “maybe it’s the time.”
He was driven by the prospect of drinking fresh hoppy beers. “When beer is delivered, it’s 2 to 3 weeks old by the time it gets to us,” Bui says. “How great would it be to taste fresh beer off the tank?”
An Bui owns two of Richmond’s best beer spots: Mekong and The Answer. (The Answer Brewpub)
So he founded The Answer, a small, bare-bones brewpub with 50-plus taps, a rotating series of beers from head brewer Brandon Tolbert, a stage for live music and a small menu of Vietnamese food.
“We make a lot of IPA,” where freshness is paramount, Bui says. “Then we have some fruity [sour] beer [and] we have some stout where we play with adjuncts.”
The Answer developed a process called The Andall, similar to Dogfish Head’s Randall, that involves infusing beers with ingredients like coffee, peanut butter cups, chilies and fruit, resulting in big, bold flavors.
Beers are available to-go in growlers or crowlers (32-ounce cans of fresh draft beer); Bui doesn’t anticipate producing enough beer to start canning or bottling anytime soon.
“I’m just trying to enjoy the moment that we have here,” Bui says. “So many breweries, so many awesome beers. The beer crowds in town are more educated and have more options to pick. It’s incredible.”
Read more about beer:
These exemplary craft beer bars keep their menus short and sweet
The secret to building the perfect draft beer list
A new beer from Atlas Brew Works, DC Brau and REI supports local bike trails


Savor week: Beer events for Thursday, May 8

Tonight is the biggest night of Savor week, with two dozen tastings, tappings and events on the official Savor calendar. It's a really difficult task to trim the list down to a few essentials, but here are the ones where we'd spend our money. One of the few Savor events to come to Virginia finds 20 beers from Richmond's Hardywood Park and Tampa's Cigar City Brewing Company at Rustico's Ballston tonight. (Photo by Evy Mages/For The Washington Post) Sister bars Twenty taps at Ballston's Rustico are being turned over to Richmond's Hardywood Park and Tampa's Cigar City breweries today. Hardywood is an up-and-coming brewery known for Belgian-style ales with funky aging techniques; Cigar City has a cult following for its IPAs, farmhouse saisons and imperial stouts. Cigar City beers are rare in these parts, which makes a chance to drink the Double Barrel Aged Hunahpu (an imperial stout with a perfect rating on Beer Advocate) and Jai Alai IPA a good reason to go to Ballston, beginning at 4 p.m. Click to see the beer menu. Jim Koch, the founder of Sam Adams, hosts a party at Jack Rose dedicated to the 30th anniversary of America's largest craft brewery. Twenty Sam Adams beers will be on tap (and $5 from 6 to 9 p.m.), and everyone who buys a beer can partake of a free clambake from 6 to 8. Minnesota's Surly Brewing Company has lots of fans, thanks to beers like the dry, hoppy Overrated West Coast Style IPA and the amazing Furious IPA. They'll pour 13 beers at ChurchKey tonight, including Schadenfreude Dunkel and Pentagram wild ale, and casks of Furious and Blakkr, a dark ale, beginning at 4 p.m. You might want to go on the early side: A Surly event at Pizzeria Paradiso during last year's Craft Brewers Conference ran out of beer pretty fast. One of the best brewery-vs-brewery events returns to Birreria Paradiso in Georgetown tonight: Washington vs. Washington. Eight taps will be devoted to beers from Washington State's Elysian, NoLi, Reuben’s Brew and Sound Brewery, while eight more will go to D.C.'s own DC Brau, Atlas and 3 Stars.


The Savor craft beer festival returns to D.C. in June, and tickets go on sale next week

The Savor craft beer festival brought 76 craft breweries to the National Building Museum in May 2014. (Photo by Eddie Arrossi/Courtesy of Savor) Savor, one of the country's biggest craft beer events, will return to the National Building Museum the weekend of June 5-6. This is later than usual for Savor, which is usually held in May, but the beer lovers who travel from around the country probably won't care. Seventy-four "small and independent craft breweries" each bring two of their beers to Washington for the party, where they're paired with hors d'oeuvres for unlimited sampling. For aficionados, this is a chance to try beers that don't usually make it to Washington -- when was the last time you saw a bar with Short's (Michigan) or Surly (Minnesota) bar on tap? -- and an opportunity to meet and greet the rock stars of the beer world. [Beer Madness 2015: Vote for your favorite craft beers in the Sweet 16] Tickets go on sale to the general public through Ticketmaster March 25 at noon, and purchasers are limited to two tickets per night. Prices are the same as last year: $135 for general admission, and $155 if you want to attend one of the popular educational salons. The salon schedule hasn't been announced yet, but last year's sessions included Sam Adams founder Jim Koch discussing the brewery's barrel-aging program and offering rare samples; the brewers of Stone, Green Flash and Coronado talking about San Diego beer culture and sharing West Coast IPAs; and the founders of Dogfish Head and Left Hand demonstrating how drinking proper glassware enhances the flavor of beer. If you're trying to get tickets, you need be online as close to noon as possible: Tickets generally sell out within half an hour. (There's a Tuesday pre-sale open only to the American Homebrewers Association, so ask any homebrewing friends if they're members.) And if dropping $135 for one night sounds like too much money, you don't need to go to Savor to sample rare and wonderful beers: Many of the breweries hold tasting events and meet-and-greets at D.C. beer bars in the days before the festival. (Here are a few of the highlights from Savor Week 2014.)

The Savor craft beer festival brought 76 craft breweries to the National Building Museum in May 2014. (Photo by Eddie Arrossi/Courtesy of Savor) Savor, one of the country's biggest craft beer events, will return to the National Building Museum the weekend of June 5-6. This is later than usual for Savor, which is usually held in May, but the beer lovers who travel from around the country probably won't care. [Beer Madness 2015: Vote for your favorite craft beers in the Sweet 16] If you're trying to get tickets, you need be online as close to noon as possible: Tickets generally sell out within half an hour. (There's a Tuesday pre-sale open only to the American Homebrewers Association, so ask any homebrewing friends if they're members.)


One of the most important names in D.C. brewing is back, with help from DC Brau

Heurich's Lager makes its debut at a fundraiser at the Heurich House on March 24, and will be sold at DC Brau's brewery after that. (Photo courtesy of DC Brau)
For the first time in more than six decades, cans of beer from the Christian Heurich Brewing Company are returning to Washington, thanks to DC Brau, the Heurich House Museum and some dedicated beer historians.
Heurich was the largest brewer in Washington in the early part of the 20th century. The German immigrant opened his first brewery in 1873, and the Christian Heurich Brewing Company closed its giant Foggy Bottom facility in 1956. (Heurich himself died in 1945 at the age of 102.) We might wonder what the beer tasted like, but Heurich House Executive Director Kim Bender says a series of fires at the brewery destroyed most of its archives, including the recipes.
That misfortune didn't dissuade homebrewers Mike Stein, Joshua Hubner and Pete Jones, who reverse-engineered a version of Heurich's Lager Beer in 2013 after looking at the brewery's invoices for raw ingredients, researching Heurich's taste in beer, and making educated guesses about the recipe given the limitations of the day. They made a presentation about the beer to the staff of the Heurich House, who decided to have a 1,000-gallon batch made at DC Brau, with a recipe refined by head brewer Jeff Hancock. He decided to use Bavarian yeast and added both flaked rice and flaked maize to the body. "It's a fun little hybrid between pre- and post-Prohibition lagers," Hancock explains.
DC Brau released Heurich's Lager on draft during the 2013 DC Beer Week, selling it at the brewery and special events. Earlier this year, Hancock asked the Heurich House whether his brewery could brew the lager again – and, this time, release it in cans. "We enjoyed it so much the first time around," Hancock says, but the problem was that lagers sit in fermentation tanks for weeks longer than ales, which would tie up much needed production space. However, DC Brau has been steadily ramping up its capacity – Hancock says they're on track to brew close to 19,000 barrels of beer this year – which means that the lager could ferment "in tanks without holding up any of our other beers."
The can is based on a 1930s label from the Heurich House archive, but designed by artist Graham Jackson, who also did DC Brau's Solar Eclipse and Smells Like Freedom cans. "The cool thing about this is that it says it was brewed for the Christian Heurich Brewing Company by DC Brau," explains Heurich House's Bender. "We're bringing back the name."
The Heurich House, one of the best-preserved Victorian homes in America, frequently uses beer as a way to reach out to the public, whether it's at the monthly History and Hops gatherings, which bring beer lovers to the mansion for meet-and-greets and tastings with local brewers, or the annual Oktoberfest held in the house's garden. "Anything we can do to educate people about who Christian Heurich was, and his importance to this city, we're going to do that," Bender says. "The history of the beer and the existence of the historic beers are really important to us. We're trying to make history interesting to people, more than just walking through a museum as someone talks at you. [Heurich's Lager] is living history."
[History and Hops: History collides with local beer at the Brewmaster’s Castle]
The official release of the beer is during a 1916-themed party at the Heurich House on Thursday, March 24, which features live jazz, hors d'oeuvres and DC Brau brews. Tickets are $100, which benefits the museum; a $150 VIP ticket includes an hour-long private tasting with the brewers.
After the party, DC Brau will sell Heurich's Lager at the brewery in cans and growlers during its regular public hours. Hancock says there will be around 150 cases of cans, but "It is by no means a large enough release to make it to all corners of the city." Translation: Try it soon, or you might be waiting for a while.
Bender says that the Heurich House, which owns the trademarks to the names of Heurich's brewery and beer, is open to collaborating with local breweries about recreating other Heurich brands in the future, such as Old Georgetown and Senate ales and Champeer Malt Liquor. "I think it will grow organically. But what's exciting about this is that the Christian Heurich Brewing Company is back."
A 1930s label for Heurich's Lager Beer. (Courtesy of the Heurich House Museum)


11 things to do in the D.C. area on the weekend of June 3-5

Welcome to the first weekend in June, D.C. To help you start the month with a bang, here are this weekend's best bets in nightlife, festivals, museums, music and much more around the Washington area. - D.C. tap takeover: The best beer events of Savor week - The Hotlist: 12 things to see, eat, drink and do in June - Garden party: 3 new beer gardens to check out More than 70 breweries from across the United States will have their beers flowing at the Savor craft beer festival this weekend at the National Building Museum. (© BREWERS ASSOCIATION) Through Sunday: [Local beer here: The definitive guide to D.C.’s best breweries] Friday-Sunday: Friday-Sunday: [It’s outdoor movie season. Here’s where to find free screenings.] Friday: PINKWASH - WALK FORWARD WITH MY EYES CLOSED (5/18/16) Friday: Awesome Con 2015 Cosplay and Overview (Washington DC) Friday-Sunday: Saturday: Saturday: "Awkward Sex ... and the City" returns to the Black Cat Saturday-Sunday: [Bound for the beach? Check out these new bars.] Sunday: Sunday: [D.C. restaurants are bracing for Metro’s earlier weekend closing]

Welcome to the first weekend in June, D.C. To help you start the month with a bang, here are this weekend's best bets in nightlife, festivals, museums, music and much more around the Washington area. More than 70 breweries from across the United States will have their beers flowing at the Savor craft beer festival this weekend at the National Building Museum. (© BREWERS ASSOCIATION) Through Sunday: [Local beer here: The definitive guide to D.C.’s best breweries] Friday-Sunday: Friday-Sunday: [It’s outdoor movie season. Here’s where to find free screenings.] Friday: PINKWASH - WALK FORWARD WITH MY EYES CLOSED (5/18/16) Friday: Awesome Con 2015 Cosplay and Overview (Washington DC) Friday-Sunday: Saturday: Saturday: "Awkward Sex ... and the City" returns to the Black Cat Saturday-Sunday: [Bound for the beach? Check out these new bars.] Sunday: Sunday: [D.C. restaurants are bracing for Metro’s earlier weekend closing]


Where’s the most relaxing place to sip a cold beer right now? At a farm.

The most relaxing places to sip a cold, refreshing beer, according to my recent research, include an Adirondack chair overlooking an old wooden barn on a family farm that dates from the 1830s and a picnic table where you can watch horses gallop through an adjacent pasture.
These settings sound so idyllic, and yet when it comes to craft breweries, they’re usually the exception, instead of the rule.
Wineries sell themselves as a back-to-nature day out, places harried city dwellers can have a glass of wine among the vines where the grapes grew. Meanwhile, most of the beer sold in America is made in factories packed with long, gleaming rows of enormous stainless steel tanks. Visit standout craft breweries around the D.C. area, and more often than not, you find yourself pulling into an industrial park.
The truth is, beer is just as much of an agricultural product as wine, made from hops, grain, water and yeast. There’s nowhere better to remind yourself of that than a farm brewery, where you can socially distance in the fresh air with a cold beverage in hand while looking over hop vines, fields and, yes, the occasional horse.
Farm breweries are a relatively recent addition to the local beer scene: Maryland created a specific license allowing farms to open breweries on their property in 2012, and Virginia passed similar legislation in 2014. Both require the use of “agricultural products” grown on the farm to be used in the beer produced there. For some farm breweries, that means wheat or barley, though most grow hops, as well as fruits and produce that add additional flavor.
There are now 14 farm breweries open in Maryland, with a dozen more in planning, while Virginia’s Alcoholic Beverage Control has issued almost three dozen farm-brewery licenses. Jim Bauckman of the Brewers Association of Maryland sees the growth of farm breweries as twofold: First, he notes, “older family farms are being passed down” to new generations of owners “looking for new ways to make, or keep, the farm profitable.” Also, he adds, the growth of agritourism has encouraged existing farms to get creative and add more amenities, such as breweries and wineries, for visiting urbanites. “The outdoor experience is very enticing to people,” Bauckman says. “People want to be outdoors, and see what’s going on in rural America. They’re looking for connections back to the land.”
If you’re looking to make that connection yourself, these farm breweries offer plenty of space. They can get busy at peak times, so some require advance reservations. Most welcome children and dogs, though they ask that kids stay at the table instead of running around. But even if you’re going solo, you’ll come away with a new appreciation for what goes into your glass, and a relaxing day spent out of the house.
If any brewery has captured the imagination of the D.C. craft beer community during the pandemic, it’s Wheatland Spring, located an hour outside downtown Washington on a picturesque 19th-century farm. The beers coming out of its tiny brewhouse include a pitch-perfect Pilsener, a Kolsch with a welcome and flinty minerality, and ales fermented with wild yeast discovered on the farm. The owners believe in using classic hops and “estate” grain grown on the farm itself.
At the same time, the vast majority of beer drinkers in the area are not going to be as obsessed as some people — including me — with the idea that Wheatland Spring’s stunning new Helles Lager, Servus, is made with a mix of local malt and Bavarian barley from a single farm near the town of Aying, Germany, which combine to create the aroma of a perfect baguette. And you know what? You don’t have to be.
The atmosphere is remarkable. Visitors enter a weathered old barn and sit at tables made from knobby trees. Canvas sails shade picnic tables and Adrirondack chairs with views of the barn, the old corn crib — now home to the brewery — and freshly harvested fields. Families sit on haybales and around a firepit. The beer consists of styles that even the most casual beer drinkers know and will happily drink in the sun: Pilsener, a citrusy witbier, a hefeweizen with balanced clove and banana notes, an IPA with spicy hops.
Owners John and Bonnie Branding were inspired by farm breweries they visited while living in Bavaria. “Our approach is what I’d imagine if I was running a small family brewery 200 years ago,” John explains. “You grow what you can on your farm, and for everything else, you expand out in concentric circles: You’d source from your neighbor’s farm, and keep moving the circle out.” Last year, Wheatland Springs produced about 40,000 pounds of wheat from the farm; in June, John says, they harvested a little over half as much barley. All of Wheatland Springs’ cans show how much malted grain came from the farm, and how much from the wider region. The beers are brewed with water from the farm’s well — one of the most important items on the Brandings’ list when they fell in love with the place. “For us, it very much is and was a passion project,” John says. “We believe there’s a lot of value in small farms.”
Wheatland Spring celebrated its first anniversary in June, but its reputation really began to grow this spring. With the number of visitors to the farm drying up, the Brandings made the decision to can more beer, and began making weekly deliveries that extended inside the Beltway, and shipping to Virginia and D.C. They’ve made the farm more comfortable, too, limiting the capacity, even though you might feel 20 feet away from the closest guests, putting a gazebo in the middle of a field, and adding contactless pickup and payment. Reservations are suggested, especially on weekend afternoons, but walk-in guests are also welcome. “We’re trying to offer a great experience on the farm but have a sense of normalcy,” John says.
38506 John Wolford Rd., Waterford, Va. wheatlandspring.com. Open Wednesday through Sunday.
You can’t talk about Waredaca without talking about horses. Portraits of them adorn each of the brewery’s canned releases, and if you linger at your picnic table on a weekend afternoon, you’re bound to see a couple in the nearby fields. Sometimes, horses come right up to the fence next to the brewery’s grassy outdoor seating area, causing a stampede of cameraphone-wielding guests. “Horses were always a very important part of our story and our history,” explains Jessica Snyder, one of the third-generation owners of the Montgomery County farm, “so we decided to make it part of the brand.”
Waredaca — short for WAshington REcreational DAy CAmp — was founded as a day camp in 1932, and has been at its present location since the 1950s. The brewery is a much more recent addition, having opened in 2015. “We wanted to diversify the existing farm operation, which is a year-round equestrian facility,” Snyder says. Even after they settled on a brewery, Snyder says the family decided against converting some pasture to produce grain: “We could grow barley at the cost of not having as many horses on the farm.” You could bet your life savings on the result of that one.
Instead, Waredaca’s brewers make use of farm-grown hops and adjuncts, or products that flavor the beer: Lemon verbena is used in the flagship IPA, Thai basil adds enticing aroma to the White Flag witbier, and local strawberries and blackberries find their way into tart goses. The bold, hoppy Sampson double IPA gets its rich body thanks to Waredaca’s apiaries. (“Honeybees are terribly high maintenance, but they’ve been really good the last couple of years,” Snyder says.)
Waredaca has always been a place to linger outside over beers, especially if you score a table with a view of the pond and horse pasture. Despite everything going on in the world, it now feels more relaxing than ever. The number of outdoor seats has more than doubled since the coronavirus pandemic began, but the brewery says that its mix of picnic tables and Adirondack chairs are closer to 12 feet apart than the mandated six feet. Reservations are required, and can be made through Open Table for a two-hour period. Ordering from the table is a breeze, using flags to get the servers’ attention, and food is available from an on-site food truck, though you can also bring your own.
4017 Damascus Rd., Laytonsville, Md. waredacabrewing.com. Open Thursday through Sunday.
Pulling into Thanksgiving Farms in Frederick County can be a disconcerting experience: It’s a sprawling garden center with rows of potted perennials, ornamental shrubs and greenhouses, all featuring plants and fruit grown on a 56-acre family farm, as well as a market selling supplies and produce. But, at the farthest end of the building from the parking lot, there’s a taproom, making this the perfect destination for your lawncare-related weekend errands. “As far as we know, we are the only garden center and produce farm with a brewery in the United States,” says Mad Science founder Brian Roberts.
Mad Science opened to the public in 2015, but Roberts had started home-brewing a decade earlier, after his wife Louisa — part of the family that owns Thanksgiving Farms — “told me I needed to get a hobby,” he says. (Roberts, an Army veteran, is a scientist who works with vaccines and drug development during the week.) He began planting hops on the farm, and jokes that it took “two years of convincing my mother-in-law that she needed to add beer as another revenue stream to the business.”
Around 300 hop plants grow on a quarter-acre plot, but you won’t find tanks or brewing equipment on-site: Roberts brews the beers at Antietam Brewery in Hagerstown, where they’re also kegged and canned. The arrangement has been especially beneficial during the pandemic, allowing Mad Science to have a steady stream of cans for to-go sales. If all goes well, Roberts hopes to build out a brewery at the farm in the next five years.
Roberts is an unabashed hophead, using a wide variety of hops, including Nugget, Cascade and Columbus, to create punchy IPAs. The Agent Orange is a standout: a hazy IPA with pine, citrus and candied orange flavors, thanks to the addition of sweet orange peel, and caramel malt providing a sturdy backbone. Human Harvester, brewed with fresh hops, is malty and resinous, with a lingering bitter grapefruit note. Beyond the hops, look for Helles Belles, a lighter lager that Roberts regularly infuses with blackberries, peaches and other fresh fruit from the farm as a taproom exclusive, or the Prion Porter, a delightfully roasty dark beer with six kinds of malt.
Mad Science’s outdoor seating is attractive and pleasant, surrounded by lush shrubs and trees, and some of the shaded tables have views of the fields across the road which, according to a historic marker on the property, look much the way they did when soldiers camped there during the Civil War. Local food trucks serve lunch on weekends. There’s a playground out back for younger visitors, who can also meet brewery dog Sinnamon and the garden center’s chatty parrot, Chico. When you do leave, don’t be surprised if you find yourself carrying potted plants back to the car along with a four-pack of beer.
1619 Buckeystown Pike, Adamstown, Md. madsciencebrewing.com. Open Saturday and Sunday.
Manor Hill is probably the most familiar farm brewery for Washington-area beer lovers, as cans of its juicy IPA and dry, quaffable Grisette farmhouse ale are found in bars and liquor stores in D.C. and Delaware, as well as across the Free State. The farm that Randy and Mary Marriner initially envisioned as a way to supply food to their Victoria Gastro Pub in Columbia has become so much more than when it opened in 2015.
You can’t forget that Manor Hill is a farm and brewery: The dramatically long one-lane driveway rolls past fields on either side, and every car turning into the parking lot passes rows of trellises covered with climbing green hops. And yet, when you actually settle down at the Howard County brewery, most of the tables are arranged in the middle of a parking lot right outside the tasting room, as if you were at a suburban restaurant in the midst of Phase 2 of the coronavirus reopening.
The tables are well spaced, but the seating area is loud and lacking atmosphere. The best spots are farther away: Walk past the resident food truck, and you’ll find a path leading toward a grassy area with umbrella-shaded picnic tables. (Veterans know they’re allowed to bring their own chairs and blankets to spread out in the grass, in case all the seats are taken.) Just be warned that capacity is limited, and no reservations are taken. If the farm fills up, as it regularly does, you’ll be given the option of either coming back later or purchasing cans of beer to enjoy at home.
On a recent visit, most of the taps were filled with “limited release” beers, including Jousting Windmills: Fruity Peppers, a thick, smoothie-like fruited sour that balances the sweetness of citrus with Trinidad Scorpion peppers; Ginger, a well-balanced tropical New England IPA; and the just-released Festbier, a bready, traditional Vienna lager. Flights are no longer available, but it’s hard to complain when 12 of the 14 drafts are $6.
When I first wrote about Manor Hill for The Post in 2015, the Marriners weren’t planning a tasting room at the brewery, preferring customers to go to Victoria instead. I’m glad they changed their minds and opened the farm to all.
4411 Manor Lane, Ellicott City, Md. manorhillbrewing.com. Open Friday and Saturday.
One of the pioneers of Virginia’s farm brewing movement, Old 690 opened a few months after Virginia legalized farm brewing in 2014. They already had more than 300 hop plants in the ground, and plans to grow more fruit.
You can still see the hop vines and an expanded garden on the 10-acre farm, near the converted barn that serves as a welcoming, no-frills taproom. The choice seats are on the shady veranda, the wide, flagstone covered patio that holds both umbrella-covered tables and a firepit, and a wide green lawn where kids run and play while parents chat and look on from nearby tables.
The menu at Old 690 attempts to cover all the bases: hazy IPA, tangerine hard seltzer, a milk stout brewed with Lucky Charms, a resiny pale ale. The standout drinks made the most of fruit, including a sour ale with pineapple, passion fruit and peach that looked like a beach drink and tasted closer to a piña colada, and a mellow Margarita Gose spiked with blackberries and lime. A strawberry blonde ale sounded like a throwback to the microbrews of the new millennium but smelled like freshly picked berries and had a soft, sweet flavor that avoided being too cloying. (Speaking of retro drinks, there’s a Raspberry Wheat ale, too.)
If you move in craft beer circles, Old 690 is not a name you might not have heard for a while. But sitting on that patio on a Sunday afternoon, sipping on fruited beers and chatting without having to talk over piped-in music, was a relaxing escape from some of Loudoun County’s more hyped breweries, and a pleasant detour from the real world.
15670 Ashbury Church Rd., Purcellville, Va. old690.com. Open Friday through Sunday.
You might not expect to find a farm brewery at the top of a mountain. At Bear Chase, the awe-inspiring view down into the rolling hills and fields of the Loudoun Valley is all most people are thinking about after grabbing a beer from the taproom or the numerous satellite bars and sinking into a comfortable Adirondack chair, kicking back to enjoy the breeze and kill a lazy summer afternoon.
And yet Bear Chase is a farm brewery, albeit one that doesn’t play up that it grows hops, cucumbers and squash to put in its beers, and even the strawberries and other fruit for its Bear Claws line of canned hard seltzers. (They, like other Bear Chase products, are only found at the brewery, so you’ll have to purchase six-packs to share with friends who love Claws-related products.)
I confess: I completely forgot about the farm products, until one of the taproom staff told me they were located down the hill, below the sloping lawn. That makes sense, as you wouldn’t want anything to get in the way of the view.
Bear Chase’s beers are handled by Charles Noll, whose extensive résumé includes Franklins Brewery in Hyattsville as well as Harpoon Brewery in Massachusetts. After only a year in operation, Bear Chase’s Oktoberfest won the gold medal in the Marzen category at the 2019 Great American Beer Festival. That’s something to consider when you’re looking for a place to spend a day outside with beers and a view of the changing leaves in the coming months, and especially if you want to do it with acres of space for kids, dogs and family to gather.
33665 Bear Chase Lane, Bluemont, Va. bearchasebrew.com. Open daily.


Pint by pint, Maryland’s sustainable breweries support local communities

The journey from farm to tap Old-fashioned flavors on a working farm An eco-friendly outpost on the Eastern Shore Learn more about taking a summer beer-cation

Walk into any bar or bottle shop across America these days and the healthy selection of local craft beer is evidence that the artisanal food movement has reached the tap. Now, a new wave of sustainable microbreweries are showing that craft beer can be environmentally friendly as well. Some of those microbreweries are in Maryland, scattered throughout the rolling farmlands of the Piedmont plateau and the Eastern Shore. With fertile acreage for barley, oats and hops—plus a rich history of communitarian values—it’s easy to see why.
“Sustainable brewing supports local jobs and local farmers,” said Lisa Challenger, director of Worcester County Tourism. “A large portion of every sale of local craft beer stays in the community, so it’s big business for small towns.”
D.C.-area residents know rural Maryland well from summertime shore visits and autumnal hiking expeditions, but the burgeoning beer scene offers a reason to visit year round. FeBREWary—Maryland’s month-long celebration of local craft beer—provides an up-close opportunity to see how these sustainable local brewers are taking the importance of community to heart.
The journey from farm to tap
Less than 10 miles inland from the Ocean City boardwalk, the area around Berlin, Md., is replete with farms and steeped in old-school agricultural traditions. That made sustainability an easy call for Bryan Brushmiller, owner of Burley Oak Brewing Company in Worcester County. “Being a sustainable brewery in this town is just doing what we do here,” Brushmiller said. “We utilize local ingredients because the products are just better, and it helps your neighbor.”
After Brushmiller was laid off from his job in 2009, he took up homebrewing and soon encountered an opportunity: What to do with the spent grain left over from the brewing process? Rather than see it go to waste, he decided to feed it to his chickens. “Even back then,” he said, “my thoughts were, ‘How do I utilize my byproducts? How do I not waste anything?’”
Two years later, a local farmer and soil scientist named Brooks Clayville proposed working with Brushmiller to grow and harvest a barley that would be well-suited to the local climate and could be malted for brewing. After lots of trial and error, they found the perfect strain—a pale barley that forms the basis for Burley Oak’s Homegrown Session IPA, one of approximately 450 beers the brewery has produced since 2011. Burley Oak has no flagship beer, instead taking advantage of close relationships with farmers and a new 3,000-square-foot “Funk Factory” to continually concoct fresh experimentations (they were years ahead of the sour beer trend). Visitors sample a rotating selection at the lively on-site taproom, set in an all-wood 19th century cooperage, and can enjoy local live music, art unveilings and other events on a regular basis.
The spent grain from all that experimentation? It goes to farmers as feed. That local-first mindset can yield pleasant opportunities, like the time a farmer brought over a large batch of blueberry blossom honey for Burley Oak to brew with. “That epitomizes what we do,” Brushmiller said. “We can support a local farmer, make something distinctive, and it will be a quality beer because it’s local and fresh.”
Old-fashioned flavors on a working farm
“I had farming in my blood,” said Tom Barse, proprietor of Mount Airy’s Milkhouse Brewery at Stillpoint Farm, which he operates alongside his wife, Carolann McConaughy. Barse’s grandparents grew up on tobacco and sheep farms on the St. Mary’s Peninsula in Maryland and in County Galway, Ireland, and his parents bought farmland in Preston County, W.Va.
After Barse took a detour to law school, he and McConaughy purchased the verdant 47-acre Stillpoint Farm. They devised a multifaceted, sustainable agricultural operation on a small scale, raising a rare breed of sheep, harvesting high-quality horse hay, keeping bees, and brewing beer—a passion Barse had pursued as a homebrewer since 1972.
Barse calls Milkhouse an “old-fashioned” brewery, which means you won’t find any double chocolate habanero stouts on tap. “We make plain beers with local ingredients so that you can taste what those ingredients are all about,” he said. The Cascade and Chinook hops used in many of Milkhouse’s beers are grown in Stillpoint’s hopyard, and Barse sources most of the other grains, fruits, herbs and honey from local farmers. He ferments wild yeast in the farm’s old milking parlor, and he is working with a local maltster to create new regional flavors.
Visitors can try Barse’s “all Maryland” beers in the brewery’s tasting room, before or after touring the farm. “By our customers seeing that working farms are still very much alive in our area, we can continue to educate people on the importance of agriculture in our day-to-day lives and brews,” said Sarah Healey, Milkhouse’s general manager.
Barse’s law degree came in handy in 2012, when he was instrumental in passing Maryland’s farm brewery law, which created a license that permits the on-site consumption of any beer made with an agricultural product from the farm. It has transformed small farm breweries into destinations for locals and tourists, and it has helped bootstrapped operations become self-sustaining. Milkhouse was the first brewery to receive the new license; Barse estimates that on a pleasant Saturday in June, as many as 200 people will come by to sip on brews like the Dollyhyde Farmhouse Ale (refreshing, with a touch of spice) and the Homestead Hefeweizen (malty, with mild banana notes). During FeBREWary, Milkhouse will debut the City Slicker Sour Farmhouse, a collaboration with Olde Mother Brewing that utilizes an experimental grain from the University of Maryland Agriculture Extension office.
An eco-friendly outpost on the Eastern Shore
Education is central to the mission of many sustainable breweries in Maryland, a calling that Jason and Beth Hearn—the founders of Tall Tales Brewing Company in Parsonsburg—take seriously. “We want to ensure that when people visit, they know where their fresh ingredients come from,” Jason Hearn said. “It’s part of their community, and it helps us be responsible as a business and as neighbors.”
Tall Tales came about when the Hearnses were looking to reutilize the headquarters of their landscaping business, a skill set that proved handy for the eco-friendly construction of the brewery: Large windows save on heating and air, while rain gardens conserve water.
The Hearnses wanted to make exceptional beer (and food) in an ecologically responsible way. They began sending residual yeast and grains to hog and cattle farmers. They developed a sophisticated water reuse system that allows them to recycle all of the brewery’s wastewater and rainwater catchment back into the crops on site. And they installed a state-of-the-art brewing system and commercial kitchen, which cranks out brick-oven pizzas to pair with mythically named beers like Sasquatch Imperial Stout and Paul Bunyan Belgian Strong Ale.
Tall Tales wants to serve as an example for other small breweries in the area, proving that it’s possible to make great beer, be environmentally responsible, and turn a profit. They host live music most Fridays and Saturdays, as well as group functions, charity events and even weddings. For FeBREWary, they participated in the Love on Tap Shore Craft Beer Fest, alongside other local breweries.
“We view ourselves as an important part of the community,” Beth Hearn said. “When they come here, our neighbors know that we’re trying to take care of the environment—not just for us, but for years to come.”
Learn more about taking a summer beer-cation


Find information on homebrewing beer and its increasing popularity.

Welcome to a Beer Town

After this week, D.C.’s reputation will never be the same. When the 2013 Craft Brewers Conference comes to an end today, nobody will blink if you call us a beer town.
In just a few years, the nation’s capital has gone from having no breweries and a humble scene to having one of the most distinctive beer cultures in the country.
After the Heurich Brewery closed in 1956, making way for the Kennedy Center, there hadn’t been a brewery in the district until 2011, when DC Brau opened its doors at 3178 Bladensburg Road NE. Now there are three within the city’s limits, and two more are in the works. Since 2008, at least 11 have opened if you include certain suburbs.
The Brewers Association’s annual gathering is the Super Bowl of craft beer — a product that comes from traditional, independent breweries of a certain size. The event brings together brewers, distributors, retailers, enthusiasts and professionals of all sorts. But it isn’t held just anywhere.
“I’ve always seen CBC go down somewhere else, or read about it,” said Drew Swift, the general manager at Meridian Pint in Columbia Heights. “For us to be chosen means that people are finally recognizing the scene and giving it some respect.”
That respect is not easy to come by, especially from veteran West Coasters. “Coming from Seattle, you get quite a few eclectic styles,” said beer enthusiast Dalona Foster while visiting the soon-to-open Bluejacket brewery near Nationals Park. But “each brewery [here] has their own unique twist to offer … I’m pretty impressed.”
Many see the recent growth as just the beginning.
“It’s no accident that we chose D.C. to start our brewery up,” said Will Durgin, who formerly worked for Oregon’s Pyramid Brewery and is now the head brewer at Atlas Brew Works, which aims to open this year at 2052 West Virginia Ave. NE. “The potential here is absolutely gigantic.”
Though Baltimore and Philadelphia have traditionally been considered the front-runners as beer cities in the mid-Atlantic, the Washington area has arrived to the scene.
“It used to be that we were very much a little brother to Philly,” said Sam Fitz, the beer director at Meridian Pint. There is an argument that we’ve surpassed them as “one of, if not [the], premier East Coast beer scenes,” he said. “I can’t think of a bar that’s opened in the past two years that hasn’t opened with craft beer.”
But what makes a good beer town? It’s not just the beer. Or the breweries. What makes D.C. unique is the melange of tastes and the transcendent interest in craft beer.
“What I’m consistently impressed by is how it’s not just the beer geeks that are into the beer anymore,” said Greg Engert, beer director for the Neighborhood Restaurant Group. “It’s everybody.”
D.C. resident Irina King happily enjoyed a New Belgium Rampant Imperial IPA at Smith Commons on Tuesday during its Masters of the Craft Beer Universe event series. “It’s amazing,” she said. “In New York, in Charleston, in the South, it’s nothing like here. People love beer here. And they appreciate the fact that it’s from D.C., it’s homegrown. It’s not a fad.”
Dan Kopman, co-founder of Schlafly Beer and a lobbyist for the Brewers Association, summed up why D.C. is a unique beer experience: There is an international community that demands imports and there are people from around the country who are interested in their hometown or regional beers. “You overlay that with new breweries starting up here in the District and it just creates this synergy of international, national, [and] local,” Kopman said on the floor of the trade show Wednesday. “You won’t get that in other cities.”
Besides the size of the venue, the decision to bring this year’s Craft Brewers Conference to D.C. was also policy-related. On Tuesday, more than 200 brewery owners, CEOs and employees lobbied on Capitol Hill to gain support for new federal excise tax legislation. “The decision to come here first started getting momentum in 2009,” said Bob Pease, chief operating officer of the Brewers Association. “The vision at that time was that we would come here and we would have hundreds of our members engage in some type of advocacy effort [and] that Washington would blossom into a great craft beer community … Much of that has come to fruition.”


Five myths about beer

Different varietals of a precious elixir. (Valentyn Volkov / iStock)

Summer for Americans is a time of backyard barbecues, baseball and beer. Memorial Day weekend is a perfect chance to sit outside with the season’s first sixer, and the varieties of beer you can pick up at the local grocer have multiplied. “This is a golden age for beer lovers,” as The Washington Post reported in 2016. Yet the sheer number of options could confuse even the most enthusiastic consumer. No wonder myths about beer’s past and present abound. Here are five.
Myth No. 1
American beer is a product of the Midwest.
Beer calls to mind the great cities of the American heartland, where 19th-century workers slaughtered pork, processed grain and brewed. They created iconic brands with staying power, such as Anheuser-Busch, Miller, Pabst and Schlitz . For several months last year, St. Louis’s Anheuser-Busch even renamed Budweiser “America,” making the country’s most-consumed beer brand synonymous with the nation itself. Budweiser is “an icon of core American values like optimism and celebration,” its makers tout.
Yet American beer has a much longer and more geographically diverse history. Archaeological evidence indicates that indigenous peoples in North and South America produced fermented beverages from corn, fruits and other plants long before Europeans arrived. The continent’s first commercial brewery opened in what’s now Manhattan in 1612. Barrels of English ale supplied hydration and nutrition to the Pilgrims as they sailed west in 1620. In the late 1700s, hops grew at George Washington’s Mount Vernon. When Gold Rush hopefuls and railroad builders looked west in the 1800s, German immigrants brewed for them in New Orleans, Denver and San Francisco. As the nation grew, beer went with it.
But when Prohibition began in 1920, it shuttered American breweries. Only a few big producers, most in the Midwest (plus Colorado’s Coors), survived. Their size allowed them to adapt, redirecting factories and refrigerated trucks toward the production of soft drinks, ice cream and even ceramics during years when they couldn’t brew. They would come to dominate the market and shape Americans’ palates. In these ways, ties between the Midwest and American beer are products of a more recent past.
Myth No. 2
Beer is a man’s drink.
In 19th-century America, men brewed in modernizing factories and drank in rowdy saloons, becoming the public face of beer production and consumption. In print and on TV, 20th-century ads broadcast beer’s masculine image to a wide audience. By 2016, 74 percent of American men drank beer each week, whereas only 26 percent of women did.
Nevertheless, history shows that beer has always been a woman’s drink, too. In colonial and early republic America, women and enslaved people brewed beer as a domestic task. Martha Ballard, a Maine midwife, wrote in her diary on May 18, 1786: “A Clear day. we Brewd a barll & ½ Beer.” Nineteenth-century women, especially widows, operated boarding houses where they served beer and food to travelers. And, as women entered wage-earning jobs at the turn of the 20th century, they, too, came to patronize urban saloons. Soon, however, advertisers’ nearly exclusive focus on male drinkers reduced its popularity among women. Petite bottles, low-calorie styles and Miller’s declaration that it was the “champagne” of beers sought to bring women back into the fold. Yet their consumption never equaled men’s.
Contemporary beer culture offers a slowly changing story. In 1983, the American Homebrewers Association tapped a woman, Nancy Vineyard, as its Homebrewer of the Year (a feat not repeated until 2013). Since 2008, the Pink Boots Society, a charitable organization with 50 chapters in 10 countries, has awarded educational scholarships to women in the industry. An increasing number of women are studying brewing and founding breweries.
American women’s relationship to beer has been equally, if not more, long-lasting than men’s ties to the drink. It has just been more likely to occur out of the public eye.
Myth No. 3
Craft breweries are small breweries.
What is craft beer? The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as “a beer made in a traditional or non-mechanized way by a small brewery.” Merriam-Webster says it’s “a specialty beer produced in limited quantities.” Similarly, the Brewers Association (BA), the not-for-profit trade association that promotes craft beer, designates a craft brewery as “small, independent and traditional.” Size seems key. Yet the BA also considers eight of the 15 largest beer companies in America to be “craft.” What’s going on?
According to the BA’s definition, a craft brewer produces 6 million or fewer barrels of beer every year. Six million sounds like a lot, especially in contrast to early micro-breweries that typically made a few thousand barrels, at most. Yet despite the success of big craft companies such as Yuengling, Boston Beer and Sierra Nevada, their sales volume counts for a drop, or a few, in the proverbial bucket. According to the BA’s math, even the largest craft brewer produces no more than 3 percent of the volume of beer sold to Americans in a year. In 2016, craft beer counted for 12 percent of the total American beer market, by volume. The takeaway is not that some craft breweries are very small and others less small, but that companies on top of the beer market — Anheuser-Busch, MillerCoors and Pabst — are extremely, gigantically big.
Ask consumers to define craft beer, and they’ll name a variety of factors other than size that appeal to them. The brewers often concoct new styles that let drinkers experiment; they run taprooms where customers can relax with their friends and neighbors; they build ties to their local communities. Some craft breweries are active in philanthropy, others emphasize environmental sustainability, still others employ innovative management practices such as employee stock ownership plans, and many pursue collegial, collaborative ties with other breweries. Market share, ultimately, is the wrong way to define a beer.
Myth No. 4
Craft beer is a recent invention.
The explosive pace of brewery openings and eclectic new offerings could convince anyone that craft beer is a 21st-century innovation. Between 2006 and 2016, the number of American breweries, most of them craft, leapt from 1,460 to 5,301, exceeding the pre-Prohibition total. As of early 2017, two new American breweries were opening each day. Craft beer’s surge fits with consumers’ enthusiasm for artisan foods and the inclination to “revitalize” formerly industrial neighborhoods across the nation.
Yet American craft beer is much older than that nanobrewery down the block. Loose collectives of home brewers began to tinker in West Coast basements in the 1960s and early 1970s, when home brewing was still illegal. Bored by light lagers, they found inspiration in English, Belgian and German styles during military or educational travels abroad. Motivation came, too, from the California wine industry, Fritz Maytag’s reborn Anchor Brewing Company in San Francisco (1965) and Jack McAuliffe’s New Albion Brewing Company in Sonoma County, Calif. (1976). Brewing-science classes at the University of California at Davis trained people who would transition from home brewing to professional, starting a craft beer revolution.
Early craft brewers elbowed their way into a market dominated by big beer. They changed consumers’ palates by introducing porters, stouts and hoppy styles, like Sierra Nevada’s iconic pale ale . Initial generations’ success paved the way for today’s brewers, who find eager investors and consumers as they experiment with wild yeasts, barrel aging and more.
Myth No. 5
Wine is for aging. Beer is for drinking fresh.
Cool cellars evoke images of dusty wine bottles, their contents mellowing and growing in value the longer they sit. Beer, on the other hand, should be consumed fresh, right? There’s even an iPhone app that calculates a beer’s age, using codes printed on the bottle or can, lest the drinker be fooled by something that has been sitting on the shelf too long.
For many beers, fresh is better. Certain styles, such as pilsners and most saisons, should be enjoyed close to the date of production. Others, especially hop-forward beers like IPAs, require uninterrupted refrigeration and timely consumption to preserve the volatile flavors of hops. Nevertheless, certain beers improve in character if aged and cellared. American brewers have long experimented with holding beers in wine and liquor barrels, aging them before they reach the consumer. High-alcohol-by-volume styles, such as barleywines , benefit especially from cellaring at home. Aging a beer softens the high-alcohol edge and allows a complex set of characteristics and flavors (toffee, straw, wood, wine) to emerge.
So how should a consumer cellar beer? First, choose the right styles. If you begin with a six-pack, drink one bottle fresh to understand its initial flavor profile. Keep the beer in a cool, dark space. Store it standing up or on its side; conflicting opinions abound. Sample aging beers regularly, perhaps once a year, to catch a brew that threatens to age past its peak. When it’s time to enjoy it, serve it in the correct glassware and at the proper temperature. Cheers.
Twitter: @theresamccu
Five myths is a weekly feature challenging everything you think you know. You can check out previous myths, read more from Outlook or follow our updates on Facebook and Twitter.


3 Stars and Neal Place Tap & Garden team up for a hyperlocal beer

Hops grow on wires at Neal Place Tap & Garden near Union Market. The hops will be used in beer by the 3 Stars Brewing Company in Northeast D.C. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post)
Throughout the summer, visitors to Neal Place Tap & Garden might have noticed green vines creeping their way up guidewires surrounding the beer garden's picnic tables and bocce court. These are hop vines -- eight varieties in all -- that produce the hop flowers, or cones, used to flavor beer.
In the last few weeks, the vines have shot up, and the hop cones have gotten larger and begun giving off fresh, oily aromas. Soon, they're going to be picked and sent to 3 Stars Brewing Company, where they'll be used to create that brewery's first-ever Made in D.C. beer.
[A brewers dozen: The 12 events to hit during D.C. Beer Week]
"We've done some hop samplings, with hops that homebrewers grew in their backyards, but we've never used D.C. hops in a beer before," says 3 Stars co-founder Dave Coleman. "There's not a lot of hop farms in the city."
Coleman and the brewing team haven't determined how much they'll get of each hop variety, which include Cascade, Nugget, Willamette and Sorachi Ace, and the yield will help determine what kind of beer to create. Some at the brewery want to take advantage of the freshness of the hops to make a strong, pungent double IPA, Coleman says, while others have argued for a lighter style of beer, such as a saison, that would better show off the flavors of the hops. ("We're a brewery divided," he jokes.) Either way, it will probably be a cask-conditioned ale, and will include some other ingredients sourced locally. "We'll probably forage for some herbs," Coleman says. "Something that rounds out the aromatics, and will balance or even counterbalance the flavors."
Expect the beer to be ready for a mid-October release, with a party to be held at Neal Place Tap & Garden. "This is just the first installment," says Coleman, who found out about the hops when Neal Place co-founder Gina Chersevani posted a photo of the crop on Instagram last week. "We'll see where we go from here. It's the whole 'Made in D.C.' thing. We're trying to showcase something made in D.C. that showcases ingredients from D.C. We're proud to be a D.C. business, and I know Gina is too."
Both 3 Stars and Neal Place will be open for D.C. Beer Week events this weekend: 3 Stars hosts the Hopfunk Fest at its Takoma brewery from 1 to 6 p.m. on Sunday, and Neal Place is turning its taps over to RAR Brewing from 5 to 9 p.m. on Saturday.
Hops grow on wires at Neal Place Tap & Garden near Union Market. The hops will be used in beer by the 3 Stars Brewing Company in Northeast D.C. (Photo by Fritz Hahn/The Washington Post)


Savor week: Beer events for Tuesday, May 6

This weekend's Savor craft beer festival brings brewers and beer fans from across the country to the National Building Museum for two nights of tastings and seminars. But the real fun takes place at local bars in the nights leading up to the festival, with happy hours, brewer meet-and-greets and rare-beer events. Every day this week, we'll publish a list of that night's must-do events, which don't require RSVPs. Just show up and pay for what you drink. • Savor Week events you'll need tickets for Smoke and Barrel's Tuesday draft lineup features beers that rarely leave the Midwest. (Photo by James Buck/The Washington Post) The reason craft beer geeks love Savor week is because it offers an unparalleled chance to taste acclaimed beers from across the country that don't usually make it to Washington. The Best of the Midwest event at Smoke and Barrel tonight is a great example: You've probably had fantastic brews by Bell's, Founders and Schlafly, and might have seen a Perennial tap or two around town lately. But Sun King's beers don't leave Indiana, which means only frequent travelers have tried the acclaimed Fistful of Hops IPA, or the Batch 666: Sympathy for the Devil Black IPA. It's a similar story for Country Boy Brewing, a Lexington, Ky., brewery only sold in Kentucky and Tennessee, or Off Color, which stays mainly in the Chicago area. You can try multiple beers from all these breweries among the 24 drafts, as well as rare beers from Bell's, Perennial and Schlafly, beginning at 5 p.m. (Check out the full draft list.) Firestone Walker Looking for a good craft beer happy hour? Firestone Walker and Flying Dog – the two breweries that collaborated on this year's exclusive Savor beer, a blend of imperial porter and black rye IPA – are teaming up to put a dozen beers on tap at Pizzeria Paradiso in Dupont Circle. All beers will be half-price between 5 and 7 p.m. (The full draft list is online.)

This weekend's Savor craft beer festival brings brewers and beer fans from across the country to the National Building Museum for two nights of tastings and seminars. But the real fun takes place at local bars in the nights leading up to the festival, with happy hours, brewer meet-and-greets and rare-beer events. Every day this week, we'll publish a list of that night's must-do events, which don't require RSVPs. Just show up and pay for what you drink. Smoke and Barrel's Tuesday draft lineup features beers that rarely leave the Midwest. (Photo by James Buck/The Washington Post) Firestone Walker