Bluejacket in DC

I truly hope that this changes things, but I'm not optimistic that it will. I've only been around Greg while volunteering at Snallygaster, but even in that short time he struck me as a bit of a micromanager. I can't imagine that this translates well to a brewing relationship, especially when Greg has no commercial brewing experience himself.

I think they might be too tied into making their beers echo flavors found on the menu. I get that they're trying to make this into more than just a "brewpub", but the main attraction at a brewery is always going to be beer-they should be making a donut to go with a brown ale, not a brown ale to go with a donut.

This kinda feeds into the idea that they tried to do too much, too quickly with the space- I think they believed they were above the "starter" beers that a lot of breweries put out initially. Even if they insisted on putting 15 beers out on the first night, Bluejacket needed to make sure that they had at least 3-4 really good beers at the outset, rather than the collection of 10 or 15 "meh" offerings they've got now. Even one truly extraordinary beer would've kept them from this general mediocrity that is really bringing them down in the eyes of beernerds. (Brau is a good example of this- if Wings didn't exist, I'd bet we'd be saying many of the same things about them as we are about Bluejacket.)

All of this is easy to say from a desk in DC, coming from a guy with no brewing experience outside of one batch of barely drinkable APA, but the execution of their business model seems lackluster at best.

 

yikes... so are we going to have the equivalent of the Beerskins and a series of revolving coaches

 

It's kind of interesting since some of the beer nuts don't seem to care for the beers but like the food, then other people who I know who have gone and are not so crazy into beer, find the beer fine and the food alright, and then you have Tom Sietsema who finds the beers enjoyable but the food lacking...

Still haven't gone, but with this latest development it seems like it's bearings/direction might need some more settling thus giving me more time off to drop by, unless the opportunity is there to set itself.

 

Greg Engert's hair.

 

That I can understand. Getting a degree in biology from Brown and ending up a barista, now that's a little tougher to understand.

 

Is Tom Seetsma someone whose beer opinion I should trust?

 

It's up to you. He's not a beer 'person', he's the food critic for the Washington Post.

 

Yeah, I know who he is. Does being the food critic for the Washington Post qualify one as knowing anything about beer?

 

I dont go to him for beer opinions but highly respect him as a food writer, so it's made it more than interesting with all the developments on how I'll perceive BJ when the time comes.

 

To me, being a food writer just means he didn't have the talent to be a chef. Unless he was a chef.

 

Just because it's easy to say doesn't mean it isn't spot on. In just about every interview I've read with Shaun Hill, they ask him what advice he would give to people wanting to start their own brewery or brewpub, and he always says that nobody should ever open their own brewpub or brewery without commercial brewing experience. That's not meant to elevate his word to the god-like status it often is given, but he gets interviewed an awful lot more than any other brewer I know of, so his word is easy to pick out of my memory.

I also had the exact same thoughts when I first read about the concept for this place - why the f*** would you start out trying to brew unique and innovative takes on classic styles when you don't even know if you can brew the style well? And for that matter, open such a ginormous space with such ridiculous expectations for ouput and demand from day 1? It reeks of hubris overtaking common sense when it comes to how to run a brewery. And now NRG has decided to take away the only person who might have had the rank and ability to stand up for common sense in running the brewing operation.

 

It's not surprising to me that a guy who enjoys the technical side of beer enjoys the technicalities of roasting and brewing coffee as well. The control, timing, and measurements required to do each well aren't all that dissimilar. Shit, both require applying dry heat to prepare a seed, followed by a hot water extraction/conversion.

 

Releasing three beers this week that are to be paired with doughnuts, interesting vision.

 

Being a chef is only one part of providing a great restaurant experience, and that's not enough to make you a good critic. Knowledge and experience of what it takes to get the food from source to table is another, wait-staff, management, etc.. among other things, which are all things you have to be aware of.

Based on his writings and work in industry I trust his opinion mostly on his writing and experience speaks for itself. I don't always agree with him either, but his methods and work and his tricks and effort he uses in reviewing places which I am not going to be-labor or go into detail about, speaks to his dedication to reviews.

Being a chef is only one small criteria, and more importantly there's plenty of bad ones out there, or don't have a breadth of experience either to know about good food. That's not enough for me to take a critic seriously if they haven't worked the line. His mannerisms to me also don't come off pompus like many jack ass critics, so I trust his judgement but also know his biases.

That's all I'll say on that subject, this is beer site after all. I only brought him up cause the subject was about Bluejacket and it's a DC establishment that people are reviewing and wondering about how good or not it is.

 

I would have gone with a Sightglass roaster, personally.

 

Wat

 

There is the possibility that he just might enjoy coffee... more than beer...

We all can get in our bubbles here, but some people aren't that crazy about beer as we are...

I know crazy... or perhaps he just liked the scenery better...

 

Lest anyone think I'm here to defend Bluejacket or this hire, I'm just taking up for coffee - against nobody, perhaps. I tend to get a little jumpy when I've been consuming.

 

Watchout for those peaberries! They make killer brew and jumpy-ness!

 

Wat