Going to be in the Crystal City area later this week. Any good beer bars, breweries or beer stores in the area?
The original Rustico is just south of Crystal City on Slaters Lane in Alexandria. It's a quick cab (or Metrobus) ride away. If you have a car, you have plenty of access to some great options in the immediate NoVA area. Rick's Wine & Gourmet and Total Wine aren't too far away, just a short hop down I-395. While you're down that way, it would also be worth your while to check out Port City Brewing Company's tasting room. If you like Dogfish Head, wander over to the Dogfish Head Alehouse in Falls Church. There's an excellent lineup of special releases right now that includes Bitches Brew, Hellhound, Old School, My Antonia, Etrusca, along with their yearround releases like Palo Santo Marron and Burton Baton. Each of the Pizzeria Paradiso locations (Old Town, Georgetown, and Dupont Circle) is reasonably close as well. Georgetown and Dupont only observe their 1/2 price draft happy hour on Tuesday and Wednesday, while Old Town's is daily.
If you have a car, check out Arrowine, Westover Market, Lost Dog Cafe (across the street from WM) and WF Clarendon, all in Arlington. The best beer bars in Arlington are Rustico, in Ballston, and at WM. In DC, check out Conn Ave Wine & Liquor, De Vinos and WF P Street in and near the Dupont Circle/ Adams Morgan area. ChurchKey is around the corner from that WF and is one of the best beer bars in the US.
To answer your original question... not really. I was just in Crystal City a few weeks back for a month of training, and I explored the area around my hotel pretty closely (the Residence Inn on Army Navy Lane). The Crystal City Wine shop has a small, but still decent, selection of craft beer, and then there's also the Cost Plus World market. (the former is at 401 12 st. south, while the latter store is on South Joyce St.). There's also a Harris Teeter nearby as well (just up the street on Army Navy ln). None of these places will have an exactly mindblowing selection of craft beer or imports, but you should be able to find stuff from Stone, Sierra Nevada, Victory, Troegs and the like. The CC wine shop gets in some cans of DC brau from time to time as well. The Sine Irish pub (also on Joyce St.) will have the usual, predictable euro macros on tap, as well as a few craft offerings. Food there is pub grub with a few "Irish" dishes as well, but it's not bad for what it is. As others have suggested, your best bet it to use the Metro if you want to really visit some of the more outstanding spots in the area. Personally, I would recommend taking the metro (the crystal city metro stop is no more than a 5 or 10 minute walk from the residence inn) over to Dupont Circle, and from there hitting Pizza Paradiso, the Big Hunt, ChurchKey and the Whole Foods on P street (good beer store selection, and the cafe often times has some interesting stuff as well - BCBS last time I was there). Everything is fairly close by to the metro stop (it's around a mile walk to Churchkey from there), and that should be enough to keep you busy for one evening at least. Not sure if you've been up to the DC area before, but if you haven't, prepare yourself for some serious sticker shock (or wallet burn, as one friend likes to say). Just keep that in mind while you're out and about in the District. There's lots to see and do, but cheap it's not. Also, just a suggestion, but you might get more responses to your OP if you post this in the Mid Atlantic forum. Good luck.
