DC/MD/NoVA Beer Updates (2020)

Did curbside at Port City and it was super easy. Back home sipping Helles on my balcony and this is very nice and peaceful, besides the Southwest plane flying overhead.

 

I've been loving Dominion's online ordering and curbside pickup. Plus they've been getting some killer stuff.

 

Do you know if they bother to check Best By or canning dates? I placed and order at TW for pickup and most of the beers were expired (past the Best By date), pretty disappointing to drive out of my way to get old beer.

 

I've never had that issue at Dominion.

 

Second this, they've been fantastic through all this. Online ordering couldn't be simpler, and curbside has been smooth.

 

Dominion is a small shop with a very well curated inventory. Their employees know and care about beer and seem to want to maintain the store's sterling reputation.

Total Wine is a much larger chain. They buy in larger quantities, and they buy everything they can get their hands on (at least from the distributors that will work with them) to avoid an instance where they don't have whatever Joe 6-pack wants. That leads to a lot of they inventory stagnating. Their employees, as large chain store employees, don't know anything about and don't care about beer.

 

Yeah you'd have to be nuts to blindly order beer from TW if you are concerned about freshness.

 

PSA for anyone hanging on to bottles of 2019 Brothers Resolute, the bottle I opened last night was infected. I noticed similar complaints when skimming through Untappd check-ins for the variants. Might want to pop 'em if you've got 'em in case they haven't turned.

 

Thanks for this. Took me a minute to find them on the small shelf by the eggs. On the same shelf was Alewerks Beatbox Bison (hazy IPA) for $10/4 pack. No date, but it looks like from Instagram that they just released it. Cracked one and it tastes fresh and good.

 

Guys, Dominion has two fresh DIPAs from Frost for sale now. Highly recommended.

 

I see these around town a few places, looking for someone to try. Last time these came through they were off (my experience in VT too, great when on but inconsistent).

 

They're really good IMO, and very fresh.

 

The Union/Port City collab “Port to Port” is really nice. They call it a “Czech-style half dark”. If there were a Czech Octoberfest beer, this would be it.

 

Anyone try the “mega tastee” series from veil?

 

I'd be curious to hear about these as well. With Aslin ruining their entire canned sour portfolio by dropping lactose throughout, I've become overly reliant on unpredictably timed Drekker drops to get my sweet 'n sour fix. It would be nice to have another dependably high-quality option to add variety.

 

I had a can of Big Papi last night. First time I've had it in ages. It was top notch, right up there with recent Veil and Other Half beers I've had. I don't remember it being that good. Maybe because I got a little burned out on their house flavor for a while. Need to get more soon.

 

I stopped buying Commonwealth's IPAs for the same reason I took a break from Aslin's--just way too much inconsistency. If CW has finally settled in a consistent groove, I'd be willing to revisit, because I did get some great batches from them a few years ago.

 

I stopped buying them because they release so many different ones with all of these different hop profiles that I don't know what to expect. It seemed like they were doing it more to release a "new" beer rather than doing it purposefully.