DC/MD/NoVA Beer Updates (2021)

I liked their beers in general, but was eventually put off by how thin they all were. Lots a great flavor, but very watery feeling.

 

Hello friends- will be in warrentown, va for a day. Is old bust head worth the trip? Or 2 silos?

not enough time to do both. Well- maybe

bonus points for bbq nearby

 

Is the mid coast the northeast now as well?

 

Yeah, not sure why thy don't have a flagship IPA, Home would be a good choice. I wouldn't say Aslin has a flagship either, they have a few rotating single IPAs that sit on store shelves now. My local harris teeter has had a stack of 25+ cases of Baby Shark at the store entrance for a week or so, pretty sure everyone in the DC area is sick of Baby Shark after the Nats run, they need to retire that beer.

 

That's totally true, but Aslin brews some of those core-like beers like Orange Starfish, etc on a relatively regular basis. With Ocelot, it seems like all of the IPAs they bring back are brewed once a year. What's more is that they brew it with just one of their house yeasts, so you, enjoying the original yeast, may not get a chance to try that IPA you like fermented with your preferred strain. It is a model heavily reliant on people making it to the taproom IMO.

 

I live and work in Warrenton, I'd say go to Altered Suds (downtown with entrance on Main Street) indoor seating / outdoor side street or back lot seating. Or Powers Farm Brewery a little out of town on Meetze Road, indoor seating and lots of outdoor patio or picnic table seating.

Neither of these have food, but both allow you to bring in food.

Warrenton's BBQ options would be Smokin Billy's - Never been but its a food truck in a permanent location, its also the closest to Old Bust Head; Shawn's Smokehouse is doing carry out only (as of a few months ago) and BBQ Country which is a little south of town in a truck stop (but it gets good reviews). We typically have been gettting our bbq fix from one of several food trucks that rotate throughout local/regional breweries or Shawns.

 

Thank you, sir. I appreciate the local low-down. I hope you are enjoying this spring weather and getting some fresh air!

 

I wish Aslin would date their cans now that so much of their beer is around, though you can sometimes figure out what's fresh by looking at their Instagram. The quality of their beers is all over the place these days, but not having a date is one more reason not to buy.

 

Yes, their lager In The Cut is one of my favorites, and priced very well.

 

Kinda funny all their labels say 'Drink Fresh' but they choose not to date the cans so their customers don't know if it's fresh.

 

If you had told me two years ago I’d move to DC and just never drink Aslin I’d have never believed you.

 

There's so much stuff on the shelves now in VA that things like Aslin don't stand out, crazy that just a few years ago people would drive hours and wait in line to get the stuff that is a shelf turd now. I would not want to open a hazy IPA brewery right now there is so much competition and a lot of what these hazy IPA factories put out tastes like a sweet chalky mess.

 

Haha, one of my visits to Herndon was for the unfortunate Type At Me Bro release. That plus the really pompous BYT article turned me off on the brewery quite a bit. I did try their beer from time to time, especially on draft, but even with the Alexandria brewery 10-15 away, I've only been once for curbside pickup for Andy's Pizza - which was also highly disappointing - didn't even get beer.

What are you digging over Aslin right now?

 

Just noticed Ocelot is now in my area as of this week (Harford County, Maryland). I am not an IPA guy, but am curious how is their Sunnyside Dweller Pilsner?

 

Probably Triple Crossing the most, am lucky enough to be in RVA a few times a month even though I don't live there so I always get to pick some up. Over the pandemic enjoyed all the tired hands shipping stuff i've got and also the bearded iris drop in the area a few months ago was really good. I've kind of lost my palette for DIPAs over time and they taste all very sweet to me now, if you haven't had a DIPA in a month or so then try one it's crazy how much more sugar comes through as the initial taste, and then the chalky burn that comes with a lot of DDH, TDH, etc.

 

You don't live close to DC per chance, do you?

 

Hi everyone, Thought maybe I could help answer and explain some Ocelot questions that have been popping up.

Hmmmm, where to start…

Well, Ocelot has always been an open book with recipes, business practices, and philosophy.


Flagship IPA - Well, the model was always meant as a rotating one. This design was meant to mimic the way we enthusiasts were drinking craft beer (always trying new things). At the time of Ocelot's inception 9 years ago, everyone wanted new new new all the time, for checkins or reviews or just because they enjoyed something different.

We have since made over 250 unique recipes in the 6 years we have been open. Some were incredible, some, not our favorite, but we always kept experimenting. Eventually we started to really want to drink certain beers more than just once every two years, so we evolved to a slightly different model where we would bring back favorites more often while still keeping room for experimentation and collaboration. A beer like “Home” (one of my favorites) is planned to come around 2-3 times a year (stupid COVID messed up a lot of planning btw). We also have a few more “core” IPA’s that will also be included in this rotation.

Something to note here though. We are a small brewery, one that tops out around 2000 bbls per year. If you do your research, you’ll know where that lands us vs some other breweries chatted about on this site. The reason I bring that up is also because being small doesn’t allow us to pick certain lots of hops for consistency. We are at the mercy of the spot market for most of our purchases, and that means the hops could be very different from batch to batch affecting the taste and smell every time. Yes, we do have some contracts on some core hops but not much as the model was never meant to support that.


Can Distro - OK, this starts with COVID (fuckin covid)!

Our model was one where 75% of liquid was going to be sold thru the tasting room thru draft and to go beer. Well, covid obviously killed that so we looked for new outlets for liquid and scrambled to figure out a balance between draft and cans since bars and restaurants were also affected by shutting down or limited access.

Being small means we need favorable margins and we worked hard to partner with distribution companies that would fairly put our beer in stores at a price that wasn’t insulting to you guys. We did that with a few companies, but unfortunately we have not figured out a compromise with our current NOVA / DC distributor and I certainly didn’t want to see $24 4 packs of a beer we sell for $16 or $17. I hope to get this sorted somehow soon as I do enjoy our relationship with them.


Can delivery - When we launched this last year, it was a huge hit at first. We delivered over 80 cases the first week. Then it dropped to 50, then 20, then 4. It didn't make much since to continue. The staff involved, the hours, the insurance, the gas, just didn't make sense. Just being honest here.


Older IPAs - ugh! This one kills me! We test our beers all the time and pull them as soon as we feel it doesn’t represent us. In fact, I just pulled 70 cases of Ebenezer IPA yesterday and will dump them down the drain this week.


House Ale strains - For those of you that have been here, you may have noticed that directly next door is Jasper Yeast Lab. Jasper Yeast handles all of our yeast needs. This is a wonderful relationship that we have and we are fortunate to have them here. House 1 originally was Chico, 2 was fullers, 3 was a Conan variant. As some of you may know, especially if you home-brew, yeast will mutate over generations. They adapt to our environment and procedures. We also manipulate the performance of the yeast with procedures to achieve our desired effect. We figured out that after some generations, we liked what they were doing better than the original pitch, so having Jasper here, he banked those for us as our new generation 1 pitch. I didn’t think it would be fair to call these strains by their original names since they now perform differently, hence the “house ale” names.

We have always displayed the ingredients on our labels as a way of being transparent to you. We wanted to let you know that when we make a different beer, it is in fact different. I do know of breweries who change one small ingredient in a popular beer and name it something else completely. We did not want to do that so we have been transparent about it. When we do something similar, the name will reflect the other beer or the label design and color will be similar as well.

I’m saddened to hear that now people are using that information to avoid the beers, especially when it comes to the yeast strain. Jack (our awesome head brewer) is capable of manipulating any one of those strains to our liking, clarity/haze, or dryness/sweetness and making our best beers to date. Meanwhile, experimentation is still a foundational principle that guides us and we will continue to evolve and make more beer that we love to share with all of you.


Anyway, apologies for the long read and thank you for all the feedback and positivity over the years.

Cheers,

A

 

Finally just got my first TC box of the pandemic. I would say that I got some mixed results. The DDH Valhalla being my favorite of the bunch. I do like and have always liked that they have a steady stream of 6-6.5% IPAs vs solely chasing the DIPA hype. Going down to RVA in a few weeks for my birthday - TCB is a definite stop.

I feel like a lot of people have been taking advantage of Tired Hands. As I said in the Mid-Atlantic Lager thread, I got some lagers and Alien Church. Alien Church was by far my favorite. I'd consider buying again from them in the future, but I'm still working through this TCB and the Wheatland Spring beers I've got at the moment. Getting my second shot tomorrow, so this is going to be a light drinking weekend.

 

Thank you for chiming in. Lots of valuable information that answers my questions about delivery and distribution. I really do appreciate that you put ingredients on the label - that has always been a big positive for me.

 

Thanks for the info — it’s great to hear from a brewery directly! As a NoVA resident who rarely has time to drive out to the brewery, I look forward to being able to buy your cans locally sometime soon. Cheers!