District Craft Brew Scene?? :(

hey bro. just moved to the district from NYC. i get you that the best breweries seem to be outside the distinct, may be a legal/cost thing. i can't get on board with the bashing of DC Brau tho. Brau pils is great, love corruption and OTWOA...the place is really cool. right proper is fun too.

also some seriously great beer bars and stores - no beer import laws!

where in DC are you ? Always up for drinks.

 

DC Brau would "last" in almost any city on OTWOA alone, but we really do have fantastic beer bars. Just go to Churchkey or Meridian Pint instead.

 

Darwensi, I hear you.

Meridan Pint just collaborated with I forget who to make a banging triple ipa, then rustico did the same sort of thing. Its getting better here everyday. Metro DC is lackluster though . Bluejacket gave us high hopes and let us down. DC Brau has serious consistency/canning problems. Right Proper makes "dainty" beers some of my friends say.

I can only imagine where we'll be in five years. When it comes to comparing us to Chicago, not really a comparison.

 

The collab was with Ocelot. The beer program through the Pint locations and Smoke and Barrel is gleaming beacon for beer lovers in DC.

Some folks swear by 3 Stars (I am not one of them). Others swear by Bluejacket (I am not one of them either). I'd love to see the likes of Atlas and DC Brau, especially DC Brau, break out of their molds and do something else. Sadly, I think they are making bank on shipping their cans around the Mid-Atlantic. Good on them, they've got mouths to feed, but I remember the early days when DC Brau has a pilot batch of something new on every 3 weeks. I was ALWAYS THERE.

DC beer drinkers should hold the line for now. Right Proper is still stellar. There's other fun/weird stuff out there if you're adventurous. How many folks reading this have never been to Public Option? Or Franklins? Or Denizens?

 

The last OTWOA my friend sent me were all drain pours. There were 5 cans about a month old. They didn't look, taste, or smell like the OTWOA I have tracked down in the past. Solar Abyss and Smells Like Freedom were off the charts tho...

 

Shocking, another bash the District beer thread...

 

More for me, there's plenty of good beer, dig a lot of stuff from DC Brau and Right Proper.

Plus I always have my nearby VA and MD locations and fall backs to go on as well.

 

My brewery scene?

 

There are two challenges in the brewery scene here:

1) The breweries are young. Every single one listed in this thread has been around what, less than 6 years at most? That doesn't mean a young brewery can't brew well. (I just did a search, the "oldest" brewery is DC Brau which is the first to brew and package in DC in 2011 since..1956). http://www.dcbeer.com/washington-dc-beer-history

2) The boundary of the district itself. There are some breweries near DC that in other places where the city designation can expand would actually be inside DC. But the DC boundary cannot expand.

 

I don't really understand the point about having the go all the way to Herndon or Cambridge to get quality beers--it's very easy to find RAR, Ocelot, or any of the other good NoVA or MD breweries around the district. When you were in Chicago, i'm sure you weren't driving out to Munster every time you wanted Zombie Dust. Just because Three Floyds isn't in Chicago doesn't mean they aren't a big part of the beer scene there.

No matter what you think of DC Brau, Bluejacket, or any of the breweries that reside in the arbitrary boundaries of the District, there's certainly no shortage of great local beers to drink in DC.

 

this is also true and helpful. aside from Aslin, most of the breweries located in suburban DC are regularly represented at churchkey, meridian pint, etc.

 

To be fair, D.C. proper is also much smaller than Chicago, both geographically and in terms of population it's 25% the size of Chicago. It's also a completely different type of city than Chicago due to a variety of factors, one of which is the height restrictions on buildings causing the region to be much more sprawling in population. As a result, many people consider the entire metro region when discussing D.C. (both for beer and lots of other things). Just look at the relative populations of the metro area - D.C. metro area has roughly 10x the population of the city proper, whereas in Chicago it's closer to 3.5x. That gives you an idea of how these cities differ.

That being said, it's true that D.C.'s breweries are weak compared to some other cities. As someone who grew up in the D.C. area and lives in NYC currently, but might return to D.C. in the future, the lack of a strong local brewery scene is definitely disappointing.

I'm a little confused about your last point though. In your OP you said "I simply want to enjoy imbibing in the city I reside and not have to schlep to Herndon, VA or Cambridge, MD to get a solid brew." Unless it's a requirement that you drink local beer at the brewery, it seems silly to not discuss the fantastic beer bar scene in the city. As others have pointed out, these bars frequently serve great local and regional beer that isn't necessarily brewed in the strict (small) confines of D.C.

Plus, things could change very quickly. Just a few years ago, NYC was kind of a wasteland for strong craft breweries too and in the past couple of years Other Half, Singlecut, Finback and Grimm have all popped up and are going strong. The arrival of Ocelot and Aslin in the suburbs could drive others to up their game and improve.

 

DC has the 9th highest beer tax per gallon in the nation. Not to say that correlation = causation, but look at the states with the highest taxes per gallon on breweries. They typically are not states with strong breweries. For example, DC is .58 per gallon and NY is .14. That's huge. OR has some of the lowest at .08. Coincidence? Maybe, but I would think that laws and taxes play a bigger role than you think.

If you are smart and live in this area, you wont open a brewery in DC. It's most likely going to be VA for multiple reasons. Here is a tax map of the states as of the start of 2015: http://taxfoundation.org/blog/how-high-are-beer-taxes-your-state.

 

Very good point made here. Lack of representation I assume would mean that these high taxes aren't going anywhere either. Makes me want to give extra props to Right Proper and DC Brau for choosing to open despite this major hurdle.