Posting this in both South Atlantic and Mid-Atlantic: Need your help, DC/NoVA peeps. I'm going with my family to the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, VA for Passover during which I cannot drink any beer. Passover ends on Tuesday night, April 18th at approximately 8:30 pm. I checked all of the local spots, and it looks like everything closes at around 10pm. At best I will only have time to visit 2 places, as I have no chance of doing any shopping on Wednesday (waaah... Aslin...). So based on my research, I will need to choose 2 of these 3 spots: Ocelot Brewing Whole Foods Fairfax Total Wine & More Fairfax I don't plan on sitting down for any drinking, so a stop at Ocelot would just be to buy bottles/fills - I don't even know how the brewery operates; there's not much info on the website, so can someone give me some details on what to expect if I go there? Anyway, I need your help to decide which 2 places to hit. I live in NY, so I would prefer at least one store with good variety/quantity with the chance for some rarities. If anyone has a suggestion for a different store, that would also be welcome. Thanks for your help, BA!
Whole Foods and Ocelot. That Total Wine sucks. Whole Foods has a great selection, and Ocelot is in my opinion the best brewery in the area. Ocelot bottles beer, their schedule is a little unpredictable, but it seems like its been about once a week recently. They might even have some bottles of Painless left, if you like BBA stouts, do not pass on it. Its an incredible beer that is criminally slept on. That's true of Ocelot in general, but I think its by design. They do their thing and don't play into trends, artificial scarcity, or hype. They just brew great beer.
Great, thanks for the info. You think they would hold a few bottles for me if I called? I could give them the whole "I can't have beer for a whole week" sob story... Is that one any good?
Oh, to be clear, the Total Wine in Chantilly is the one I was referring to when I said it sucks. The one in Fairfax might be a little better, but I would still stick to WF and Ocelot.
They actually might hold bottles for you, I'm not sure. Its worth a call, the staff is very friendly.
