In July, one of D.C.’s oldest production breweries, 3 Stars Brewing Company, announced its sudden closure, citing the ongoing challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. Other Half Brewing Company DC, which opened during the pandemic and is still rolling more than two years later, has become the biggest brewery in the city. The Other Half brand was born in Brooklyn and its staff had worked with 3 Stars prior to opening in the District in 2020. The closing of a standard bearer and the opening of a big and busy new operation reflect some of the changes bubbling up in the D.C. beer world.

When a brewery like 3 Stars dies, drinkers and brewers can feel a range of emotions. Sadness is perhaps the most common. If your neighborhood loses a business, or a dozen people lose their jobs, nobody is happy.

“It’s a big loss of community in that small neighborhood. It was a local watering hole for a lot of people that would walk to 3 Stars every given day that we were open,” says Lyn Holland, who served as events manager at 3 Stars’ Takoma facility prior to the closure. Holland is now the assistant general manager and events coordinator at Atlas Brew Works’ Ivy City location.

“I think it’s definitely cause for concern,” says Atlas founder and CEO Justin Cox. “D.C. is still very much in recovery mode … You see restaurants and bars are still announcing closings as we see the cracks showing in businesses likely put there due to COVID or some that may have pre-existed and were exacerbated.” 

“I was deeply saddened when [co-founder] Mike [McGarvey] called to let me know that he was closing 3 Stars,” writes Brandon Skall, CEO & co-founder of DC Brau Brewing, D.C.’s oldest production brewery. “The brewery has been a staple in the DC Beer universe for over a decade and seeing it close felt like watching local history unfold.”

In 2011, 3 Stars launched their brand with their first commercial batch of beer, the Syndicate Saison, brewed at Evolution Craft Brewing. Their production facility in Takoma wasn’t finalized and it would be another year before they opened their brewery on Chillum Place NE. 

When the Syndicate was released in May 2011, seven D.C. establishments served it on draft: ChurchKey, RFD, Scion, Pizzeria Paradiso Dupont, Bourbon, Meridian Pint, and The Big Hunt. Out of these seven bars that served 3 Stars 11 years ago, only two are still in existence. ChurchKey and Pizzeria Paradiso Dupont still serve high-quality draft beer and food today, but the other five businesses have gone the way of the dinosaur. It’s perhaps too reductive to say that these five bars and restaurants closed because D.C. lost interest in beer-focused bars and restaurants, but a common refrain dozens of brewers and brewery owners have repeated is: It’s no longer enough to just brew good local beer.

“We did projects with 3 Stars over the years,” says Matt Monahan, CEO of Other Half Brewing, which launched in New York in 2014 before opening a D.C. location two years ago. “That was tough, to see that facility shut down. It was really tough. It’s hard. It’s hard for everybody right now.” Other Half is D.C.’s largest brewer, producing 15,000 barrels of beer annually, but they’re also D.C.’s only brewer to own and operate two breweries in Brooklyn, one in the Finger Lakes, and one in Philadelphia, in addition to taprooms and beer gardens in Manhattan and Buffalo. The D.C. brewery services the Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware markets, with some of its production heading north to New Jersey, New York, and Connecticut. D.C. is the company’s most efficient brewery when it comes to making lager.

“I think as an industry, it’s terrible,” says Daniel Terrones, lead brewer at Other Half DC, of the 3 Stars closing. “You go into any taproom and typically you’re going to see people from other breweries there. If the brewery promotes a sense of community, you should see that, which is important. So just simply from a brewery perspective, I think it’s super shitty.”

“I think it signals that we’re coming to the end of Chapter 1 in the modern D.C. brewing story,” says James Warner, owner and founder of City-State Brewing Company. “If [3 Stars] couldn’t make it work, is that a single case or is it foreboding?” City State opened in June 2021, one of several newer breweries that have opened over the past four years.

***

“What could’ve helped us and maybe helped us to stay running is if we could’ve got more people on premise,” Mike McGarvey, 3 Stars owner says. “Being able to set up another premises, where there’s higher traffic … absolutely would’ve helped us.”

It’s notable that until now, D.C.’s breweries and brewpubs haven’t expanded into Virginia. On Friday, Jan. 6, Atlas Brew Works announced a forthcoming third location in the new Carlyle Crossing mixed-use development in Alexandria. The brewery and tap room will serve food from Andy’s Pizza.

Virginia, on the other hand, has brought Solace Outpost Navy Yard, a facility that sells Solace beer across the street from Nationals Park. Crooked Run Fermentation, which has facilities in Sterling and Leesburg, just opened its Union Market taproom to the public.

“With the pandemic, the change happened so quickly, but there’s not a change back that’s happening,” McGarvey says. “I think that’s also a trend we’ve seen in D.C. The high traffic areas are killing it, the places people were going to before that? Not so much.”

He says his brewery suffered from a reduction in on-site foot traffic. A lack of people visiting breweries affects sales. It hits them particularly hard because beer sold over the bar offers brewers the greatest profit margin.

3 Stars also had more competition when more local breweries were starting to distribute their beers during the pandemic. If more breweries were competing for consumer dollars during the height of the pandemic, there would be less sales for a brewery looking to gain customers via distribution. “Where does that distribution come from? We lost distribution during that time,” McGarvey says. According to Brewers Association numbers, 3 Stars’ beer production dropped from 5,500 barrels in 2019 to 3,206 in 2020 and 3,500 in 2021.

“[T]here were so many mixed factors that I think affected us: what our strategy was going into the pandemic, how things changed during the pandemic,” McGarvey says. “We changed as much as we could with what access to capital we had. There’s also the dynamics of when you receive financing for grants and loans and what position you’re already in with your balance sheet. There were just so many factors during that time period that as much as we tried, we just hit a point where we just didn’t have that runway anymore.”

“You have to spend money to make money,” says Meth Gunasinghe, who was 3 Stars’ lead brewer before closing. “But toward the end, we were spending too much and weren’t able to make enough back. So just trying to keep up with all the pivots we had to make over the past two years and everything getting more expensive and not as many people coming out as there used to, it all created the perfect storm.”

Gunasinghe now brews for Atlas, but spent the past six years working his way up from assistant brewer to lead brewer at 3 Stars. After brewing 3 Stars’ beloved brown ale, Southern Belle, for the better part of a decade, he thinks he’s roasted tons of pecans.

With a strong brown ale in its core lineup, 3 Stars stood out. The fact that the brown ale was 8.7 percent alcohol by volume and featured roasted pecans further set it afield. Though brown ale has died down in popularity, during the rise of small breweries between 2007 and 2010, they seemed ubiquitous.

“Twelve to 15 years ago, [brown ale] was going to taste kinda like dishwater. A darkened, maybe a little smokey, like ashtray beer,” McGarvey recalls. “We kind of took that one as a challenge and that’s where Southern Belle came from.

“And at the time, our lineup was really heavily focused on higher ABV stuff. We were trying to position these products toward barrel aging because that’s where all the good stuff was at that point. So the idea to add nuts was just to add another dimension to it. People really liked that beer.”

Southern Belle gave 3 Stars recognition among customers looking to support local beer, as well as those searching out a frequently hard-to-find style of beer. Despite the brown ale’s popularity, even more barrels of Peppercorn Saison, the Belgian-style ale that 3 Stars became well known for, were brewed. “Peppercorn Saison hands down was the one we were brewing the most … brewing multiple batches of that every week,” Gunasinghe says.

“We would have liked to have been doing sour beers, barrel-aged sour beers, right out of the gate” says McGarvey. “But we just didn’t really have financing, the facilities, all of the things necessary. With saison, we could often get a flavor profile or in a clean cellar [void of wild yeast], we were producing something that was tart and still a little funky.”

When 3 Stars opened in 2012, it joined the company of two other local production breweries who are still in existence today: DC Brau in Northeast D.C. and Port City Brewing Company in Alexandria. The owners planned to keep their beers on the extreme side. Their intent to produce funky beers with wild yeast came to fruition and in 2017, the brewery offered memberships to a group it named the Funkerdome Society. “With the Funkerdome Society we will continue to explore the art and techniques of souring and blending beers while working with different bacteria and yeast strains,” the brewery wrote in late 2016.

In 2023, more than two dozen breweries are operating in greater D.C. and even more are operating in the further reaches of Maryland and Virginia. Nationally, similar numbers play out. When 3 Stars’ physical brewery began making beer in 2012, it was one of 2,670 breweries in the U.S., according to the Brewers Association. In 2022, the Brewers Association reported 9,500 total U.S. breweries.

Despite more breweries opening, sales are never guaranteed. Events outside of a brewery’s control, like a World Series or Stanley Cup championship, can greatly affect beer sales. “As teams are doing well and having exciting seasons, more people are watching those games out at bars and restaurants around town, which equates to more beer activity,” says Atlas’ Justin Cox. “If the team’s doing well just on a statistical level, if they’re in the playoffs and there’s more physical games, that means more beer sold.”

The massive decline in beer production in 2020 was largely thanks to the pandemic, and the forced closure of indoor taprooms effectively killed off the production of draft beer. Draft beer has historically been a massive category of sales for local breweries.

“Obviously when the shutdowns happened and then draft beer business went to zero, that was a pretty significant event,” Cox says. “At the time we didn’t know how long the shutdowns were going to happen, but while it was shut down, we knew we needed zero draft beer.” 

Even ballpark sales couldn’t help in 2020, when Major League Baseball played just 60 games. Cox recognizes the Nationals as a leader for their District Drafts program. This June, the stadium poured beer from 10 different local breweries: 3 Stars, Atlas, City-State, DC Brau, Denizens, Old Ox, Other Half, Port City, Right Proper, and Solace. Of these 10 breweries, six are based in D.C. proper, three in Virginia, and one in Maryland.

“Draft beer is easier and there’s less quality control concerns with keg beer versus canned or bottled beers, which is awesome, but when that light switch gets turned off, 70 percent of our business is dead, whereas a Virginia brewery may be the opposite of that, maybe 30 percent is draft beer,” Cox says.

As the success of the District Drafts program proves, the consumer wants variety. If there were only one local brewery on offer at the ballpark, that brewery would sell a ton of beer. But that’s not reality.

***

“Are there going to be production breweries in D.C. 10 years from now?” James Warner of City-State asks. “We’d say yes because we’re here, but there’s a lot of adjustments we’ve had to make from when we started.”

For Other Half DC’s two-year anniversary in October, the brewery released five beers. Two were stronger IPAs with ABVs of 8 and 10 percent; one was a fruited sour beer with passion fruit, orange, and guava; and another was a 4.7 percent ABV pale lager. The biggest beer of the lot was Quiet Space, a barrel-aged, 13 percent ABV stout.

In years past, an anniversary stout like this may have had coffee, vanilla, or chocolate in it, called “adjuncts” in the brewing world. “A lot of the highly adjunct-ed stuff we don’t do anymore,” says Monahan, Other Half’s CEO. “Adjuncts are expensive. Coffee is expensive. Chocolate is expensive. Vanilla is expensive … Those styles, like all styles, ebb and flow in terms of demand. People’s tastes change and as a business you have to respond to it.”

Between 2016 and 2019, the DC Homebrewers Club raised more than $2,000 using 3 Stars’ space for their annual fundraiser. For a club with zero membership dues, this was a way that a brewery who may not have had cash to donate to a home-brew club helped foster the District’s home-brewing community.

In addition to helping the DC Homebrewers Club, 3 Stars regularly had small local businesses popping up at the brewery. Now there’s one less space for these vendors to gather pursuing their entrepreneurial dreams.

“I’d say on a monthly basis we worked with probably about 25 to 30 [small businesses], depending on the month, who would come set up shop on plant swap days. Or just the local makers market that we’d try and do to support local businesses,” says Holland, the former staffer. Holland has successfully resuscitated the popular plant swap formerly at 3 Stars to Atlas Brew Works but there are still many gatherings, of small business owners, and local residents, whose fate hangs in the balance.

In a straightforward sense, the death of 3 Stars means less opportunity for local businesses. Whether or not local breweries and small businesses can continue to thrive depends on many things but there is no question that an engaged community makes brewers’ jobs easier.

In the past two months, the region has seen three breweries announce closures: Rocket Frog Brewing and Beltway Brewing Company in Sterling, along with New District Brewing in Arlington, which plans to close in May pending finding a new location. There is a sense among brewers and brewery owners that things will get worse before they get better.

They call themselves “the collective” and in the informal group are many firsts. Montgomery County’s first and only Black-owned beer brand. The first woman-owned Black beer brand in D.C. history. The first Black-owned brewery in Charles County, which is also the only brick and mortar Black-owned brewery in Maryland and the D.C. metro region. 

“And we do not wish to be the only ones,” Eugene Lott, Patuxent Brewing Company co-owner and taproom manager, tells Washington City Paper.

According to the Brewers Association, 15 beer companies were operating in D.C. in 2021. Three of these companies are Black-owned. In theory, 20 percent of the beer companies in D.C. being Black-owned seems like a high percentage, considering the number of Black-owned breweries nationally is under 1 percent. But measuring equity is tricky, and the picture is more complex than the numbers make it appear.

“Unfortunately, there are not a lot of places that have Black-owned beer on tap,” says Black Viking Brewing co-owner, co-founder, and chief visionary officer Shaun Taylor. His is the first and only Black-owned beer brand in Montgomery County. “Most of the [Black-owned] D.C. beer brands, I don’t think any of them distribute in Maryland to my knowledge. And a lot of us [Black-owned] Maryland brands don’t really distribute in D.C.,” Taylor says. But he says, “I do really enjoy the fact that Erika [Geodrich] at Craft Beer Cellar is very intentional about carrying Black-owned brands.”

Taylor’s goal is to produce the first nationally distributed Black-owned beer. It’s a goal as big as the history of beer is deep. “The goal is for us to become the first but not the only,” he says. “It’s unbelievable that that hasn’t happened yet. That there’s no Black-owned beer that has national distribution.”

“We’re stronger together” says Eamoni Tate-Collier, CEO and founder of Urban Garden Brewing. Urban Garden is the first Black-owned brewing and distribution company in D.C. history owned by a woman. The brewing company does not own a production facility, so Urban Garden is what is known as a contract brewer. The batches of beer she’s released came from Right Proper Brewing Company’s facility in Shaw and DC Brau Brewing Company. Born and raised in D.C., Tate-Collier will celebrate her company’s one-year anniversary in September.

Soul Mega Beer Company, D.C.’s second-oldest Black-owned beer company, will turn three years old in August. Elliott Johnson, its CEO and co-founder, refers to his company as a “startup craft beer brand,” although the company doubled its production from 2019 to 2022. Soul Mega is also a contract brewery—its production takes place at Calvert Brewing Company in Upper Marlboro.

“It’s very impressive that Soul Mega has grown so much in their short time up and running,” says Michael Uhrich, founder and chief economist of Seventh Point Analytic Consulting. “It speaks to the tremendous opportunity for Black-owned breweries in D.C. and elsewhere,” especially given “D.C.’s per capita consumption of beer is not terribly high.”

According to Uhrich, who previously worked for the Beer Institute and MillerCoors, “D.C. has a lot of uspide in terms of potential per capita consumption of beer. Like most major metro areas, D.C. has a relatively low per capita consumption of beer and a relatively high per capita consumption of wine and distilled spirits.” But there’s an opportunity for beer to grow in the D.C. area without increasing the average consumption of alcohol. It just needs to gain greater share of the marketplace. “I think that there’s plenty of space for breweries to be opened by various marginalized communities including Black and Indigenous people, other people of color, queer people, loads of space,” he says.

Soul Mega’s third anniversary celebration will be a block party at the Parks at Walter Reed on Aug. 27. While many craft breweries celebrate themselves and their house brands of beer at their anniversary parties, Soul Mega has invited fellow members of the collective: Patuxent Brewing Company, Sankofa Beer Company, Urban Garden Brewing, Joyhound Beer Company, Black Viking Brewing, Liquid Intrusion Brewing Company, and Black Brew Movement.

Courtney and Charles Rominiyi are two co-founders of Black Brew Movement, an organization that aims to connect Black American culture with craft beer through educational events, industry consultation, and marketing. Black Brew Movement is the only non-beer/brewing company in the collective, but their importance in bolstering what is becoming a robust Black-owned beer scene cannot be overstated. According to Patuxent’s Eugene Lott, “the relationships we all have with each other are excellent and I have to throw in the Black Brew Movement … they’ve helped all of us and put that attention on Black brewers.”

“[Patuxent has] a brick and mortar and while they don’t always have all of these Black brewers on tap, they do make an effort to have them on there, and so the times where we do go in and make it out to Waldorf, it’s nice to go and enjoy Patuxent’s brew in their space,” Courtney Rominiyi says.

Patuxent does have some beer on offer at establishments outside of their taproom, having had their beer poured at Silver Diner in Waldorf, Bayou Girl Drink Factory in La Plata, and at The Brass Tap National Harbor.

“When we coined ourselves the Black Brew Movement we wanted to do just that: make Black brew move,” Rominiyi says. “We really serve as a platform for all parts of the craft beer movement, specifically focusing on getting more Black consumers in the craft beer space.”

Last summer, Rominiyi organized an event during Black Greek Fest, a festival that celebrates the Divine Nine—historically Black Greek letter organizations that make up the National Pan-Hellenic Council—and Black Greek culture. “It was the first time that a majority of the local Black-owned beer companies were together … we were also at a Black event. The Divine Nine Greek life is very important to the Black community, so this was us being at the epicenter of something that is very prominent. We saw it as a challenge and as a celebratory opportunity to market craft beer to our target audience, which is Black people.”

“We also were able to expose them [attendees] to types and styles of beer that they didn’t know about prior to us being there … when a lot of people in general think about beer,  they kind of think of traditional shelf mainstream … and they have that “beery” taste and one of the great things about all the brewers in the collective—all the local Black-owned brewers—is they have very unique brewing styles. Each one of their styles is unique to their story. Being able to capture those stories, tell those stories in person, I think really gave a layer of personality and humanity to craft beer that I think that particular consumer base had never seen before.”

At Right Proper in Shaw, you can order Urban Garden Brewing’s largest batch of beer to date, Chamolite. This first 30-barrel batch—about 60 kegs worth of beer—pours a pale straw color with golden highlights and is easy to drink the way a cup of chamomile cruises down the digestive tract and calms the system after a long day of existential dread.

Tate-Collier, co-founder of Urban Garden, describes Chamolite, a blonde ale brewed with chamomile and honey, as an easy drinking beer. “I created [the beer] with non-beer drinkers in mind, as well as women, and craft beer lovers. It’s something that’s very easy drinking, a nice introductory beer,” she says.

Tate-Collier has also had her beer poured at City-State Brewing Company. City-State had bought some Chamolite and “we had a party, just a ‘hey we’re here!’ party. I thought that was so awesome,” Tate-Collier recalls. This kind of pop-up event wouldn’t have been feasible five years ago, as no Black-owned beer brands existed in D.C. at that point in time.

In April, City-State released Alliance Saison, a Franco-Belgian Biere de Garde style, which translates roughly to keeping beer, a collaborative batch brewed with Soul Mega’s founders, Johnson and Jahi Wartts. City-State founder James Warner called the beer’s release date, April 3, “Soul Mega Day” at the brewery.

Johnson jokes that he sometimes calls Soul Mega, “Soul Michelin,” as his flagship brand World Wide Pale Ale is available at Bar Chinois and the Blue Duck Tavern (Bar Chinois was recognized by Michelin Guide USA and included in their 2022 dining guide and Blue Duck Tavern received a Michelin star in 2017, 2018, and 2019).

Johnson recommends drinking at Serenata, inside La Cosecha Market, as it’s “a good place to find Black Viking and Urban Garden” beers as well as his. He also mentioned his fondness for The Midlands on Georgia Avenue NW in Park View, which regularly carries Sankofa beer. In addition to the bars and restaurants selling Black-owned beer brands, all D.C. Trader Joe’s regularly stock Soul Mega and Joyhound Beer Company’s products.

“I always hate to call and shout out one particular place,” says Sankofa Beer Company cofounder Kofi Meroe. His brewery is also a contract brewer, and all of his beers, save the Sankofa collaborations, come from Black Flag Brewing Company in Columbia. “I will give special recognition to Metro Bar. They’ve been great supporters of our brand and it also happens to be a really cool and fun place to have a drink and meet people.” Meroe’s Sankofa became the first entirely Black-owned beer company in D.C. in 2018.

In those four years, the region has seen the opening of two more Black-owned beer brands in D.C., Patuxent’s physical brick and mortar brewery and taproom, and two more craft beer brands in metropolitan Maryland, Black Viking and Joyhound.

When Alfred Rotimi launched Joyhound in 2019, “it was all draft, all kegs,” he says, meaning there was not one can of Joyhound to be had. But of course, by the spring of 2020, nearly all local beer was in cans due to the pandemic. “There was no other choice,” Rotimi says. “I named the beer company Joyhound because I love dogs” and Rotimi’s beer has been bringing joy into the world ever since.

His IPA is named Oba IPA. “Oba means ruler” Rotimi says. Oba were leaders and kings in southern Nigeria, “the kings or emperors depending on what state it was and in what time in history used that title.”

“I wanted to bring some more exposure to Benin City and its artwork because that’s where my dad is from in southern Nigeria, known for its Benin Bronzes,” he adds. “The person on the label is based off of Oba Esigie who was a ruler during the 16th century.” In D.C., you can find Joyhound’s Oba IPA at every Trader Joe’s, Wardman Wines in Brookland, and at Craft Beer Cellar on H Street NE.

Similar African influences can be found with Sankofa and Urban Garden. Sankofa Beer Company was inspired by co-founder Kofie Meroe’s upbringing in West Africa. Urban Garden’s Tate-Collier says, “we’re inspired by ancient Egyptian practice on how they used to brew beer. They believed it to be used for its healing properties so we use flowers, herbs, and spices in our beer, that’s our thing, and things you can find in a garden, hence Urban Garden.”

As the American beer world begins to recognize the importance of beer brewing on continents outside Europe, overdue respect and centuries of neglect begin to be addressed. In his James Beard Award-winning book, The Cooking Gene, Michael Twitty writes, “Given some of the connections between indigenous foods and those found across the Atlantic, it might be more in the lap of West Africans that we owe the existence of beers made from persimmons mixed with honey locust.”

As July is America’s biggest beer-selling month, these new brewers are reviving ancient traditions that will carry us into the future. In August, at the Barrel & Flow Fest in Pittsburgh, Sankofa and Brooklyn Brewing Company’s collaborative beer will be poured, as will Black Viking’s collaborative beer with Tröegs Brewing Company. And as validation of our region’s breweries by older, bigger brewers is wonderful, it’s a strong sense of family that keeps the locals going.

“Our collective” says Patuxent’s Lott, “we can’t wait for more of us. We can’t wait for some of us to have a taproom like ourselves. We always say between all of us there’s no competition. We just want to see each other grow, and for the most part we’re a big family.”

Ask local brewers what keeps them up at night, and they’ll talk about a dirty draft line ruining their product and scaring a customer away forever. They’ll mention that the historically poor quality barley harvest in 2021 worries them when sipping their 5 a.m. coffee. And for brewery owners, just keeping their brewery afloat looms large when their heads hit the pillow.

Many breweries saw the pandemic slash draft sales because bars and restaurants were buying fewer, if any, kegs. They’re also seeing costs go up for everything from raw ingredients to cans.

“Here in D.C. we have a very, very competitive beer market,” says D.C.-based Seventh Point Analytics Consulting founder and chief economist Michael Uhrich. “We have suppliers from all over the world that are competing pretty fiercely, and we have some strongly relevant local brands.” 

To forecast the brewing landscape in 2022, City Paper interviewed more than a dozen brewers, distributors, retailers, economists, and reporters to get a sense of what lies ahead. The challenges they’re facing vary based on their size and business model.

Beer Trends

What trends are coming down the pike? Walters Sports Bar owner Jeremy Gifford believes the popularity of the lunch beer while working from home led to a rise in sales of low-alcohol beers. “When the pandemic first hit, and we were all allowed to sell six packs [to go], we couldn’t sell an IPA, but anything that was light we just couldn’t even keep on our shelf,” he says.

“Everyone was drinking two beers at lunch and needed to be able to function on the Zoom, so I think there will be a more concentrated effort on lower ABV beers,” Gifford continues. He says that the robust seltzer market may have convinced brewers they need to make more “crushable” beers if they want to sell volume.

Mike McGarvey, owner of 3 Stars Brewing Company, also notices consumer tastes trending towards what he calls “comfort” beers. He describes this category as consistent, readily available flagship brands that are often clean, traditional styles with lower ABVs.

3 Stars’ newest flagship beer, Chillum Lite, is designed to be familiar to beer drinkers. If you’ve ever tried Bud Light or Miller Lite, you know how an American light lager brewed with rice or corn tastes.

Lead brewer Meth Gunasinghe used corn and rice in formulating Chillum Lite’s recipe. Gunasinghe also used German hops and Bavarian yeast in the beer, further differentiating it from Bud Light and Miller Lite. The beer debuted in December, 2021.

According to McGarvey, in order for a beer to be labeled lite or light, it needs to adhere to Tax and Trade Bureau labeling requirements. So as a result, Chillum Lite was sent off for laboratory analysis. The goal is to have Chillum Lite widely available wherever 3 Stars beers are sold, unlike their rare, specialty beers that are only available in their taproom.

Like Gifford, McGarvey expects consumers to flock to gluten-free beverages like hard seltzer. 3 Stars isn’t the only local brewery with a hard seltzer. Atlas Brew Works, DC Brau Brewing Company, Denizens Brewing Company, Other Half Brewing, and Solace Brewing Company make it too. Smaller area producers like Patuxent Brewing Company and 7 Locks Brewing have also hitched seltzer kegs onto their proverbial lager wagons.

Bill Butcher, who founded Port City Brewing Company, believes that in addition to their pale ale and porter, their lager line of beers will be an important part of the brewery’s growth in 2022. Their rotating styles of lager beer allows drinkers to discover styles they may not drink regularly like Czech-style dark lagers, German-style smoked lagers, and Mexican-style dark lagers. These are beers that brewers love making as much as they love drinking. “Our lager series sells very well, and continues to grow,” Butcher says.

“I think you’re definitely seeing a shift to some older traditional styles like lagers,” says Matt Monahan, CEO of Other Half. He expects more breweries will add lagers into their production schedules as their customers ask for it. For now, all of Other Half’s lagers are manufactured in D.C.

Jon Humerick, co-founder and director of operations at Solace, has a different take. “Every year I hear the same thing, ‘Oh it’s craft lagers, or sours, or some old-world style that’s the next big thing,’” he says. “And every year, IPA continues to dominate.” He doesn’t see consumer tastes “changing significantly enough to knock IPA off its pedestal.”

Combatting Rising Costs

“Some folks think that our beer is really expensive, and we’re making all this money off this beer, and we’re not,” says Sankofa Beer Company co-founder Kofi Meroe. The D.C. brewery that draws influence from West Africa is best known for its hibiscus pale ale, Hypebiscus. Sankofa doesn’t have its own physical brewery. Instead, Meroe brews out of the Black Flag Brewing Company in Columbia, Maryland.

“Our beer is really expensive because I just don’t want to go under,” Meroe continues. Prices for “inputs,” a term brewers use for the raw ingredients like barley and hops, are rising. “My inputs are killing me right now,” he says.

“In terms of commodities, a lot of stuff is through the roof,” Uhrich echoes, ticking off barley, corn, and wheat. Rice, however, is more stable. “Does that mean that brewers who rely predominantly on rice as an input are going to face fewer challenges in the coming year? I don’t think that means that, no.”

Cans are another financial challenge. Meroe says he used to be able to go to one source for cans, but now needs to get them from multiple vendors. “Obviously we’re not a big player so we got cut when things got really tight because we don’t have a large contract with the suppliers,” he says.

Ball Corporation, the world’s largest aluminum beverage can manufacturer, told contractless customers in November 2021 that their minimum orders for printed cans must increase from one truckload to five come January 2022. That translates to a previous minimum order of 204,000 cans to more than one million. This new minimum equates to 6,000 kegs, which is more beer than the majority of D.C.’s small producers manufacture in a year. According to the Brewers Association, a trade group, only four D.C. breweries produced more than 6,000 kegs worth of beer in 2020.

Oregon Sen. Roy Wyden, who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, sent Ball Corporation a letter at the end of last month asking the company to delay implementation of their new policy for non-contracted customers. Ball notified the senator’s office and the Brewers Association that it will postpone implementation to March 2022.

Predicting Keg Sales

Continuing economic challenges are a given for brewers. But so much of the growth and decline of a market depends on consumers and their heavily changing habits. Draft sales haven’t returned to 2019 levels, and there is still a residual shift to beers packaged in bottles and cans. 

Uhrich says that national draft sales are roughly 25 percent less than pre-pandemic levels. This may be attributable to more beer making its way into cans as much as to a decline in dining out. Breweries such as Port City may choose to sell their beers in bottles and cans if they have the means to do so.

Butcher, of Port City, believes his company’s biggest challenge is trying to forecast how sales and production will look in 2022. He says that normal trends have gone away, and the outlook on numbers changes daily.

Butcher notes on-premise keg sales have been slow coming back in D.C. Despite the sleepy sales of kegged beer in bars, some well loved lagers are turning over at a decent clip. At The Pub and the People, Port City’s Downright Pilsner leads draft sales. Whereas America’s number one selling beer, Bud Light, moves around one case per month at the same bar.

The consequences of being unable to predict keg sales mean brewers must be nimble and find ways to make up for their losses. But if consumers’ habits change based on COVID-19 transmission, the job of forecasting brewery sales shifts from predicting purchases to epidemiology. 

Staffing & Labor Models

Finding, hiring, and retaining employees poses a problem to breweries in need of quality staff. “As with any industry, there’s lots of jobs that no one wants to do in brewing,” Monahan says. He asserts that he pays well and offers good benefits. Other Half has alumni from other D.C. breweries like 3 Stars, DC Brau, and Right Proper Brewing Company on its team.

A brewer in the D.C. region typically makes $16-$20 an hour, according to interviews and job listings. Some may leave to seek jobs at larger breweries that may have more resources. Others may leave the industry all together in search of higher wages, more benefits, and better hours. Like bars and restaurants, smaller breweries are trying to do more with fewer employees.

It’s hard to know how to staff a taproom when you don’t know who will show up. “We have a bar that can hold 600 people, and we’ve maybe seen it filled up three or four times,” Monahan says of Other Half’s Ivy City location. “We expected it to be like that every weekend.” The brewery celebrated its one-year anniversary in October 2021.

The operational changes that result can be felt when walking into a taproom. Before the pandemic, bartenders or servers could explain what makes some beers sour or why a particular beer is made from rice. Brewers lament that these interactions have largely been replaced with QR-code ordering.

At the Solace Outpost in Falls Church, Humerick notes that the restaurant portion of the business doesn’t have a host station or servers who come to the table. “It’s seat yourself, and you have to go to the counter to order,” he says. “Since the Falls Church Outpost opened in June of 2020, we were still operating under a lot of COVID restrictions so the model made sense. We’ve found that it works, so we’ve kept it. The Outpost at Navy Yard will use the same service model and will also include QR ordering from your table.”

For those completely converted to QR code ordering there are breweries who will no doubt continue it. Will breweries continue a trend of a reduced labor force? There’s a good chance of it, and with that we’re likely to see competing models on how to run a brewery.

***

Even with these challenges, more breweries are coming. Meroe expresses his excitement for more Black-owned breweries popping up in the District, like Urban Garden Brewing. “I also think there’s going to be a lot of movement from smaller breweries getting their start,” he says, listing Black Viking Brewing, Montgomery County’s first Black-owned beer brand.

In addition to forthcoming small new breweries and beer brands, breweries from the suburbs are also coming to the District. While Solace will populate the Navy Yard neighborhood, Barred in DC reports Crooked Run Fermentation will operate a business in the Union Market area. They currently have locations in Leesburg and Sterling, Virginia.

For these forthcoming beer brands, brewpubs, and breweries, a thirsty public eagerly awaits.

When MayorMuriel Bowser’s stay-at-home order took effect, ending on-premise alcohol sales, D.C.’s beer and cider makers were forced to close their taprooms and try to recoup lost revenue that would have come from bars, restaurants, concert venues, and stadiums serving their products.

The creative ways in which these producers have continued to operate support D.C.’s hyperlocal economy and small businesses from Maryland to Maine.

Here’s a sampling of their latest offerings you can sip at home:

3 Stars Brewing Company6400 Chillum Place NW; (202) 847-3755; 3starsbrewing.com

An offshoot of the CSA model is CSB—Community Supported Beer—which 3 Stars is now offering. Tipplers can choose between three tiers: the Weekender for $32, the Enthusiast at $70, and the Get It Poppin’ for $90.

The Weekender gets you a gallon and a quart of beer, the Enthusiast buys you more than two gallons and a quart, and the Get it Poppin’ buys you just under two and a half gallons and includes a bottle of the sought-after Illuminati or Funkerdome beers.

To meet the demand for fresh new beers, 3 Stars staff members are exercising their creativity. “We’re pulling some beer off and doing different conditions and also brewing small batch stuff for it, too,” says brewerMeth Gunasinghe.

If the CSB is too much of a commitment, you can still buy smaller quantities of the brewery’s flagship and experimental beers. Peppercorn Saison is $12 for a six-pack and Citra Lemon Saison is $14 for a four-pack of 16-ounce cans. Vintage bottles like Funkerdome 2018 #4, an American wild ale from chardonnay barrels costs $25. 3 Stars offers pick-up and delivery.

Bluejacket300 Tingey St. SE; (202) 524-4862; bluejacketdc.com

Bluejacket has been canning more beer than ever before during the pandemic. Neighborhood Restaurant Group has been selling Bluejacket beer through its new venture, Neighborhood Provisions, an online marketplace featuring everything from meals to cocktails to pantry items.

While a complete shift in business models is never easy, Bluejacket has done it with grace. Breweries all over the country have had to dump draft beer due to a lack of packaging materials, but Bluejacket was able to successfully can the beer that was earmarked for drinking on site before and after Nationals games. Look forward to barrel-aged beers that are currently being prepped for sale from the brewery. Bluejacket beers range from $12 to $18 per four-pack. They’re available via Neighborhood Provisions or for pick up at the brewery.

ANXO Cidery711 Kennedy St. NW; (202) 722-2696; anxodc.com

A combination of CSA memberships has turned this cidery and restaurant into an agriculture and beverage broker. They offer a biweekly War Shore Seafood Box for $50 and a Smithfield meat box, which now has a waiting list. If customers don’t want to commit to a box they can buy a la carte provisions such as baguettes from Bakery de France in Rockville for $4.49, Spanish olives for $5.99, and a pound of Maine mussels for $6.99. ANXO selling raw seafood directly to customers would have been unthinkable three months ago, when the only way to eat their Maine mussels was at their restaurant in Truxton Circle.

You can also order cider from Spain and perry (pear cider) from France directly from ANXO’s cellar to your door. A fancy French bottle of Eric Bordelet Poire Authentique runs $15.99 and a bottle from Spanish cider maker Trabanco’s Cosecha Propia costs $10.99; both can be delivered directly to your curb. A four-pack of 12-ounce cans of ANXO’s flagship Cidre Blanc costs $11.99. 

ANXO’s beer selection includes an impressive range of regional American craft (Aslin and Union Craft Brewing), American sours (Referend, Oxbow, and Wooden Robot) and Belgian Lambic beers (Oud Beersel and Drie Fonteinen). 

Beer, wine, spirits, and cider are all available for pickup or delivery within the District, but delivery requires a $35 minimum. Beer and spirits orders must be accompanied by a food purchase.

Hellbender Brewing Company5788 2nd St. NE; (202) 827-8768; hellbenderbeer.com

Hellbender debuted an innovative ale that’s been popular during the pandemic. Serves You Rice, a purple rice saison, is a collaboration beer brewed with Chincoteague, Virginia’s Black Narrows Brewing Company and USA Rice. Last year, USA Rice included the Hellbender tasting room in their Think Rice Truck Tour and the brewery hosted a rice-themed trivia night.

Josh Chapman, a former Bluejacket brewer who was once a chef at Evening Star Cafe in Alexandria, owns and operates Black Narrows. His brewery champions local ingredients and uses a proprietary strain of yeast collected from Chincoteague oysters. The oyster yeast was cultured and grown by Jasper Yeast lab in northern Virginia. The purple rice saison uses Blanca Isabel, a variety of purple rice grown exclusively in Rayne, Louisiana.

USA Rice is a global advocate for the U.S. rice industry, and while rice has famously been in Budweiser since the 1800s, this kind of beer, purple rice saison, is as new as it is popular. It’s not, however, gluten free. A 32-ounce crowler of Serves You Rice is available for takeout for $11 at the brewery.

“We sold out of six packs in the first four days, but we have plenty of kegs to fill crowlers for at least a few weeks” says head brewer and co-owner Ben Evans.

So far this month, Hellbender has had Swizzler and Timber Pizza Co. pop up for to-go sales outside of the brewery and they recently teamed up with Sapidus Farms for ongoing sales of “Happy Oysters” using Hellbender as a pick-up point. Place orders on the Sapidus website by Tuesday night for Thursday pick-up. 

Soul Megasoulmega.com 

When Soul Mega started selling their World Wide Pale Ale in 2019, they became the third black-owned brewery in the history of D.C. Run by Howard University graduates Elliott Johnson and Jahi Wartts, Soul Mega does not own a taproom or production facility. All the would-be pints at The Pub & The Peopleor Present Company aren’t being poured. Soul Mega launched at the Trill Grill, a music and food truck festival headlined by Rick Ross held at the St. Elizabeths campus’ Gateway Pavilion.

The future of festivals with flowing beer is unknown, but you can support Soul Mega and other local businesses at the same time. Order a sandwich, fries, and Soul Mega’s pale ale from Mr. Braxton Bar & Kitchen in Park View for $17.95. HalfSmoke in Shaw also sells cans of World Wide Pale Ale for $1 with any wing purchase. Johnson says he’s been beta testing delivery and estimates that in a week or two they could be in a position to launch. Check their website for updates.

Beer industry employees in D.C. earn some of the highest average wages in the nation, according to the Brewers Association’s 2018 Economic Impact report. Workers make an average of $68,469 annually, second only to beer industry workers in New Jersey. But average earnings for brewery workers in D.C. are 41 percent below the national average, according to statistics furnished by Beer Institute chief economist Michael Uhrich.

By these measures, those who work inside breweries seem to make less than their peers who distribute and sell beer. A look through salary records on the company review site Glassdoor reveals that brewers in the U.S. make an average salary of $38,226. 

The District’s thirst for local beer and these figures made this writer wonder if the brewery employees testing water chemistry, macerating fruit, tending to yeasts, and filling cans have a good quality of life. More than a dozen current and retired brewers and brewery owners opened up about their wages, their work, and why they do what they do.

“If you want to stay in the industry, you need to marry well, and a lot of us have done that,” says Bill Madden, former owner of Mad Fox Brewing Company. It’s a common refrain. Talk to enough brewers and they’ll tell you their spouses, working in professions outside of brewing, tend to be the breadwinners. This can cause tension if one or both partners have unrealistic salary expectations of the beer industry.

Madden completed the Master Brewers Certificate Program at the University of California, Davis in 1995. He entered the industry as head-brewer-in-training for Capitol City Brewing Company, earning $30,000. “Once we had five units and I was overseeing all five breweries, I topped out with them around 50K,” Madden says. That was in 2004. 

Once he founded Mad Fox in 2010, he says his salary increased, but declined to say how much. Toward the end of the brewery’s run in July, Madden’s head brewer moved on, leaving him in charge of all facets of operations from brewing to distribution.

“I was working non-stop for six months,” he says. “Not taking a day off. At least 10 hours a day if not more.” While the beer industry supported Madden for 25 years, he says financial perks for brewers are hard to come by.

Hellbender Brewing Company CEO and head brewer Ben Evans puts in similar hours. “I’m in the brewery about 90 hours a week working,” he says. “Doing everything—literally. I’m not just the head brewer, I’m working the business end, I’m doing taproom managing, I’m managing our social media. I couldn’t have a family if I wanted to right now.” But, he says, “I absolutely love the industry I’m in and what I’m doing.”

When asked about the $68,469 average salary quoted in the Brewers Association report, Evans thought it sounded surprisingly high. “I’ve been paying myself essentially a fraction of what I do my employees, essentially making sure every penny outside of what they get paid is going into operating costs or expansion,” he says. 

“[$68,469] sounds like a lot,” 3 Stars Brewing Company brewer Meth Gunasinghe says. Gunasinghe has spent the last three years there and says he “wouldn’t trade it for anything.” Despite his reaction to the statistics, he says he’s seen a steady increase in pay as he’s risen through the ranks from assistant brewer to brewer.

According to the Brewers Association report, the District offers higher salaries than surrounding states: Maryland is listed at $48,864 ($19,605 less than D.C.), while Virginia’s average salary was $45,367 ($23,102 less than D.C.). 

“I think the Maryland and Virginia ones sound more accurate,” Evans says. “Ours would be way down if we factored mine in for the three of us [in production]. I know our guys are both over [$40K] but I don’t know what’s bringing it up to $68K … I would assume that there’s some ownership salaries in there that are skewing the numbers.”

The average wage numbers for the beer industry provided by the Brewers Association are higher than the wages of brewers, according to those interviewed for this story. Perhaps the numbers are being inflated by a combination of the inclusion of the salaries of distributors, retailers, and brewery owners.

While the beer consumer has seen a significant growth of breweries over the last decade, the labor market in brewing has seen some bloodletting in regards to earnings. Uhrich, from the Beer Institute, a national trade association for the brewing industry, importers, and industry suppliers, details a troubling trend. “Between 2008 and 2018, average earnings among brewery workers fell by an average of 8 percent per year, falling in 2018 to an average of only $45,000 per year.”

One local brewer, who requested anonymity, reported making $60,000 annually and said they believe their salary was high for brewers in the District. At their last post in a different D.C. brewery, they earned significantly less: $42,000.

Brewers have stayed in the industry despite falling salaries over the last decade. Madden, for example, felt that a big perk was being a part of the brewing community. “There’s all sorts of benefits that pop up there,” he says, ticking off a few. “Prestige, access, visiting other breweries and having the welcome mat put out for you. Let’s not even forget free beer.”

“I love brewing and I love the family aspect” says Sam Puffenbarger, a brewer at Alexandria’s Port City Brewing Company. He took an immediate $45K pay cut when he left a well paying environmental policy job for a brewing job at Atlas Brew Works. “But we do it because we love it,” he says. “If you do just a little research you know that you are not going to get rich as a brewer.”

He’s brewed at four breweries of different sizes that produce anywhere between 4,000 and 190,000 barrels of beer per year, and has seen how different companies treat their employees and how work culture differs. “Based on my small data set, it varies widely,” he says. “As a whole, I wish the industry would improve on salaries and benefits. It is a unique job that requires a lot of shitty, manual work, but also requires a lot of understanding of the science.”

Puffenbarger says Port City “is by far the best brewery I have brewed at as far as salary and benefits.” The company matches his 401(k), offers medical, dental, vision, and life insurance, provides monthly cell phone credits, and foots the bill for trips to gatherings like the Great American Beer Festival and the Craft Brewers Conference.

He also gets reimbursed for professional development events and three weeks paid time off, plus a free beer after his shift is complete, a monthly gift card to spend on beer and merchandise, and allotments twice a year for brewing boots and work clothes.

Port City is the D.C. area’s largest brewery, which explains why Puffenbarger has a meatier salary and benefits. Its founder, Bill Butcher, estimates Port City produced 16,000 barrels of beer so far this year.

According to Uhrich, many of the new breweries that have opened since 2008 remain very small.

“Smaller firms tend to pay less, and as a result, average earnings among brewery workers have fallen,” he explains. “In many industries, the larger, more established firms pay a lot more than the smallest ones, and there aren’t currently any major brewers located in D.C.” The Brewers Association defines small brewers as those who make six million barrels of beer or less annually.

The biggest brewery in D.C. history was the Christian Heurich Brewing Company. At its height, the company could produce 200,000 barrels of beer annually. Christian Heurich was a brewer prior to becoming a brewery owner. The conversation of compensation has been on brewers’ lips for centuries.

Heurich’s grandson, Gary Heurich, wrote The Christian Heurich Brewing Company, 1872-1956, published by the Washington Historical Society in the 1970s. Addressing labor practices at his grandfather’s brewery, Gary wrote about a salary request in the brewery at the turn of the 20th Century:

“The new brewmaster was Carl Eisenmenger who held that position until 1898. One day in 1898 he approached Mr. Heurich and demanded a raise. Mr. Heurich asked him what he would have to do if he (the brewmaster) died. Mr. Eisenmenger answered that Mr. Heurich would have to get a new brewmaster. To that Mr. Heurich replied, “Consider yourself dead.” 

His name is Henry Benesch, but everyone calls him “Zadie.” The word means “grandfather” or “storyteller” in Yiddish, but typically uses the spellings “Zayde” or “Zaide.” He’s from what’s now the Czech Republic—the country famous for being the birthplace of the pale Pilsner beer.

“I don’t like light beer, but I like the darker beers” Benesch says. He also likes coffee, bourbon, and cigars. His favorite beer is Blackwing, Union Craft Brewing’sdark lager. Benesch has been volunteering at the Baltimore-based brewery with a local D.C. following for the past seven years. Co-founder Adam Benesch is one of Henry’s 16 grandchildren. 

When his grandson and the other founders started the brewery, Henry says he hung around “until he got in their way.” Then he earned the task of making flats—the cardboard boxes that hold cases of beer. 

Born in Baltimore in 1920, Henry was too young to remember when the sale of beer was illegal. But some things Henry recalls easily. “I must’ve been 9 or 10 and I was selling newspapers when the Lindbergh baby was kidnapped,” he says.

Serving in World War II as a second lieutenant, Henry went first to New Guinea and then to Luzon, Philippines in 1942. “I was requested by the president of the United States to join his Army in 1942 and I was assigned to aid the mission.”

On Jan. 19, 2020, Henry will celebrate his 100th birthday. He isn’t sure what’s kept him alive for a full century. “I can’t answer that, but I say I drank from the fountain of youth when I was 17 and I smoked cigars when I was 22 and I’m still smoking cigars and drinking bourbon.”

“Zadie is the coolest person I’ve ever met,” says Union Craft Brewing co-founder Kevin Blodger. “I truly believe he must be the oldest brewery employee [technically a volunteer] in the country, if not the world. It’s really an honor to have a member of the greatest generation here.” 

“I’m here for a reason and I go with the flow,” Henry says. “If I get up in the morning, I come in. If I don’t get up in the morning, I don’t come in.” Even though he says he drank from the fountain of youth, he still has to endure the trials of aging.

Henry has stopped driving, for example. “There’s so many things I had to give up,” he says. “I’m a very independent person and now I have to rely on people.” But despite the inherent difficulties in getting older, Henry has set a stellar example for his family and his colleagues at Union Craft Brewing. “At 99, he’s still here almost every day folding boxes and riding around the brewery on his [tricycle],” Blodger says. “His badass-ness just rubs off on all of us.” 

When he’s not drinking Blackwing, Henry also enjoys Union Craft Brewing’s gose, Old Pro. “Old Pro is a nice summer beer,” he says. “It reminds me of lemonade or Champagne. I like the taste.” In 2014, the judges at the Great American Beer Festival agreed with Henry. Old Pro received a silver medal in the German-style sour ale category at the world’s largest commercial beer competition.

“Zay Day,” the brewery’s 100th birthday party for Henry, will take place at the brewery on Jan. 19. It will feature $1.00 Blackwing cans and a box folding competition.

Union Craft Brewing Company, 1700 W 41st St., Baltimore, Md.; (410) 539-7344; unioncraftbrewing.com

Neighborhood Restaurant Group is opening its first concept outside of the D.C. area, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The Grand Delancey will debut in the fall inside Market Line—a 120,000-square-foot food hall located below Delancey Street boasting 30 food vendors. “We are targeting opening in October,” says beer director and partner Greg Engert. 

Engert began building a name for himself with NRG when Rustico Slaters Lane and ChurchKey opened in 2006 and 2009, respectively. Since then he’s developed beer lists for all of the company’s restaurants and bars including The Sovereign and Owen’s Ordinary. The company added a brewery into the mix when Bluejacket opened in 2013. Engert also spearheads the annual Snallygaster beer festival.

Save for the fast casual sector, it’s not often that a homegrown D.C. restaurant group makes a foray north. It’s far more common for New York restaurateurs to test the market in the District. NRG Founder Michael Babin says his company took its time finding the right opportunity outside of D.C. 

When it opens, The Grand Delancey will boast 50 draft lines, two British-style beers on cask, as well as 40 to 50 bottles and cans. Engert says of the bottles and cans on the list, 10 to 12 beers will be classics that should be on every list “no matter how mundane they seem to people nowadays.”

Belgian bottles like Saison Dupont and Orval will complete the list as well as an extensive cellar selection of some of the hottest beer styles today, like hazy IPA, fruited sour ales, and adjunct stouts. He hopes to showcase some Mid-Atlantic beers from both NRG’s own Bluejacket along with the red-hot Richmond brewery The Veil.

In addition to 45 draft lines, five lines will feature side pull faucets traditionally found in the Czech Republic. Classic Belgian beers from the likes of De La Senne, De Ranke, Blaugies, and Cantillon that are available at ChurchKey will also be available at The Grand Delancey. Building on the classics are New York breweries: Brooklyn’s Folksbier, Threes Brewing, Grimm Artisanal Ales, Other Half, and the upstate brewers Suarez Family and Hudson Valley.

Because drafts and cask-poured beers are required to stay in the bar, The Grand Delancey will have four and six packs of cans for purchase to be consumed in the food hall. Customers can also choose to bring food from the food hall into the bar such as dumplings from Nom Wah, sausage from Schaller & Weber, or a hamburger from Veselka.

“I still believe there’s an upper echelon of brewers in the world that need to be poured at all costs at all times,” Engert says. “De La Senne, Mahrs, and Moor Beer Company, people like Hill Farmstead. These are breweries where if you can get their beer you must pour it. That goes for ChurchKey, that goes for The Sovereign, and that goes for The Grand Delancey. In that way, things are not going to change.”

The Grand Delancey inside Market Line, 115 Delancey Street, New York; marketline.nyc

Last Tuesday Sierra Nevada Brewing Company brewed Resilience Butte County Proud IPA to benefit those affected by the Camp Fire in Northern California. Then they asked every brewery in America to do the same.

Answering the call in the immediate D.C. area are 3 Stars Brewing Company, Atlas Brew Works, Bluejacket, Port City Brewing Company, and Right Proper Shaw Brewpub.

The Camp Fire in Butte County that started earlier this month was finally contained on Nov. 25. It’s the deadliest and most destructive fire in California history. It scorched more than 153,000 acres, destroyed close to 14,000 homes, and has claimed the lives of 85 people at last count. About a dozen people are still missing.

The concept of the fundraiser is simple: Sierra Nevada created the recipe, suppliers donated the ingredients, local brewers make the beer, and 100 percent of sales go to the victims via the Sierra Nevada Camp Fire Relief Fund. As of Friday there were more than 1,200 participating breweries.

Sierra Nevada founder Ken Grossman says he’s working with malt, hop, and yeast suppliers to provide breweries with what they need to participate, making it possible for breweries to donate 100 percent of sales to the fund. Breweries must sign up by Dec. 7.

Several local brewers had their malt suppliers donate barley, sticking to only pale and crystal malts per Sierra Nevada’s recipe. “They know their way around a hoppy beer,” says Port City founder Bill Butcher.

In the case of Bluejacket and Right Proper, Brewers Supply Group donated barley and the two breweries each donated Cascade and Centennial hops. Atlas’ supply partner, Country Malt, donated all of the ingredients for their batch.

“Atlas will donate 100 percent of Resilience IPA sales to the relief fund for Butte County,” says CEO Justin Cox. “We are hoping to release the beer in our tap room, if the yeast gods smile on us, on New Years Eve. Corey Poole, our director of operations, and I will be working the bar that 1 p.m. to 7 p.m. shift and donating our tips to the fund as well.”

3 Stars’ co-founder Dave Coleman says he’s brewing the Resilience Butte County Proud IPA this week and will have it available in the taproom later this month. Briess Malt and Yakima Chief Hops sponsored the batch.

“We’re not sure that Sierra Nevada could have foreseen the massive response they received, but we’re proud of Ken Grossman and his team for their initiative and of our brewing colleagues for their generosity” Butcher says. “We plan to brew Resilience IPA on Dec. 18, and tap it in mid January.”

Other participating breweries in the region include Maryland’s Brewers Alley, Guinness Open Gate Brewery in Baltimore, and True Respite. In northern Virginia, Chubby Squirrel Brewing Company, Crooked Run Brewing, Lake Anne Brew House, and Twinpanzee Brewing Co. will brew a relief beer.

Sierra Nevada’s specification is a beer with 6.7 percent ABV. It’s impossible to be certain that all the local beers will be to Sierra’s specifications given that brewers yeast is a microorganism and cannot be told to stop turning sugar into alcohol. Some could be stronger, approaching 8 percent ABV while others could be weaker, closer to 6 percent ABV.

Beer lovers could set out to try all five, one from 3 Stars, Atlas, Bluejacket, Port City, and Right Proper Brewpub to see which they liked best. In theory, they’re all the same. But in practice? You be the judge.

Photo courtesy California National Guard

Omar Al-Nidawi is a member of the DC Homebrewers Club. Known for his traditional British and Belgian style beers, the District resident has impressed many club colleagues, including the club’s first-ever female president, Sara Bondioli. “I’ve tasted many excellent beers from Omar,” Bondioli says. “You don’t see a lot of English mild beers in the wild, so it’s always a treat when Omar makes one.”

To try his award-winning beers you’ll need to attend a DC Homebrewers Meeting. The next one is at Iron Horse Taproom on Oct. 24 at 7 p.m. There, you can ask Al-Nidawi how a dentist’s degree prepared him for his hobby.

Born in Baghdad in 1980, months after the Iranian revolution and a few months before the Iran-Iraq War, Al-Nidawi was brought into a world of conflict. Al-Nidawi’s father was in the military and he remembers a summer visit with him, close to the border in southern Iraq, when sudden flashes of artillery lit up the night.

While the majority of the fighting in the Iran-Iraq War occurred outside urban areas, in 1987 the two counties traded missile attacks in what became known as the War of the Cities. Al-Nidawi says that some of his neighbors were killed.

Remembering grade school days, Al-Nidawi says while the war did not disrupt daily lessons, he and his classmates felt deeply the overall tone of militarization. “We had a flag salute ceremony every Thursday and one of the teachers would fire a gun in the air,” he recalls. “You don’t normally have that in an elementary school in front of 6- and 7-year-olds.”

After the war, after Desert Storm in the 90s, and before he left his home country in 2007, Al-Nidawi remembers four breweries with beer for sale in Baghdad. “Some of them had a robust flavor profile,” he says. “I think one of them was kind of on the paler and sweeter side, but another one of them called Ferida had quite a hop kick to it and very noticeable bitterness.”

Graduating from the School of Dentistry at Baghdad University in 2002, Al-Nidawi spent the next several years practicing but felt hopeless at the same time. “You’re trapped politically, you’re trapped socially, you can’t leave the country, you’re an international pariah, the regime doesn’t let you speak,” he says.

Certified as a dentist, he says he practiced for about four years in public clinics in and around Baghdad and then about a year in southern Iraq in the marshlands near Basra. He recalls a “really miserable quarantine facility where they housed all the tuberculosis patients so they needed a special dentist unit because it’s a highly contagious disease.” But without electricity to run the dentist’s chair, it was pointless.

He obtained a passport in 2004, and enrolled at Columbia University in 2007. Attending the School of International and Public Affairs he gained his master’s degree and today works as a Middle East analyst, doing business advising and consulting.

In his home brewing, Al-Nidawi draws inspiration from Iraqi and Middle Eastern ingredients. “Iraqis have a very special relationship with date palms” he says, noting that the trees provided Mesopotamians with everything from food to shelter.

“I think dates were often in one form or another part of Sumerian beer recipes, as the hymn to Ninkasi suggests,” Al-Nidawi says. Ninkasi was the Sumerian goddess of beer. “I like to keep that tradition alive.”

While he’s been brewing since 2011, Al-Nidawi started entering competitions only in the last three years, during which he’s won more than a dozen awards and accolades. His English porters and English dark milds have placed, earning him medals and ribbons in competitions in New York City, Philadelphia, Virginia, and Maryland.

In addition to finding Al-Nidawi at DC Homebrewers meetings, you can also occasionally find him talking recipes and ingredients at the 3 Stars Brewing Company homebrew shop on weekends, open from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturdays and 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Sundays.

Before commercial brewing, Matt Humbard found success as a microbiologist. He researched antibiotic resistance and breast cancer biomarkers and even saw his work published in publications like Nature, a multidisciplinary science journal. 

He brings this unique background to his most recent brewing venture, Patent Brewing Company coming to Prince George’s County. Humbard previously co-founded the now defunct Handsome Beer Company and oversaw nearly every single production run of their beers as a contract brewer.

Jace Gonnerman, beverage director at Meridian Pint, Smoke & Barrel, and Brookland Pint, is eager to see how Patent’s product will differ from Humbard’s past efforts. “Unfortunately in his last project, a lot of his creativity was restrained by circumstances,” he says. “That shouldn’t be the case this time around. This project is about as unique as it gets.”

The brewery name, Patent, reflects Humbard’s intent to stand out. He’s currently looking at properties in Prince George’s County along with three co-founders, wife Krissi Humbard, and Lauren and Matt Geist.” The Humbards live in Hyattsville and the Geists live in Fort Washington and the team anticipates a fall 2019 opening pending unforeseen setbacks.

“We’re looking at spaces now and one of the other advantages of not installing a brewhouse [immediately] is it collapses that timeline,” Humbard says. His model of opening first without a brewing system is a unique one. He’ll be buying wort from other breweries in the D.C. area and will be fermenting the sugary liquid into beer at Patent. This strategy is more common for cideries and wineries, taking apple juice or grape must and turning it into an alcoholic beverage on-site.

“It’s not much different than walking into a brewery and buying a sack of grain. It’s just one step further down the road from that—actually buying the wort,” Humbard explains. He plans to buy the wort from other from local breweries and turn it into beer in his cellar.

Humbard and team are planning a taproom-style model where Patent will serve from six to a dozen of its own beers on draft at any given time in constant rotation. “If I’m in charge of making the beer and fermenting it, there’s no limitation on the type of experimentation we would like to do.”

He’s embracing German and Belgian beer styles. “When you hear about someone purchasing wort and then fermenting it, you think of the Lambic blenders of Belgium” Gonnerman says. Perhaps the most famous example is Gueuzerie Tilquin. This brewery in Belgium’s Senne valley uses wort from highly regarded Lambic brewers like Brussels’ Cantillon.

Another example is the zoigl beer of Germany. Some towns will share a single brewhouse with only one brew kettle, but a variety of beers are produced because families take on their own fermentations at home. Each beer has a different taste even though they came from the same kettle. Patent plans to use unique combinations of organisms and blends of different beers to create a diverse portfolio.

“I’m trying to embrace these ancient Belgian and German cultural pieces,” Humbard says, referring to his use of a variety of yeasts, bacteria, and microorganisms. Humbard talks of making Berliner Weisse, a type of German beer, with lactobacillus and pediococcus. “The difference might be subtle or lost to some people, but it matters to me.” He currently maintains 18 different Kveik blends of yeast from Norway, Lithuania, and Russia, as well as 35 different brettanomyces isolates, and 20 different lactic acid bacteria.

By working with a diverse portfolio of organisms, Humbard is setting himself up to do work currently unseen in the Mid-Atlantic. The majority of commercial beers available throughout the D.C. metro region, and the world, are made with a single strain of yeast. Patent will also manufacture single-yeast beers like a Pilsner and an IPA.

“I’m nervous and excited because I’ve never been happier than when I’m making beer,” Humbard adds. “I just hope that people can feel my enthusiasm for it in what we can offer, and I know we’re doing something strange and different.”

Patent Brewing Company, facebook.com/patentbrewing