Category Archives: DC

Beer options in Washington DC

The Washington Post has a couple articles talking about craft beer options in the city.

Beer Paradise in logan circle

Rustico in Alexandria

RFD for an evening of great beers and delicious food pairings

I forgot to post this one, tomorrow night (thursday) RFD is hosting evening of great beers and delicious food pairings. Here is Dave’s email on the subject

Howdy Rowdies and Holy Goldie!
Let’s hear it for the girls!
ONE NIGHT ONLY
Thursday November 15th
Author Lucy Saunders comes to RFD for an evening of great beers and
delicious food pairings. Lucy is COOL! She has written several books on the subject
and is a true expert in both cooking with beer and pairing foods with beers.
Check out her sites.
_https://www.beercook.com/_ (https://www.beercook.com/)
_https://grillingwithbeer.com/_ (https://grillingwithbeer.com/)
I gotta sit down for a second. Diane is hosting this event. Lucy and the big
boss Diane Alexander herself (I’m in big trouble) will present an evening of
yummy beers and foods including these courses which will be paired with
crazy good beers from Dave’s stash!
Bittersweet salad with bittergreens and chocolate
Carrot Ginger Curry Soup
Cocoa Rubbed Pork Shoulder with Ancho Chile Sauce (paired with two
contrasting beers)
Chocolate Noir Cake with Framboise sauce
Food made with chocolate? food made with beer? who wrote these rules you
ask?
THERE ARE NO RULES! WE CAN’T HANDLE THE RULES!
Lucy will have copies of her new book “Grilling with Beer” available for
purchase and signing at this event. Tickets are only $40.00 for a multiple
course evening of wonderful pairings. Don’t miss this chance to meet one of the
beer worlds best writers. Call RFD at 202-289-2030 NOW and get your tickets
for this truly special evening. Doors open at 6 we will try our best to start
at 7!
As always a tip’o’the bottlecap and a please stay safe to all my buddies all
over the world from
BigPoppaHandPump /aka BeerGuyDave!

Smithsonian National Zoo + Beer = Brew at the Zoo

The Smithsonian runs a fund raising event every year called the Brew at the Zoo. I got a last minute ticket for this years event. They had beer from over 20 microbreweries, and served hors d’oeuvres from area restaurants. The price of the ticket included a Beer Glass, Food, and all the beer samples you can drink.

As you can see there was a large turn out from the local brewers

Capitol City Brewing Company, The District Chophouse and Brewery, Wild Goose Brewery, Clipper City Brewing Company, Great American Restuarants, Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery, Hook & Ladder Brewing Company, Shenandoah Brewing Company, Gordon Biersch Brewery and Restaurant, Fordham Brewery, Widmer Brothers Brewing, Old Dominion Brewery, Pilsner Urquell, Peroni Nastro Azzurro, Cristal, Cusqueña, Aguila, Boston Beer Company, Sierra Nevada Brewing, Harpoon Brewery, Brewery Ommegang, Magic Hat Brewing Company, Paleewong Trading Company, Anchor Brewing Company, Dogfish Head Brewery, EX. Matt Brewing Company, Abita Brewing Company, Allagash Brewing Company, Victory Brewing Company, Rogue Ales, North Coast Brewing Company, Belekus Imports, Premium Distributors, Captial Eagle, Inc., and Global Brewers Guild.

I didn’t have as many beers as some of the people I was there with but my personal beer list was

Clipper City’s Loose Cannon

Ommegang’s Hennepin

Brasserie Lefèbvre SA’s Blanche De Bruxelles

Brouwerij Riva SA’s Lucifer

North Coast’s Red Seal

Cusquena

Dog Fish Head’s 60 minute

Clipper City’s Oxford Raspberry

Sweet Water’s American Pale Ale Thanks Nick for the end of night fill my glass beyond the sample line.

Two events at the Brick

Notes from Dave at the Brick about two up coming events.

TWO events coming up, both are at the BRICKSKELLER
A SPECIAL BRICKSKELLER EVENT
APRIL 4TH

ONE NIGHT ONLY
Children’s Hospital Benefit Tasting

Join the Tuppers as they taste their 15,000th beer. Bob and Ellie will share highlights as well as the most embarrassing moments of their 30 year quest for great beer. Several brewers are bringing beers so new or so rare that not even the Tuppers have tasted them.

Beers include:

Tiny Tim, a “quirky ale” from Brewers’ Art

A Dry-Hopped Maibock from Jason Oliver at Gordon Biersch Stinky

An exceptionally hoppy beer from Starr Hill’s Mark Thompson

A new beer from Bill Madden’s new brewing home at Vintage 50

Holy Sheet Belgian Abbey style ale from Clipper City’s Heavy Seas selection

A specially dry-hopped-in-cask firkin of Tuppers’ Hop Pocket Al

A sample of 1988 Thomas Hardy’s Ale from the Tuppers’ own cellar. (ThomasHardy is our top rated beer of all time.)

….and more

watch Tuppers webpage for more updates!

All attendees get a souvenir Tuppers’ glass 100% of the admission price will be donated to Children’s Hospital

TICKETS ARE $50 for this benefit event at the good old Brickskeller

Call 202-293-1885 for reservations.

We will try to start the evening as close to 7pm as possible, doors open at 6 for those wishing to order off the menu before the evening starts.

Bruce Williams of Scotlands famous Heather Ale Brewery will appear at the Brickskeller April 10 and 11! We’re doing a cool program as always! Bruce is one of our favorite guests, we like him so much we’ve even stopped asking him to stop lifting his skirt on stage!!!!!

Bruce always has a wonderful program for these events, this one is no exception!

The first half of the show will be a hop Quiz – guess the hop – multiple choice, good fun and it’ll get y’all all lubed up for the second half onslaught of fantastic ales from the land of the kilted gods….. floor show, powerpoint misappropriation and selected abusive remarks will more than likely abound. Guests are warned that swearing may dominate the punctuation towards the end of the evening, but he’s got a good brogue, most of hiswords you can’t understand anyway! As always, doors open at 6, we really do try to start at 7 honest! WE LOVE BRUCE!!!!!!! c’mon down and welcome him back to DC! Tickets for this event are $35.00 and can be had by calling the BRICKSKELLER at 202-293-1885

As always a tip’o’the bottlecap and a please stay safe to all my buddies all over the world from BigPoppaHandPump /aka BeerGuyDave!

Larry Bell Tasting at the Brickskeller

Dave sent out the following email about the Larry Bell tasting.

Tickets for the March 7th and 8th
Larry Bell tasting are now on sale!
Larry is the founder of Michigan’s great Bell’s Brewing Company (formerly Kalamazoo Brewing) and an old pal of the Brick. Join us as we welcome the lad back to the scene of his underage drinking! Larry always brings GREAT beers to these events, as soon as the list is confirmed I’ll send out a list that I promise you my friends my dear, dear friends is a list of beers so fine so wonderful so overly tastified so posolutely slurperific it is guaranteed that’s right I said guaranteed to stun the converts and bewilder the uninitiated!
This is going to be an extremely popular event, don’t be a sadeyed little wipey cheeks at the door cause you waited too long to call for tix! Our casually disaffected doorpersons will politely turn their deafest ear to your pleas. Please please you and get your tickets SOON! Doors open at six, we never start at seven. (but we try! Honest! We DO!) Tickets for this event are $30.00 and can be had by calling 202-293-1885.
This event is at the BRICKSKELLER. Call the BRICKSKELLER for tickets PLEASE!!!!! 202-293-1885!

This is always an extremely popular event. If you have other people joining your table you must give us a name to hold the table under. We set the room according to reservations and cannot guarantee your group will be able to sit together if your friends don’t ask to be seated with the proper table. We will accept no cancellations within 24 hours of the event. We don’t want to turn someone away because sales indicated the house was sold out then have empty seats during the event! Help us out peeps!. hopppppss. . . hopppppssszzzzzz . . .you need hoppppsssszzzzzzzz . . . . . As always a tip’o’the bottlecap and a please stay safe to all my buddies all over the world from
BigPoppaHandPump /aka BeerGuyDave!

Allagash and Russian River beer tasting and the Brickskeller

Last night I had the pleasure of attending a Lovefest Brickskeller beer tasting.

Rob Tod from Allagash Brewing and Vinnie Cilurzo were on hand to talk about the wonderful selection of beers they brought from with them for the tasting.

Brickskeller1 Rod on the left and Vinnie on the right
Brickskeller2 The Happy beer tasters
Brickskeller3 Vinnie
Both the Allagash and Russian River Breweries brought a wide selection of Belgian style beers. In total there were 11 samplings, 5 from each pub and a special JW Lee Vintage Harvest Ale from 1999 in a real cask.

Allagash Brewing Company brought

Tripel (9%)

Dubbel (7%)

Interlude (9 1/2%)

White (5%)

Curieux (11%)
Russian River Brewing Company brought

Damnation (7 -7 1/2% depending on if it is in a bottle)

Salvation (9%)

Diefication (7%)

Perdition (6.1%)

Temptation (7.25%)

Overall my favorites were the Allagash triple, a nice fruity beer, the taste comes from the yeast rather than adding any fruit. The Allagash Interlude which had a smooth tart taste. Finally the Russion River Temptation which has a lovely wine taste.

DC is now smoke free

I had fogotten that DC bars went smoke free on January first until I read the latest email from the brickskeller. I need to get out and do some beer tasting in a non smokey bar 🙂

New Beers on tap at the Brick, Tickets on sale for lovefest

Russian River and Allagash upstairs at the Brick

Dave wrote to say that the Jan 24 & 25 Tickets are now on sale for the first LOVEFEST!

Vinnie Cilurzo of Northern California’s Russian River Brewing Co and Rob Tod of Maine’s great Allagash Brewing Co will take the stage to talk about the all the gold medals they’ve won.

The first half of the program theywill serve a few rounds of similar styles the breweries produce letting the guys talk about their philosophy on brewing these styles or whatever they want to talk about, the second half of the show Katie bars the door and we serve a whole bunch of their big specialty beers and they’ll either talk about brewing them or whatever they want to talk about! .

Tickets are only $30.00 for this first of it’s kind event, to be held upstairs at the Brickskeller January 24th and/or 25th!

Call 202-293-1885 to order your tickets now! Doors open at 6 with a possible start time of 7pm

Gordon Biersch Season Schedule

Kelly from Gordon Bierch was kind enough to give me a heads up on their seasonal beers for the year. For VA and DC they will have the following on tap….

April 10th – May 27th, MaiBock

June 26th – August 5th, Kolsch

September 18th – October 28th, FestBier

November 27th – January 6th, 2008, WinterBock

I need to get out and try more of their beer now that they have a restaurant in Tysons Corner Mall.

Brickskeller Lagunitas Brewing Event

Tomorrow night, January 9th the Brickskeller will be hosting an event faturing California’s Lagunitas Brewing

Dave reports that they have raided their valts and are bringing Freakout and Undercover Shutdown, Brown Shugga from 05, and their barelywine, Old Gnarly from 04.  They are also bringing some of their current 12oz offerings, IPA, Censored and Hairy Eyeball!

Dave is going to toss in rounds of both their 9th and 10 anniversary brews in 22 oz bottles out of his own personal stash.

Dave says “This is going to be a great evening featuring many of the west coasts finest
beers, some that have never been here before and we’ll not see again after the event.”

Tickets are only $30.00 and can be reserved by calling 202-293-1885.
The room will open at six, we will try to start at seven, honest!
This event is going to be held in the downstairs back room at the
Brickskeller 1523 22nd St NW