New Arlington Brewpub!

It can certainly be argued that DC, while generally a very good beer town, is lacking in the brewpub department. There’s a couple of national chains in Rock Bottom and Gordon Biersch, and a local chain in Cap City. Rock Bottom also operates The District Chophouse.

“They all make great beer, Sam!” you say. “Why are you complaining?”

I’m not complaining as much as I’m just asking for some kind of independent establishment where I can feel more like “This brewpub is mine! People who don’t live here don’t know what they’re missing! Muhuahahahahaha!”

Yes, its true, not every Rock Bottom sells Ballston Brown, but the snob in me wants somewhere to go where you can only get the “experience” of it in that particular place. You know if you talk to your friend out in California and say “Oh, going to this great brewpub over here called Rock Bottom.” They can just reply, “Oh, I’ve been to one of those.”

Well with Mad Fox Brewing Company, there will be only one. Not one of many.  I was alerted to this via DCBeer.

Looking at their site, it seems they’re going local for most of the food (always a plus) and will have a nice stable of beers to try. Now I might actualy WANT to go to Arlington, again some snobbery at hand there. (Or maybe not snobbery as much as laziness. I tend to stay in the city closer to my apartment.)

July 4th Saison Brewing

What better way to spend Independence Day than brewing up a batch of American homebrew? Not exactly an Ameican style, but hey, it’s a free country. 

Myself and a couple of friends avoided the DC crowds and hung around the house yesterday to brew this batch. I got some yeast from the brewers at District Chophouse, so I was expecting this to be one of my more healthy fermentations. I was right. I was wrong, though, to think I could rotate this video to be the right direction. 

 

 
So I had to make a trip to the hardware store this morning because  I woke up to my room smelling like beer, very yeasty beer. When I went in with my spare carboy in hand one of the men working there almost had a heart attack thinking I was going to drop it and shatter glass all over his store. After I assured him that I had a good hold of it I got the tube and came back to put it in the active carboy. Below are some pictures from today. Forgot to take any yesterday during the actual brewing. I’ll post my recipe up here soon. 

 

 

Mission: Brewer

I frequently scan the classifieds on ProBrewer.com. It seems to be one of the top sites for brewing jobs and such, if not the No. 1 site. I’m noticing that lots of the brewing jobs, particularly a dream job that’s up there right now at Weyerbacher, require a formal brewing education, such as a diploma from Siebel or Doemens. (KUDOS if you can read that Doemens page) I’m really enjoying what I’m doing at the District Chophouse these past couple of Thursdays, and it sounds like I could enter the field that way by working my way up, but brewing school is sounding more and more enticing. 

Now beginning “grad school” savings fund.

Brewing Commercial

 

So I’ve been kind of slack on the posting recently, been really busy with the new shoe job and what not. This past week though, I got to help out the brewers at the District Chophouse and Brewery in Chinatown. Barret and Brian were really helpful with teaching me how they brew there, and I got to do most of the things they do on a regular basis — and I’m sure they were happy to have me shovel the spent grain. It was more or less the first time I did all-grain brewing so the learning was plentiful. It was all volunteer, but hey, who can complain when you get to try the beers they have on tap?

Here are some pictures. I will hopefully be going back and helping more so I might be able to get more pics in the future. 

 

Me shoveling spent grain from the mash tun. 

The hop additions: not very large as we were brewing light lager. 

 

Another shot of the mash tun.