It’s always puzzled me that DC doesn’t have a truly local brewery. What’s a beer-drinking locavore to do? Microbreweries are par for the course in small towns and large cities on the West coast. Even out here in the East, plenty of cities have their own local favorites. But as far as I know, there are no breweries that make and bottle beer within the city limits of DC.
Yes, it’s true, there are a few restaurants that brew and serve their own beer in-house (District Chop House, Capital City brewpubs, maybe some others I don’t know about). And maybe I’m being too literal, demanding there be a brewery in the district proper. I need to try something from Shenandoah Brewing Company, located in (a non-Metro-friendly part of) Alexandria – obviously, that’s very close. And there are some notable beers from the greater DC/Baltimore area, such as Delaware-based Dogfish Head and Frederick, MD-based Flying Dog.
Still, it surprises me that there haven’t been any serious recent attempts at a DC microbrewery. It could be that rents are just too expensive to make a go of it, but that factor certainly hasn’t prevented a number of breweries from succeeding in Brooklyn and San Francisco and Seattle. Is DC not enough of a beer town?
This post is part of DC Blogtoberfest, a series of beer-themed blog posts taking place all month. Join in the fun here.
Gradually Greener 
My best guess is that DC has some strange liquor/zoning laws. Like, if you make beer, you have to serve food. Or something. I mean, the whole grocery store zoning thing is pretty weird.
My boss just told me of a place near Charlottesville that makes their own hard cider. As ridiculous as it would be to drive down there *JUST* to buy a few bottles of local (and apparently delicious) hard cider, I think I might have to do it.
katy,
If you drive down for that, combine it with the apple festival at this farm: http://www.vintagevirginiaapples.com/
(Now that I look, I believe the cider house you’re talking about is the same people as the farm/festival.)
At any rate, I go to that festival almost every year; it’s a great time. And good apples, too.
I don’t think there are any laws prohibiting bottling in DC, I know Old Heurich was talking about it before they closed a few years back.
Much like bread and potato chips, beer used to be an almost exclusively local product. DC had a lot of breweries before prohibition, most located in southwest near the waterfront so they would have somewhere to dump their outflows.
Beer is a tough subject for locavores and green eaters — your “local” brewery is still using barley that has probably been shipped a long, long way, the brewing process is incredibly energy-intensive and uses a ton of water, and the finished product is heavy to move and not known for its green packaging. I’m not personally a particularly staunch upholder of any food ideology, but I can’t help having a laugh seeing restaurants who wax poetic about local and seasonal ingredients on the front of their menu and then hand you a beer and wine list that has mostly seen a trip across the continent, if not an ocean.
Our local favorites are among the worse offenders — Commonwealth’s beer list has nothing from VA or MD, a couple of PA beers, and pretty much anything you want from the UK. Wine is a slightly different issue, but it takes a strong stomach for irony tell your server you want a glass of sauvignon blanc with your Chincoteague oysters at localer-than-thou DC institution Equinox and be offered a New Zealand wine. I’m not trying to come down too hard on Jamie Leeds for serving the beers he likes or Equinox’s investors for not wanting to go broke trying to serve only VA wines with some pretty high-end cuisine, but too often this seems to be a blind spot rather than a reasonable compromise.
T, FYI, Jamie Leeds is a lady. But very good points about the difficulties of local boozing.
Right you are, not sure where I got the impression that she was a he.
T’s comments may help explain why we have so many micro breweries in the Pacific Northwest. The hops and wheat grow right here, and we have lots of water and cheap energy (relatively speaking).
marilyn makes an excellent point: when there is abundance, it is used. A lot.
Perhaps, then, what we really need is more hard cider “microbrews” here. We’ve got the apples!
Then again, I’m a huge hard cider fan. My favorite part of England was ponying up to the part & having a selection of ciders (some unfiltered! yum!) to choose from.
Not within the District, but really, really close is Franklin’s up in Hyattsville. http://www.franklinsbrewery.com/
Not close to Metro, but there are buses that go right past. And, you can get a growler bring home with you!
Belga cafe in Barrack’s Row also brews its own– they do a great line of Belgians…they might also bottle it?
also, Hook & Ladder is in Silver Spring…also pretty close:
http://www.hookandladderbeer.com/Public/default.aspx