Dry off those snowboots and get ready to head back out there. Although the Brickskeller has postponed their second night of strong ales, there is still plenty to do beerwise in DC this week.

Tonight 21st Amendment founder Nico Freccia will be taking a winter holiday from his San Francisco can brewery to hang out at ChurchKey. Available on draft will be Brew Free or Die IPA, Hell or High Watermelon Wheat, Back in Black Black IPA, Monk’s Blood Belgian Strong Dark Ale, and Golden Doom Belgian-Style Golden Ale, a limited release keg-only beer in 21st Amendment’s “Big Can” Specialty Draft Series.

The Skinny Tuesday Mardi Gras celebration at 1905 has been postponed, but you and your SUV can head out to Hyattsville for Franklin’s “Meet the New Brewer” night. Wednesday you can go back to ChurchKey to taste three Stone beers on cask and meet Stone Brewing Company VP Arlen Arnsten (assuming he can get to DC) or head downtown to Elephant and Castle with your honey for a romantic British beer and chocolate event. More details in our DC Beer Events Calendar below.

Little Miss Whiskey's Golden Dollar

Has the snow given you cabin fever yet? If you haven’t heard, several H Street bars are promising a dollar off drinks for every six inches of snow on the ground all day Friday and Saturday. This of course includes beer, just not any beverages under $2.

Participating bars (so far) include The Red and the Black, Little Miss Whiskey’s Golden Dollar, Jimmy Valentine’s Lonely Hearts Club, Palace of Wonders, The Pug, and Sticky Rice.

As for beer selection, Little Miss Whisky’s has the nicest list by far, with gems from Avery, Bell’s, Duck-Rabbit, Founders, Weyerbacher, and Stone. They also have a nice showing of doppelbocks and dunkels, perfect for warming yourself on a cold winter night and our favorite kind of German beer.

Although we picked a clear winner, we are sure you will be able to find something tasty at any of the participating places. If you can get yourself out there safely, have at it. Just don’t…

Fredericksburg’s annual Blue-Gray Show, contrary to what you might guess, is not a place to go hunting for deals on rusted minie balls and brass belt buckles dug up on Civil War battlefields. But if you’re in the market for antique beer paraphenalia, you would be well advised to get yourself to the Ramada Inn in Fredericksburg, February 12-14, where you’ll be able to browse table after table of collectible beer cans, bottles, foam scrapers, labels, trays, posters, etc.

The event is now in its 30th year–and this time will be commemorating an even more august anniversary: 75 years of canned beer. So if you’re looking to add a decades-old can of Natty Boh to your collection, here’s your opportunity. For more information, check out the show’s website, or visit its Facebook page.

Photo by elvissa used under a Creative Commons license

Last June, we lamented the absence of a traditional German-style beer garden in our fair city. Before long, though,  our prayers were answered with the soon-to-open Biergarten Haus in the Atlas District. We have high hopes for the place and expect it to fill a gaping void in DC’s beer scene. Taking a survey of the landscape, things are looking good for fans of imported brews.  German beer? Check. Belgian beer? Check. Czech beer? Czech?

The Czech Republic is host to a world-class beer culture every bit as vibrant and exciting as those to be found in Germany and Belgium (as our very own Beerspotter would agree). It’s a no-brainer that Americans would go crazy for the stuff. Pilseners (albeit the watered-down, tasteless, low-cal variety) dominate the American market, and pilseners are exactly what the Czechs do best. You can probably find a fair number of them on offer at the Brickskeller (we haven’t ‘czeched’ in a while… sorry), and Black Squirrel has Czechvar on tap, but we’re hardpressed to name another restaurant with a sizeable list.

More on Czech bars in the U.S. after the jump.

Read More “High Time For Czech Beer in DC” »

This week offers a decent selection of beer-focused events. Tonight you can drink some special kegs at either Pizzeria Paradiso location in the name of Haitian relief or down as many oysters as you can pints of Troegs at Hank’s Oyster Bar in Alexandria. Tuesday marks the first of two nights of tasting regionally-brewed strong ales at the Brickskeller, and Thursday is a big Flying Dog tweetup at Birreria Paradiso in Georgetown.

And don’t forget Monday night’s regular “guest tap” at Room 11, and that Thursdays are always firkin night at The Reef. Take your pick. More details on each event in our DC Beer Events Calendar below.

What’s missing from this picture? Beer, of course. According to a report in the New York Daily News, Burger King plans to open “Whopper Bars” in several cities, thereby allowing customers to get some suds with their burgers and fries. The first one will be in Miami Beach, with others to follow in New York, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas. But don’t get your hopes up: the burgers may be tasty (thanks largely to flavor scientists in white lab jackets), but the beers will not be as flavorful. Whopper Bars will carry only watered-down American pilsners like Bud and Miller. They’ll set you back $4.25 for the beer alone, or $7.99 if you get the meal deal including a burger and fries. No plans for special toys with your over-21 meal deal, but the beer will come in a custom-designed aluminum bottle.

Photo by Siqbal used under a Creative Commons license

Beer in cans? The very idea used to induce self-satisfied chuckles among beer snobs. How things have changed. The prime mover in the shift was Oskar Blues in Longmont, Colorado, which released Dale’s Pale Ale in cans back in 2002, followed by four other brews…and yet another, Gubna, due out in March.  Their success launched a series of breweries, including several in Colorado, to get in the canning game. Joining them later this spring will be Boulder’s Avery Brewing Company.

From the Denver food blog Westword:

The company, which is still testing the new canning line, hopes to have its Ellie’s Brown Ale, White Rascal, India Pale Ale and a fourth beer — a new brew that Avery will reveal later this year — in cans and on Colorado liquor store shelves by May 1. (The beers will still primarily be available in bottles.)

Read More “Avery’s Plan to Can” »

The Lagerheads took a little day trip to Fredericksburg last weekend. After parking the car and walking past only a handful of quaint colonial buildings, we stumbled into one for a wine tasting thinking we could score some free cheese. We did get some aged cheddar but wound up stumbling upon a great little beer shop. We prefer that to cheddar any day.

There were three things we loved about the Virginia Wine Experience in Old Town Fredericksburg.

1. Selection: First and always most important is the selection. In addition to a whole slew of well-chosen American craft breweries, the shop carries a nice selection of Belgian, German, British, Canadian (Unibroue and Dieu de Ciel), and Scandinavian imports.

2. Single City: As we made our way past the coolers of individual bottles, we soon noticed that every bottle in the store was priced and marked for individual sale. Most were between $3  (like Bell’s) and $10 (hard hitters like Dogfish Head 120). No bargain, for sure, but the shop offers a 10% discount on a mixed 6-pack and 20% off a mixed 12-pack. Don’t know about you, but we’re willing to pay a little more for variety. We got out of there with 12 bottles of fermented beverages for about $45.

Read More “Fredericksburg Find: The Virginia Wine Experience” »

We do, but not the way you’re thinking. Our friends tend to get us wacky beer-related gifts when they travel. You may recall the Saudi couple bottle covers given to us by a State Department friend posted in Riyadh last year, for example.

A few weeks ago a good friend returned from a European vacation with Manufaktura Beer Shower Gel from a Czech company that makes an entire line of health and beauty products from beer.

A roughly-translated description from the Manufaktura website:

Beer Tradition Manufaktura Cosmetics is based on centuries-old tradition of the Czech beer, which is thanks to its exceptional quality generally recognized as the best in the world. Its unique strong taste, delicious hop bitterness, full flavour, clearness and gorgeous golden colour are highly appreciated. This toothsome beverage has been brewed in Bohemia since time immemorial. The first written mentions date back to 10th century. The unique climatic effects for hop-growing, centuries-old experience of our brewers and traditional production procedures contribute significantly to the unrepeatable quality and taste of the Czech beer.
Read More “Shower Yourself in Beer” »

The good news started when WaPo’s Going Out Guru Fritz Hahn spread the word about Brasserie Beck’s special January daily happy hour. The tune got even sweeter when Beck beer maestro Thor Cheston granted Mike Dolan’s plea on DC Beer that the happy hour become permanent. This week the story gets even better.

In addition to extending their daily 5:00-7:00pm half-priced draft happy hour beyond the month of January indefinitely, Brasserie Beck has decided to add happiness to late-night weekend hours. Starting this week, every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night from 10:00pm to closing, all drafts are half-price as well as items from the raw bar. (The website says it starts at 10:30 but Thor told us directly 10:00, so we’re going with that. Every minute counts!)

That’s a total of 23 happy hours a week to drink half-priced Belgian beer at the place with our city’s largest selection of the stuff. It reminds us of the heyday we enjoyed when Bohemian Caverns had their Belgian beer happy hour. Prices have gone up a bit since then, but fancy-pants Belgian imports for half price? Antigoon for $4.50? We’re so there.