Believe it or not, there has been other news in the world this week, aside from the opening of Birch & Barley/ChurchKey, the long-awaited Neighborhood Restaurant Group project on 14th Street NW. You wouldn’t know it, though, from all the local food coverage, which has devoted a ton of server space to detailing every nook and cranny and keg at the joint.

Let’s go to the highlights:

• WaPo’s Fritz Hahn has what’s on tap.
• Metrocurean has the glamour shots.
• The Beerspotter breaks down the cask list.

• The Washingtonian digs into some of the dining options.
• ReadysetDC calls Metrocurean’s glamour shots and raises it 20 design-porn shots.
• Even more photos here and here.
• The Not Thin Man goes all soft opening on us.

There are lots more, but Y&H is tired of reading the same info over and over.

UPDATE: NRG spokesperson Amber Pfau says that Birch & Barley/ChurchKey will open tomorrow, “barring natural disasters.” For an inside look, see Metrocurean’s preview on the place.

The DC-Beer listserv has been humming today on a rumor that Birch & Barley/ChurchKey, the long-awaited twin-concept, beer-soaked bar and restaurant (which is not a gastropub!), will finally open tomorrow. Neighborhood Restaurant Group has been conducting mock services already, but one member of the listserv writes:

My wife got a press release/e-mail in her e-mail from a local business networking group which states that Birch & Barley opens tomorrow.

Beerspotter Orr Shtuhl says the rumors are true, but I’m trying to get confirmation on this from NRG. More as I know it.

Photograph by Darrow Montgomery

Starting Monday, Y&H will morph into Two Week Bender. For the next couple of  weeks, this space will be devoted to fermented beverages, distilled beverages, anything liquid that alters your brain chemistry for a few glorious hours. Well, anything short of drain cleaners and the like, I guess.

The line-up of writers is top shelf. Not only will the blog’s usual beer scribes — Orr Shtuhl (aka the Beerspotter) and Tammy Tuck and Bruce Falconer (aka the Lagerheads) — be on board for the ride, but we also have a couple of ringers: man-about-town Mike Riggs and master mixologist/historian Derek Brown, whose writings on cocktails for The Atlantic are first-rate.

I hope y’all enjoy reading about booze for a couple of weeks, because I’m actually going to be imbibing some.

The Lagerheads piqued our interest earlier about a potential D.C. Beer Week in August that would culminate with Brew at the Zoo on August 20.

It’s official now: The festivities will run from Aug. 16 to 21, and so far 15 tastings, happy hours, meet-the-brewers, food pairings, and plain old drinking parties have been announced. There’s lots of H Street NE action, what with one of the organizers being Teddy Folkman of Granville Moore’s. Brew at the Zoo still seems like the main event, but The party ends on Friday with a Nats game featuring a discount for Beer Week attendees. (They’re playing the Milwaukee Brewers, natch.)

Here are the full listings. You will want to bookmark this sucker because there will be updates. The Web site’s not finished, but they’re also Facebookin’ (sorry, federal employees).

SUNDAY, AUG. 16.

• D.C. Beer Week “Unity Jam” at Rock & Roll Hotel — The week kicks off with a classic pairing: music and beer. For $20 you can buy ten 4 oz. sample pours of rare craft beers. No word on the beer lineup, but tune providers include: See-I, The Blackjacks, Laura Tsagaris Band, and The Jeff Wells Band. Beers include: Abita Abbey Ale, Allagash Double, Allagash Four, Brooklyn Local One, Brooklyn Octoberfest, Troegs Dead Reckoning Porter, Victory V-Saison (2008 vintage), and Victory St. Boistorous. 2-8 p.m., $10.
• Unity Jam After Party at The Pug — Featuring their usual lineup of craft beer in cans and, according to the press release, free cheese puffs. 8:30 p.m.

MONDAY, AUG. 17

• Allagash Beer Dinner With Rob Tod at Granville Moore’s — A five-course, six-beer dinner with Allagash President and Brewmaster Rob Tod. Beer lineup includes: Hugh Malone, White, Dubbel, Tripel, Curieux, and Black.
  Menu: Meat and Cheese Plate; Roasted Beet Salad with Orange-Cumin Vinaigrette, Boucheron, Arugula; House Cured Pork Belly with Collard Greens; Crudo of White Toro with Rainier Cherries; Allagash-Marinated Lamb Shoulder with Melon-Pistachio Cous Cous; House-Made Cheesecake. $75.
• Sausage, Cheese, and Beerliciousness at Big Hunt — A hard trinity of food-beer pairings to argue with. Includes beers from some big boys of craft: Allagash, Bell’s, Brooklyn, Dogfish Head, Troegs, and Victory. 7 p.m., $25.
• Dogfish Head Happy Hour at Brasserie Beck — Beck breaks from their all-Belgian mantra to pour drafts of Raison D’Etre, Fort, and Theobroma. 5-7 p.m.
• Chimay Vintage Beer and Cheese Tasting at Birreria Paradiso – Try Chimay Blanche on draft and their vintage Grande Reserve (the fancy one) with rich and nutty Chimay cheese. 5 p.m.
• “Hop Times in the City: A Beer Tasting for Hopheads & the People Who Love Them at The Black Squirrel – A tongue-scraping lineup of extreme offerings from Bear Republic, Green Flash, Avery, Dogfish Head, and Speakeasy, co-hosted by bloggeroo cohort DC Beer. For extra doses of ridiculous, the tasting also includes a hop cocktail and hop ice cream. 7:30-10 p.m., $40.

TUESDAY, AUG. 18

• Rogue Oregon Oyster and Ale Festival at The Reef — 1,000 Yequina Bay Oysters are being flown in from Newport, Ore. to our collective bellies. Pair the oysters and other food specials with Captain Sig’s Deadliest Ale and “something imperial” on draft, plus a few bottles. Specials available 5-10 p.m.
• Brooklyn Brewery Beer and Cheese Tasting with Cowgirl Creamery at Café Saint-Ex — Think about the Cowgirl fromagophiles’ evocative cheese descriptions. Now add Brooklyn beer. 7 p.m.
• Abita Beer Crawfish Boil at the Argonaut — New Orleans’ dominant brewery will bring a boatload of crawfish and introduce it to a nice, warm bath. 6 p.m.
• Terrapin Beer Event at Galaxy Hut — Try beers on tap from the Athens, Ga. brewery: Big Hoppy Monster IPA, Sunray Wheat, India Brown Ale, and Rye Pale Ale — the latter of which is a Beerspotter desert island pick. 6 p.m.

WEDNESDAY, AUG. 19

• Hitting the Cycle at Marvin — Drink Smuttynose Star Island Single, Brooklyn Local #2, Allagash Tripel, and Weyerbacher Quad, with a dinner buffet of Belgian food. Also includes a drawing for tickets to the Aug. 21 Nats-Brewers game. 40 tickets are available in all. 5:30 p.m., $35.
• Belgian Beer Invades the Capitol at Capitol Lounge — Discounts on Belgian and Belgian-style beer, food specials, and beer chat with Larissa Hill of Granville Moore’s. 4-11 p.m.
• Coney Island Freak Show at Palace of Wonders — In a match made in hell, the founders of Schmaltz Brewing Co. (makers of Coney Island lagers and Hebrew ales) present their big, creative beers with a freak show backdrop. 8 p.m.
• Meet the Brewer Happy Hour at District Chophouse – Meet the talented Barrett Lauer and check out his shiny brewing setup. Half-price beers from 3-7 p.m.
• Drink to Victory at CommonWealth Gastropub – Beer and food pairings, plus seasonal Victory beers and a pair of brews on cask. 5-10 p.m.
• Terrapin Launch Party at Rustico – Featuring all four Terrapin flagship beers as well as the 2008 Big Hoppy Monster and, new from their Side Project Series, Maggie’s Farmhouse Ale. Free Terrapin glass with every beer you buy. 6 p.m.

THURSDAY, AUG. 20

• Brew at the Zoo at the National Zoo — The main event of This event has nothing to do with D.C. Beer Week, but it features 35 microbreweries, including Sierra Nevada, Dogfish Head, Brooklyn, Smuttynose, Great Divide, and Stoudt’s. Anheuser-Busch InBev is also pouring, so you can quaff that presidential Bud Light. 6-9 p.m., $35 for FONZ members, $50 for nonmembers.
• Brew at the Zoo After Party at Asylum — After the [completely unrelated] beer fest, swap pandas for drunks as a backdrop, at a place that always surprises with one or two great finds on tap. 9:30 p.m.
• Troegs Pint Night at the Red & the Black — Taste tasty Troegs and snatch a free pint glass at H Street’s sleeper venue for good beer. 7 p.m.

FRIDAY, AUG. 21

• Nationals v. Milwaukee Brewers, D.C. Beer Week Special – Drink the Nationals Park’s awesome new microbrews while watching the punniest beer-related sporting event since Bud Bowl. Drafts include Bell’s Kalamazoo Stout and Stone Arrogant Bastard! Come on! Beer Week attendees receive 25 percent off tickets in selected areas — enter the super-secret promo code (“Beer”) to receive the discount. 7:05 p.m.
• DC Beer Week Happy Hour at RFD – Nurse (or feed) your Beer Week hangover with specials on Allagash, Bell’s, and Dogfish Head beers. As a bonus, catch the worst team in baseball live on TV. 4-8 p.m.

The Obama beer meeting was last night, and by all accounts nothing happened. (Although WaPo’s Dana Milbank did totally hijack the Lagerheads’ titular pun for his own use.)

But my favorite post-summit coverage so far comes from Canada’s CBC, which came up with not one but two entertaining animated graphics: “Beer Diplomacy” (in the intro) and the even-better “The Suds That Soothed.”

Pictured above, the graphic matches each diplomat with their beer of choice: Obama, Bud Light; Gates, Sam Adams Light; and Crowley, Blue Moon. And, in a display of either pride or shame, MillerCoors’ Blue Moon gets a fat red stamp: “Made in Canada.”

D.C.’s Brickskeller and owner Dave Alexander also make cameos at the 3:25 mark. I apologize, but you do have to sit through a truly nauseating U2/Blackberry ad first.

Screenshot from CBC

Answer: President Obama drinking Bud Light.

(I told you I wouldn’t let this die.) I don’t know if I should have seen it coming, but this light-beer position is even less excusable than, I don’t know, torture. Light beer — especially the mass-produced variety— is less flavorful and less potent than “regular” beer. From both an alcoholic and ingredient standpoint, it is literally watered down. And don’t even dream of playing the “drinkability” card; it’s not as if regular Bud is some buxom elixir that is delicious but too rich for refreshment. If it can be funneled, it has drinkability.

The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union adds another cloud to the picnic, lobbying for the beers to be swapped for lemonade. Fine, WCTU, I’d take a virgin Tom Collins over a fizzy light beer. But this quote in the same article, from local crazy Rocky Twyman (founder of Pray at the Pump, a group that prayed for lower gas prices), is, shall we say, harder to take:

“Studies show that alcoholism leads our previous youth to use harder drugs like cocaine that is responsible for vicious youth crimes, especially in inner-city America that gave Obama large electoral margins,” said Twyman.

I’m not gonna even touch that one. Cleanse your mind with some doggie sex toys, courtesy of The Sexist.

Photo by √oxéfx via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

Every time President Obama eats a burger, Mr. Y&H (aka Tim Carman) has a goddamn field day. But now that Obama is set to crack beers with Officer James Crowley and Harvard prof Henry Louis Gates, Jr. to discuss Gates’ false arrest at his Cambridge home, it’s time for the liquid half of Young & Hungry to go nuts. And I’m going to milk this baby for all it’s worth.

First, CNN reports (with the urgent UPDATE in all caps) that Obama will have a Budweiser, which is what he had at the MLB All-Star Game. Crowley will reportedly quaff a Blue Moon, and Gates’s choice is still undetermined, though he has a preference for Red Stripe and Beck’s. Surprising? No, but so, so disappointing.

Beck’s is owned by Anheuser-Busch InBev, the same not-really-American corp. as Bud. Blue Moon is MillerCoors (yep, they’re one company now), and Red Stripe is owned by Diageo, a giant that also owns Guinness, Smirnoff, Tanqueray, Johnnie Walker, et al.

So here’s my advice:

Mr. President, sir, there’s an easy-drinking lager made in almost every major American city — Boston, Sam Adams; New York, Brooklyn Lager; Philly, Victory Lager; Washington, pick a brewpub. Bud might be the “easy choice,” but if you’re going to take Ray’s Hell Burger over McDonald’s — and have Alice Watersplan your vegetable garden, for God’s sake — man up and try an American microbrew.

Around the D.C. blogs, DCist covers the story as well, with Eric Axelson suggesting a menu for the liquid bread-breaking. He recommends (and I wholeheartedly second) Allagash White as a Blue Moon replacement, and a root beer for Gates. His description of Great Divide Samurai Ale as “the perfect recipe for overcoming differences” has me confused, though. It’s a rice beer, so maybe he’s equating the clean flavor with a diplomatic blank slate? Help me out, Eric.

At We Love DC, Tiffany Bridge writes a sober defense of quality products over protectionism, and even manages to compare A-B InBev to General Motors (nice!).

And finally, roll over to the Denver Business Journal for a funny snippet of transcript between Press Secretary Robert Gibbs and a reporter who wants to make sure Obama has some salty snacks to go with his beer.

Hopefully this saga will continue until re-election. More UPDATEs as they come.

Photo by √oxéfx via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

D.C. residents are lucky to have the craft beer selection we enjoy, and I’m reminded as much every time I walk into a good bar or store. But if you drink lots of beer (I call it “research”) the selection can be maddening. Though my heart is in it, I just don’t have the constitution to try every good beer at a restaurant with, say, eight taps and a fetching bottle list. Such are the problems in my life.

Enter the side-by-side tasting. Every now and then, my friends and I convene around a dinner table for a beer tasting with a mission: We choose one style, like IPA or stout, and taste each one “blind.” (More on this in a minute.) We compare notes, then reveal which beers were which. Invariably, some of us discover new favorites.

If those old household commercials have taught us anything, it’s that comparison is the best way to test something. When you taste beers side-by-side and discuss them with friends, your impressions are more likely to stay with you and inform your buying decisions the next time you pick up a six-pack. It’s fun, educational, and just a bit nerdy. But while I opt for the full-on, annotated geek-out, all you really need is friends, glasses, and beer.

Here are some tips to get you started:

1. Pick a beer style and stick to it. You’ll learn more by comparing stouts to stouts, lagers to lagers, etc.
2. Taste blind (not literally). Put the bottles in numbered brown bags so you can try each one without bias. It’s surprising how different some old favorites taste when you’re not expecting them. If you really want to get scientific, don’t write on the bags — instead have a second person (not the bagger) assign a random letter to each number and write down a key. That way not even the pourer will know which beer is which.
3. Cleanse your palate. In the Pepsi Challenge, the two sodas were indistinguishable without eating an oyster cracker in between. The snacky food should be light and minimal, like water crackers or saltines. I prefer to skip the food altogether and sip some interstitial club soda.
4. Warm it up! Beers should generally be drunk at temps in the 40s or 50s. Forget the bullshit about “frost-brewed” and “coldest-tasting” — you can’t taste beer at 34 degrees. Lagers should spend a few minutes outside the fridge, dark beers and Belgians can warm up even longer.
5. Six beers or less, and 3-ounce pours. OK, these numbers are arbitrary, but the point is, after a few tastes your palate gets tired and flavors start to run together. Think back to the last beer festival you went to. How well do you remember the third beer you tasted? How about the seventh or eighth?
6. Don’t lose your notes. Sounds obvious, right? Well, try remembering that when you break rule #5 and drink a dozen beers. Tasting beer is fun, but you’ll take more out of it if you don’t lose your notes…and your phone…and your keys….

Photo by merfam via Flickr Creative Commons Attribution License

It’s a short work week, and we at Young & Hungry Central have just the thing you need: beer and dining recommendations for the Fourth. We also have something for your reading pleasure:

The top blog posts of the week.

1. Obama Ate Here: The Working Map (with apologies and gratitude to BrightestYoungThings)
2. What Did Your $10 Ticket Get You at the Safeway Barbecue Battle?
3. On July 4th Weekend, Buy American Beer
4. Breadline Busted on 19 Health Code Violations, Ten of Them Critical
5. Dairy Godmother’s Owner Doesn’t Want the Obama Bump That Ray’s Hell Burger Got

Photo by cristinabe via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution License