Welcome back to DC Beer Show. We are @DCBeer across social media,
including on Bluesky, where we're there with Port City and Android
Theory, and hopefully you. Brandy, what's in your glass this lovely
evening? I was just drinking a Dying Moons from
Lost Generation. I was at Lost Generation for a private
event, a stolen bread, not s
t o l e n, but stollen with 2 l's, which is a type of
bread that Chris, my very dear friend and owner
of Ravenhook, was instructing a class on how to make it.
But right now, I am drinking some leftover
Prosecco that I opened on Sunday morning that I'm like,
I should probably drink it before it gets not fizzy. I'm
lame. Anyhoo, mister Stein, what are you drinking? It's
so funny. I thought Prosecco made one classy AF. Didn't
know it made you lame today, I learned. I'm
having a champagne of beer, Schönramer.
Hell, it's back in town. The Schönramer out of
Germany. Delicious pale lager. I've got some for you.
I've got some for Jacob Scoops Berg.
Mister Berg, what are you having? You know, if you're drinking
German lager, that's Jakob Berg to you.
I also have a pale lager, but it comes from down the
street. It's Lost Generation's Call The Owl. They're pre-Prohibition
lager. Just a lovely lager, a little
bit more ish. I do have another one in the fridge. I might open that
one too. It's just a a nice way to go out for our last podcast
of 2024. And what a year it was. It
was. I love how Call the Owl is
really an ode to Jared's great grandfather.
Is it great grand grandfather, Jake? It is great.
Great. Who owned a car body shop who
that souped up cars to be rum
runners and whiskey runners during prohibition. It's a wonderful
ode to that since we are in the twenties.
So I'm looking forward to having more Lost Generation
beer and hopefully not seeing many more
breweries closing in in 2025. Here we are. But I
had a wonderful year, and I had a wonderful year with you guys. Thank you
so much for being my DC Beer fam. I had a lovely
time.
Everybody, make a point of going to go visit Hellbender
at some point in the very near future. I think I
am the most butthurt about all of
this news than probably
anybody else because it is my neighborhood brewery,
and I have been going there since
I've lived in this house for 10 years.
And they've gone through such
turmoil, and they've still come out of the other
side. And it really bums me out because I
see every single day all the new construction going on over here at
Fort Totten. It is blown up. In my opinion,
I really just wish that they could
wait, like, one more year just to see, because
Urban Gardens gonna be opening on South Dakota,
literally, 2 minute drive down the street. And the Aldi
just opened. There's so many businesses and new residential,
buildings being built. There's more people come. There's a huge
influx coming in, and I feel like Hellbender
just would have benefited from that. But I totally understand
the issues, and it my heart breaks.
So this one hit close to home, literally. Yeah. It's it's
a hell of a time to be a beer drinker in the US and
then more specifically in DC today. And the
reason I say that is because we're
seeing another brewery go. In
January of 2023, I wrote an
article for city paper about 3 Stars closing.
In a perfect world, every single draft line of
3 Stars Peppercorn Saison would have been taken
over by Hellbenders. I think Southern Torrent was the name of the saison.
Whatever their saison was. Right? And it doesn't matter if saison, white
ale, farmhouse beer, doable. Even the dark Belgian
style Franco spicy effervescent beer.
But that's not how the world works, and I feel broken
and heartachy that
this is the case. In the perfect world, my heart would have broken for
3 stars, but then we would have seen Hellbender shore up
business by working with a distro to get all those lines.
I wanna give credit to Ben Evans and
LT Goodluck, the taproom staff, and the
community, because and this is the
nicest way possible. My goodness was
Ben Evans stubborn. He could have thrown in the
towel long before they reached their 11th anniversary.
Just this last year, there was a boiler issue. The local
community showed them love. Where we showed up, they donated
their beer. DC Brau either donated or at low cost
tank space for them to brew more Ignite IPA.
But before that, there was a patio issue.
There was a licensing issue when one of the previous
non Ben Evans cofounders
split. I just it's been a lot.
Hellbender was one of the first breweries on the East Coast to use a
Belgian mash filter that you see over there,
much more efficient in terms of extracting fermentable
materials. That was always part of their ethos. They're working with
Casey Trees around the brewery. They're
metro accessible. Obviously, the Hellbender is DC's it's
not a state, but it's our state amphibian. Yeah. It
sucks. What are you gonna say? Well, I know all my
neighborhood folks. I'll still see you somewhere around the neighborhood, but it won't
be at our watering hole. We'll figure it out. And shout
out to our producer, Richard Fawal, who's Brew
Daddies podcast that turned into the DC Beer Show.
Their very first episode was recorded at Hellbender
with Ben, and that was in 2017.
Alright, Brandy. What are you looking forward to over the next week or so?
Actually, this current week is my busy beer week for a
seemingly the month because it's the women's brew culture club that will have
happened yesterday, going to Denizen's holiday karaoke
night. Just like 3 or 4 hours after this podcast drops,
we've got our final beer share of 2024,
a Friday night beer share at Right Proper Brookland, which is
great because it means I can walk to LT. And also because Right Proper is
dope. And we are going to be doing a fundraiser,
which the with the h three project, and they are gonna be
dropping off a donation bin for winter clothes
and such items for the displaced and,
victims of domestic violence. All of our friends
and beer fam, when you come to the beer share tonight at Right
Proper at Brookland, don't go to Shaw, then please
bring some winter clothes to donate. That would be
awesome. But if you can't make it to Right Proper Brookland, go to Right Proper
Shaw anyway. You'll have a good time. They have a collaboration beer
on, although, fingers crossed, they have that on at Brookland as
well. Just for clarity's sake, if you're listening today,
Friday, December 20th, we are
at 920 Gerard Street Northeast. That's right. In the Brookland
neighborhood, come on down to Wright proper Brookland. If you are
listening on multiple streaming platforms, we so appreciate
you. Check us out on Patreon. A little bit
later, we do talk about Julie Verratti in our interview
with Phil Runco. And just to remind y'all, Julie is a
Patreon supporter. Come support us DC Beer on patreon.
Patreon.com/dcbeer, and you can
support us the way that we support the beer culture in
our brewing city. So check us out on dcbeer.com.
Follow us on socials. You'll get a good idea
of which events are coming this week. And, of course, we have
to be grateful for Brandy for keeping us in the know. Thank you,
Brandy, for letting all of us know. I know that our dear friend, Phil
Runco, does a yearly beer and review, which is
extremely popular, one of our highest rated articles
and, podcasts of the year, and we're
very thankful for that. We love you, Phil. Thank you.
But I thought I've always wanted to do kind of our
own one, but I don't wanna take away from Phil's thunder.
So I wanted to ask my fellow DC beer
fam, you know, what really, what their highlights were of 2024.
And we sent it out in the newsletter, and I've randomly been posting
it on the Instagrams. So if you're interested or even
care about what we care about, come on over and read about
it. But I actually wanna say with sincerely,
thank you to all of those social media folks, at the
breweries who tag DC Beer because that really
helps me and allows me to share any and all
beer related events on our social media. So tag DC
Beer if you have an event going on. Submit them to
our website. It is our gift to you. It's the gift that keeps on
giving, guys. Do yourself and us a favor and
always tag us. Jake? If you don't do it right now, make it your New
Year's resolution to do so in in 2025,
which will be here in just about a
week. But before we get into 2025, let's get a
take a look back at the year that was with, as
mentioned, Phil. Welcome. We're here with Phil
Runco. Phil, what's in your glass tonight? I have
a, West Coast Pilsner, which is a bit timely
as it was one of the the bells of the ball of what we are
soon to be discussing. And that particular West Coast Pilsner is
from Sapwood Cellars, and it's called, Frivol,
if I'm saying it correctly. It's with Citra and Wakatu.
Nice. Phil, we're super excited to have you. We always look forward to beer and
review every year. By my math, in 2021,
you had 16 breweries and brewers you talked
to, 20 in 22, 21 in
2023. Are we expecting bigger and better for
the beer in review in 2024? I took it back down
to 20. I like a nice round number. I wish there was a
greater logic than that, but I'm more concerned with sort of the
makeup of the of the participants. I tried to do 7
from Maryland, 7 from Virginia, and 6 from DC,
and that got us to, 20. 21 seemed, even though it's
one larger, just a little too many, just mentally.
So what's this process like for you? Do you start
in November? Do you start in October? Are you striving to go
and visit all 20 of, these
interview subjects in person? The actual answers are all
completed by them online. Right? Compiling it is
already a fairly onerous task once you add in the
live going to each place to get a a fresh photo.
If I had to transcribe all of these interviews, I'd probably lose my
mind, probably lose my marriage. I already pushed the the
boundaries of it, compiling it as is. But,
yeah, this year was probably the earliest that I've had in the back of my
mind that I wanted to try to not be put in a
position of knocking everything out in 2 weeks, which I think
is what I had done, the previous year in terms of the photos. And
for and for those who might have have not seen the article before, as soon
as I started doing it, maybe the last year, I used to do it on
a website called Brightest and Things. Maybe the last year there and every
year I've done it for DC Beer, which I think has been the last 4
years. Could be 3 years, but I think it's 4 years. Yeah. I've
wanted to get a fresh photo of everyone. I think it
just adds sort of a kind of a fun yearbook quality to it. And
then beyond that, I also feel like it's kind of my only
creative contribution to the article because, you know, I get that I
get to pick the the participants. All of the work is done by the people
who are filling out these answers. These aren't my these aren't my
answers, but they are my pictures. I have to say they're great scrolling
through them, and it's always great to me when I see somebody I
see couple times a year, once a quarter, once a month.
And I'm like, who is that guy? And it's, oh, it's Jennings or it's Mike
Tonsmeier, and they look so svelte and well pictured in their
photos. Last year for the 2023 beer and review,
you asked Emily Brown best of out of town
beers, and she wrote too many forget about
it. What forget about it moments have come to
light this year that you can share with our listenership that really struck
you? Yeah. It's funny
because when you don't know a brewery, it's just some words on a page. You
know? The new the ones that are new to me, one of them is in
our backyard, and you guys may be well familiar with them,
but I had not heard of Blind House Brewing in Roanoke, which,
a lot of people mentioned as being, one of the
standouts it sounds as if they're a brewery that's doing a lot of
mixed fermentation or bread fermentation saisons.
They seem to be quite popular. One of the other sort of breweries,
Old Hellbender out of Pittsburgh, was one I hadn't heard of that I looked up.
In terms of humorous, Emily's sort of writing is always so
fun, and she's always such a joy to to I wouldn't
say to edit, but to just add some punctuation to
because she brings such life and excitement
and, like, verve is really the way to put it to her sort of writing
and opinions. Sometimes some of the the
submissions can be a little more formal be the way to put it. And I
wish everyone wrote like Emily did, which is, like, you're
excited and you're at a bar and you're telling your friend about
something that that you are excited about. Because I always wanna encourage people
to write like they speak because that's what people wanna read. They don't
wanna read your term paper writing. Right. And so I think one of
the other guests who I like who also has a voice,
and this goes again to the sort of the out of town beer scene,
is Giulia Verratti from Denizens because she never drinks anything
from out of town ever. You'll never see her at Churchkey or
the Sovereign or like a beer bar. She's at some
neighborhood place and she's either drinking Denizens or Port City
or Atlas. And really that's that. And you ask her like, what are your
favorite out of town beers? She's just, I don't do that. There's enough good beer
here. I support the locals. And that's that. Some people will write very
floridly Phil words about favorite out of town beers, and
Julie's got one sentence, and that's it.
Yeah. If there was, like, a local beer mob, then
Julie's in it. Right? And then she's taken the Omerta,
and she is not going to drink outsider's
beer, and I I respect that. You
facilitate and you compile and you
edit. Let's put these questions to you. If
someone were to say Phil Runco, favorite local beers, favorite out
of town beers of 2024, favorite places to drink,
what would Phil what would the 21st entry? What would Phil Runco's entry
be? As you 2 know, I spent half the year dealing with
some cancer, and I can tell you that during
chemo, I did not want to drink. I just didn't want
to I didn't have any desire to drink beer, you know, and,
yeah, sure. Phil focus on drinking on water. But I always said I'm really looking
forward to not only I'm looking forward to drinking beer, I'm looking forward to
wanting to drink beer. And by, like, June of this year, once that kinda
came back, it was awesome. As I know in the article, I help
Ocelot brewing with some of its social media
and with some of the collaborations, that they do,
particularly the the the music collaborations. And so when I think
about sort of, like, beers that I have been a part of that
I'm particularly proud of, that's towards the top of that list.
Getting to make Verratti and Sheer Mag
and Montreal, Bad Moves. Tomorrow,
you know, beer with Eleanor Friedburger and the Fiery Furnaces,
which has 2024 Anchovy in it, which I'm excited to try.
Those are, like, in the category of beers that this is a rare instance where
I actually can speak to beers that I tried that I'm proud of. This is
from a conceptual standpoint. Obviously, Jack Snyder and his
brother, Rich, make the beers at Ocelot. And as much as I can lob any
ideas towards them, they are the ones who actually make them delicious. In
terms of other beers locally, I moved to
Ekington at the beginning of the very beginning of the
year, and having lost generation, 4 or 5
blocks down the street. I have long waited to have a
great brewery within walking distance, of me,
and I assure you that I have not slept on the opportunity.
I'm also much closer to Blue Jacket. And anytime
that a friend wants to meet for a drink and there's much food
involved, that's where you'll find me. I I love their low ABV
lagers are really a
staple for me, Chimbley Sweep. The German dark lager, I wanna say, is a a
beer that I order every single time that I'm in there. It's low fours,
I wanna say. Just so much flavor. I think about
best local beers, that's sort of top of the the
list for me. Yeah. Those would be that's my rambling answer. Out of
town beers? I don't know. I
don't know if I have I'd I wish I I wish I had thought about
that a little more in advance. I tend to drink, a lot of
Oxlopat and the Lost Gen and Blue Jacket,
and I don't often find myself buying 4
packs of out of town beers. See, it's a very Julie
Verratti answer. you know how to keep a
nose. I see the continuance of the Omerta is alive and
well. You didn't mention De La Sam, Cantillon,
Ridgeway, Coniston, or any of the
English, Irish, Scottish, Belgian, French.
So respect to the locals. I'm gonna
simultaneously bust your chops and say, well done, sir. You
already mentioned Blind House, who's available in in North Virginia,
bottle conditioning, mixed fermentation beers, so they've got some buzz
there. I like to use your beer review piece through Trendspot.
If a brie, 3 or 4 brewers or 3 or 4 beer
buyers, bottle shop owners mention something,
then it pops up on my radar. And so, Blind House is one of those
this year. They're down in Roanoke. They distribute into DC proper.
Maybe we'd see a couple of kegs pop up at the Sovereign. They'll do when
you meet the brewer evening at some point in 2025. What are
some of the other sort of commonalities and things that you
got out of reporting and collecting for the
Bureau in Review? Yeah. It's always fun to see what does
repeat. And there definitely were a a number of
threads that I found popping up less in the, like,
recommendations of breweries, but there definitely were
industry trends that kept repeating. One is
the return or golden age
of craft lager appreciate appreciation that we are,
you know, seem to be living in, although I went back to
that 2016 article, and people in 2016
were saying, vloggers here, baby. And
so every single year, it seems that people are are saying that.
But I think perhaps in 2016, it might have been a little bit of wish
casting. And now you have, Crooked Crab
saying, you know, we did a full batch of dark lager, and it was one
of our bestsellers. A lot of people talking about West
Coast Pilsner, as poppy lagers generally.
And as I think some people mentioned, a lot of it is just how it's
how these beers are positioned, how they're presented to people. And
it seems as if West Coast Phil was the thing that got people to, quote,
unquote, get LT, whereas, like, IPL as a term,
India Phil lager might have been a little bit clunky. You
had people advocating for low
ABV beer, which I was put in that sort of area type brewer category
along with lager love. And I think one thing interesting
there is Rich Snyder of Ocelot sort of mentioning
that West Coast IPAs are back, but they're not necessarily back as
they were. They're back taking some of the lessons of hazy
IPA and and incorporating them into how you
approach a a West Coast IPA, which
honestly for me fits with my own sort of consumption preferences.
But one other sort of common topic, and I'd be curious to hear what you
guys think about this, is there seem to be sort of a
debate, a conversation about people
returning to bars. Some people seem to say, you
know, it's happening and it's great. And some people seem to be
fretting about it and saying it's not happening. I had invited Steve
Jones, legendary brewer, now brewing at the Brewers Arc,
and, she he had a Verratti dark comment about how
he saw the state of the industry and people not drinking beer. At the same
time, you had other people. Emily seemed pretty upbeat about it.
Emily Brown again. You know, you guys are are immersed in the scene,
and I'm sure you hear a lot from some sort of people
about how they Phil about the state of the industry and take Yeah. I mean,
my understanding of this is that draft sales, in DC
kind of cratered during the pandemic, and they're they've been very
slow to pick up. Seeing more cans,
but the margin's better on draft, both for breweries
and for bars and restaurants as well.
I've seen breweries, bars and restaurants absolutely slammed on a
Wednesday and I've seen them deserted on Thursday Friday.
I can't really make heads and tails of it nor do I wanna
bring gloom and doom. Having
edited this piece and in the process of posting
it, I have seen Steve Jones comment. And
his pessimism is, I think, probably more
well earned than any optimism that I've
seen. Yeah. I would echo that and say it's
a wild world in which we live where I had a sacred and
profane dry hop pale lager today at LT,
you know, at the roost. And then they had Knobloch
and Eichorn, all these German lagers on that they'd never had before. So
we're getting a ton of very interesting beer on draft. I don't know if we
hadn't had you know, for example, the mayor of DC shut down
drafts, arguably responsible thing during pandemic times in 2020,
if we'd be seeing beer from Franconia or
Maine at a tank pub that in theory only serves
tank draft beer in Maine. So I think both things
can be true where we're excited to see people back on premise. And then a
brewer who has been brewing in Baltimore
for, I don't know, a couple decades. Maybe it's more well earned than any other
brewer. But, Phil, we're so grateful for you, and we're we're very eager
to rip into, beer and review. As we say this
now, of course, this will be out today, and we're so grateful for
you. Phil, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you.
Thank you, everybody. Have a happy, healthy, safe
holiday season and New Year's and such. You can
celebrate at any number of breweries or neighborhood restaurant group
spots, or you can do what Brandy and I do and sit at home
and drink a very effervescent beer if we make it to midnight.
Thank you so much DC Beer listenership. We'll see you
and you will hear us on Friday,
January 10th 2025.