Welcome to the DC Beer Show. I'm Mike Stein. I'm here with
Jordan Harvey. Jordan, what are you drinking?
You know, I'm still trying to keep the the, our listeners on their toes.
So I'm I'm doubling back down with the halfway crooks, man. I'm still sipping
some, top fermenting lager. It's a crispy
boy season. It's been a nice nice official spring
weather, seventies as high as the eighties, on,
Easter. So I hope hope all for all those that celebrated had a good Easter.
And if Easter is not your thing, I hope you had a good 04/20. And
if that's not your thing, I hope you have a great Earth Day because that'll
be what day it is when this episode drops. So, so serious to
you. But, Mike Stein, what's in your sign tonight, sir? You've got so many
bases covered, Jordan. I love to see it. I'm enjoying DC
golden funk, a golden sour ale, very much
outside of the, typical realm we expect from
Brau. It's not hoppy. It's not malty. It's not hard
seltzer. It's a wonderfully yeast forward, sour, funky
treat. I am loving it.
So what we have this evening are special guests from
DC Brau. I figured I would follow through with a DC Brau
beer. But it's April.
It's hot, but yet the mosquitoes
aren't completely tearing me to shred. So if you can get
outside, enjoy the one, maybe more days this
year where it's warm enough to be outside and not be torn apart,
by mosquitoes. Speaking of April, we
have some fun things lined up. Jordan, what
are you looking forward to as we get into April,
move into May, look forward right now?
Let's see if I can really, cover so many bases. Well, we had a
couple Star Wars days coming up. I'm saying that in the wake of,
yeah, you know, Star Wars weekend this past weekend. You know,
Cinco de Mayo, so some Mexican lagers, I'm sure they would those would be available
in copious amounts. So looking forward to that. Trivia will be in
abundance. Again, patio weather will be, patio beer drinking
weather will be upon us, despite the mosquitoes.
And, yeah, man. Just looking to really, you know, celebrate, May
and AAPI month and and all the other things that that are coming down the
pipe, you know, including Mother's Day and everything else. But, Maryland Craft
Beer Festival is really the big rock, the big feather in my cap
for, for May. So I'm looking forward to tripping up to
Frederick for that and, and drinking as local as I can. You know, I'm sure
it won't be limited to just Maryland based breweries, but it will be a lot
of Maryland based breweries in attendance. So if you're free
on, the May 10, the May,
definitely would encourage you to go up. The Brewers Association of Maryland
as will the other prolific breweries in Maryland will
be bringing out some of the, some mixed farms,
some some stout, some sours, some some lagers, some
IPAs, and all the good things that we want to, to have
when the weather is nice and school is almost out.
What about you, or what are you tracking, as as April comes to a conclusion,
the next week and a half or so? Well, I'm looking forward to wonderful
cask beer. I love it at Bluejacket. I love it
at Churchkey. I love it at Shelter. And sure enough,
the women's brew culture club has some events
happening on Saturday at The Roost, specifically
at Show of Hands with the manager, Ali.
I know our good friend of the site, Amber, is doing the First
Women's Brew Culture Club Baltimore branch on Sunday at
Pickett Brewing, and, of course, Pickett Brewing is a woman owned brewery.
So those are super exciting. I don't know that missus
Stein will be attending them. I hope she will, but knowing,
how much, activity is in the air, we
probably will be up in New York City this week, so it's gonna be
busy. So I've actually been tracking breweries, you know, in Brooklyn,
Queens, Bronx, Staten Island, and Long Island
as if a tiny time in New York City would allow me to do them
all. Right? Like, if you're in DC for one day, you're not getting to
Alexandria, Silver Spring, Richmond, Baltimore.
But one can dream one could dream, can't they? Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So to your point, may the fourth
be with you. If you're a a Spaceballs fan,
may the Schwartz be with you. And in
addition to some Mexican style lagers, we hopefully
will see some Schwartz beers going on as well.
So we love seeing the Mexican style lagers, had a
Mundo Especial from Silver Spring, from, excuse
me, Silver Branch over the weekend, also in Silver Spring.
Very much looking forward to Schwartz beers and some dark lagers
coming down the pike. Yeah. And and in addition to, like, just
the Schwartz beers and and everything else, I I've
been really appreciating the,
proliferation of, some of the lower ABV beers and some of
the NA beers. They're still there, folks. It's still not dry January.
But, you know, if you're if you're not if you're looking to to have a
lot of sessional beers, a lot of the local breweries are are dropping them. I'm
thinking of, some of the happy Pilsners that, Lost
Generation has been dropping. Same for Third Hill. You know, I'll always say something for
Third Hill again. That's one of my neighborhood watering holes. So, just
really really looking forward to a a lot of the beers that that are coming
out. And as well as, again, this isn't really beer related,
but in the for the sake of refreshing beverages, the
Kentucky Derby, the most exciting two minutes of sports, almost upon
us. And, missus Harvey is looking forward
to getting a mint julep. So just all the things that
that are coming your way to to to make this, very exciting
official spring. I don't think we'll get any any onion snows in between now
and and then. So we're officially we're officially in there. But, yeah. You
mentioned, DC excuse me, Brau. And you also mentioned
Bluejacket. And one of those folks can listen and learn about the other folks
the other one people might actually have to go to the site to read about.
So, definitely check out Stein's latest article, about Bluejacket.
And, what can the folks look forward to listening to tonight with, DC
Brown? Oh, tonight, we have lined up Alex Spencer,
head brewer, and Brandon Skoll, CEO and cofounder of
DC Brown. Let's give a listen. Thank
you so much, Brandon Skoll and Alex Spencer. We
so appreciate you both coming on the DC Beer Show
tonight. Welcome back, I should say. Thank
you for having us. Thank you. It's always a pleasure, Mike. Always a pleasure.
Alright. So, Brandon, you are CEO and cofounder of DC.
Alex, you are head brewer of DC. The
brewery just turned 14, and we received
a press release about Dueling Grounds, the Vienna
lager. The first question is a softball question.
Is Dueling Grounds Vienna lager big news?
And if so, why? I think for us, it's big news.
We don't often, you know, mess with the flagship lineup here
at Brau. When we add a new core beer, it's it's a big deal.
And it's been quite a while since we've done that. We felt it was time,
and we put a lot of care and thought into what that new
flagship would be. And it ended up being Dueling Grounds Vienna
Lager. Alex, can you tell us a little bit about the beer? What should,
listeners of the pod or fans of Better Beer locally expect with with
Dueling Grounds Vienna Lager? Oh, it's gonna be a a
profoundly malt forward beer. You
know, the the the bulk of the characters, like, you know, toasted bread
crust, dark bread, very, very bready
with some, you know, caramelly toffee
undertones, a little bit of sweetness, a little bit of Braun
sugar, but the the predominant character is Brau crust.
Wonderful. So stepping things up and playing off the
fourteen years, the fourteenth anniversary, I'm wondering if you
can tell us a little bit about some of the barriers
and struggles you've successfully overcome.
There's been some, I don't wanna say fights, but some
struggle on the local legislative front. When you first opened,
you had to overcome some some local legislation and
bring DC Brau sort of into the 20 century.
I'm wondering then what can you see in the
future either, locally or federally
coming down the pike that you might struggle with or some barriers
that you feel could be coming down the pike that you see sort of
brewing as we move, you know, through the first quarter of
of twenty twenty five and look at 2026? Yeah. Mike,
well, would you perhaps call those struggles, duels? Duels.
Perhaps historically?
I'll I'll address the question, but just playfully before we get
into it, I do wanna mention that the name for the Brau Dueling
Grounds has quite the historic reference. And as a
historian, you might appreciate that the Bladensburg Dueling Grounds
are right across the street from us, actually,
about, I think, less than a mile, maybe half a mile from here in Colmar
Manor. And these Dueling Grounds were
where, you know, politicians or
just the the elite of Washington DC would go to settle their duels
with pistols and whatnot, all the way from the late seventeen
hundreds until right before the civil war. So, we had a little bit of
a historic nod to the name of the beer. Anybody who
comes to visit the brewery, I highly suggest you walk
the extra few feet over to the Bladensburg Dueling Grounds. Check out
the historical marker there and read all about it. It's a fun little piece of
local history and something that we thought was worthy of,
naming a beer after. But, in speaking of duels, yes,
there was there was quite a bit, that we had to fight against when we
opened. And maybe saying fighting against is is a bit of a
strong term. I mean, what we found was that just
nobody had had a brewery in the district in fifty years fifty plus
years. And what that came down to was, though it was perfectly
legal to have a brewery and there was a license on the books, a
lot of the supporting legislation that had sort of happened in the
country throughout the last half century to modernize the industry just
hadn't happened in DC. For example, a lot of the
tasting room structure that you have all over the rest of the country didn't
exist in Washington, DC. An example of that is that we were able
to package our beer here, brew our beer here. We were
able to sell our beer to people who came to the brewery, but they weren't
allowed to even taste the beer. And our
first step there was, before we could even think about pouring a pint, was to
introduce a bill to allow people to taste the product.
Back in those early days, we had to sort of, you know,
go little bit by little bit into the the modern legislation that
exists now. And that first sort of compromise was to allow people
no more than 12 ounces of beer per day,
to taste, which we decided to break up into,
four little three ounce pour. So if you remember coming to the brewery,
in the first few years that we were around, you were given four tickets,
and each ticket was good for a teeny little pour. And so people
would come, and they would do the tour, and they would take their taste, and
then they would buy their beer to go. And slowly, as the
laws modernized, that eventually turned into us being allowed to,
sell pints here and people being able to hang out and have more of the
modern taproom culture that we have now. One of my favorite
stories from back then, we had just exhausted our
budget really on that easing, permit legislation,
And we didn't have any more to spend on changing laws because we
were opening a brewery, and that's what we needed to save our money for. And
there was a rule that we couldn't sell growlers. However, we were allowed to
sell steeled glass bottles, and it did not, you know, give
any variation on size or, whatnot. So we
interpreted the law that we were able to sell growlers
despite them being called growlers, and we wrote a very kind
letter to to Brau, to the the alcohol
legislation and regulation, committee here in town,
agency. And we said, hey. We're just letting you know. We interpret this law to
say that we actually can sell Growlers, and we're gonna start doing it on this
date. If you disagree with us, let us know as soon as possible.
And we actually got back a signed letter saying, actually,
we fully agree with you, and it was signed by all of the board members.
And that was a really fun, you know,
cheap win for us, legislatively. But since then, you know, so much
has changed. I think the biggest struggle that we've had to face has
not been, you know, limited just to us,
but the pandemic really rocked our industry, and it still
continues to do so to this day. You know, I think
that the the economic landscape has changed
for a lot of breweries, and we're finally starting to see that really catch up
to the industry as we're starting to have years where we've got more closings than
openings, in the industry.
And as we're dealing with that, you know, we've got tariffs sort of
coming into play as well, which are no doubt going
to sort of, be another struggle when we're already still sort of recovering
from the pandemic. And, also, you know, our industry, I'll say,
is very interlaced with hospitality in many ways, way
beyond just having a a tasting room here. Here. All of the bars and restaurants
in town that carry our product product, which is over 60% of our
sales, they've been struggling as well. And we've been riding
that roller coaster with them for the past five years. And in
DC right now, you know, if you're local here, you may be aware, but, if
you're not local, you might not know. The hospitality industry
is in peril. In fact, this year, the restaurant association of
Metropolitan Washington is predicting, over 40%
of the restaurants in Washington DC will close. And that is just a
huge loss culturally, to the
restaurant industry of this town, but also
to all of the businesses that are interlaced with them in success.
But I think that, you know, the landscape might look very different a year from
now, and and there's so many businesses that support and thrive on
the hospitality industry. I think we're gonna see that ripple
across many industries. So right now, that's where my attention is
focused. I am, you know, paying a lot of attention to what's going
on with the tariffs, and we're trying to adjust when, where, and how we
can and pivot so that it has a minimal impact.
However, where my primary focus is is what's going on with the
hospitality industry. How can we bring awareness, to this
issue, and how can we help boost it? Because the restaurants that will
survive, that 50% that make it, it's gonna
be hard for them to be the mom and pops. It's gonna be hard for
them to be those chef driven concepts that really
care, a lot to have local products like ours on and to feature
them. So, that's where I'm spending a lot of my attention right
now. But, you know, I think that time will tell, and,
hopefully, the people locally will get out and support these
restaurants and support this industry because it really needs it now more than
ever. Thank you. That's well well said. I'll share
a tidbit about the hospitality industry. We were at, the Salamander
in Southwest DC, and sure enough, we did a
staycation. And when we were in our room, they had DC Brau corruption.
It, not only in in the fridge, but they had it on offer room
service. So I got a cheese board because, you know,
cheese is delicious. And I paired it with a corruption. It was delightful. It was
under a month old, and I was thrilled to see, you know, a twenty
eight day old corruption. So I wanted to ask you, Alex,
certainly, you know, the the brewery's been around for fourteen years. You
haven't been head brewer for fourteen years, but you've been head brewer for a little
while now. When the brewery first launched, it was very, sort
of pale ale IPA heavy. Of course, the public
pale ale and corruption IPA, these are still big brands
in DC today. But I'm wondering what you're seeing as you
brew or ferment or sell our sort of, you know,
five days a week. What do you see, coming down
the pike? Are you of course, you know, there's the the hard seltzer
line as well in addition to, you know, the the
beers that sort of traditional beers that that DC Brown is brewing, the
nonalcoholic beers. What do you see coming down the pike as
you, make beer, ferment beer, and and package beer
five days a week? Well, I mean, I came into BRAU kind of at
the the tail end of the West
Coast IPA, more bitter is better, how
many IBUs is your IPA craze,
and hazy's really starting to become popular outside of New
England. And, you know, we saw that trend
growing, my first couple years at the brewery. When
I started, you know, the citizen was still part of the core lineup,
and we ended up dropping that off and putting joint resolution of Hazy
in its place. But I'm seeing Hazy's become
less and less popular, especially outside of the breweries
that are really known for them. And I'm seeing a lot
more desire for, you know, straightforward,
you know, quote, unquote, beer flavored beer, really
typified by the the resurgence of the popular area of lagers.
And, you know, the the macro beer drinkers who've always
only drank lager, but with, you know,
craft beer drinkers who used to, you know, decry, you know,
fizzy yellow beer, moving towards them as
well. So things that we've really, you
know, expanded in recent years are the number of lagers we're doing,
the the styles of lagers we're doing, and Dueling Grounds seem to
fit kinda right into that. You know? And I
think what we're seeing is a bit of a a backlash
on the consumer side from all of these
extremely flavored beers. You know, the the hop
sludge milkshake IPAs and the, the the
crazy pastry sounds and all that and back to something that, you
know, is drinkable and subtle and nuanced and, you know,
you don't get overwhelmed with just having a little taste of it. If I
could jump in there to sort of, you know, just piggyback on the point that
Alex just made, kind of the biggest growth
brand that we have had the past two and a half years has been Old
Time, and not by a little bit. Double digit,
even triple digit growth one year, this lager has
just really continued to chug along for us. And the
idea there was that, you know, we were seeing a lot of the younger generation
drinking Narragansett, going back to Yingling and Brau, and, of
course, Natty Bo in Baltimore, and we thought we could do that
here too. We can brew a beer like that, and we thought it would resonate
with the consumer, be approachable to not only the the
folks who've always drunk lager that Alex was talking about, but
also the sector of craft beer enthusiasts who are rediscovering
those easy drinking everyday lagers and bringing them back into the fold.
And and that's definitely what we saw. And, also, just tip of the hat
to Alex, if you've been to Anthem or nine thirty Club
anytime soon, you probably had the I'm pills,
which is a, a a check pills that Alex,
wrote the recipe for for the brewery, and that's been one of the
absolutely most well received beers of the past several years. So all of
these sort of reinforce that, you know, all paths lead back
to lager, which is a a phrase that I often heard back fourteen years
ago when we were starting a brewery. And it seems like, indeed, our path
has led back to lager. Well said. I wanted to ask you as
when we had Dan Kopman on the show, that was
episode one ninety five for our listeners out there.
Dan Kopman, of course, is professional lecturer at American University's
Kogod School of Business, and he's a senior policy adviser to the
Worldwide Brewing Alliance. He told us that early
mover advantage often coincides with early adopters.
So when I talk about early adopters, those are the consumers with an
innovation cycle that are your first consumers.
So with that, I wanted to ask you, do you still feel you're
seeing benefits from beating early adopters, or has the
competitive advantage has it eroded because the market has
become so competitive? Well, that's a that's a
really good question, Mike. You know, and it's one that,
it's hard to give a clear answer to, but what I can tell you that,
I do think that that early adapter advantage we had early on did a really
good job beyond just getting the Brau placed of getting
the brewery itself placed and formalized in DC.
We often say we are DC's beer knowing that there's a lot of other
beer that comes from DC, but being out there first and having
DC in our name really helped to sort of, you know, get us cemented in
the market. And I I still think even though so many people have
come and gone in the past fourteen years, that that reputation
and what we did back then, that that foundation has
stayed. However, you know, the the competitiveness
that we're seeing out there, it's it's
twofold because it's not just from there being a lot of breweries, but it's
there being a drop in consumption as well.
And just to sort of illustrate that point, you know, Washington DC was
always a 6,000,000 case market. And if you've run into me anytime in the
past two years, you've probably heard me talk about this. But
6,000,000 cases total for all of the beer that was consumed
in DC. And that means, you know, the macros, the micros,
everybody. And when the pandemic hit,
that number went from 6,000,000 cases down to 4,000,000
cases. And it never really came back. It just sort of
flatlined. There was, like, a little pop of lights here and
there, but, you know, what would be gained one month would then be
lost the next. And the crystal ball was broken as far
as, you know, how much it would come back and when.
And to this day, really, what we've seen is is sort of flat.
So, in addition to there being more brands out there, there
was just less beer being consumed in the district. And that's sort of,
like, you know, something that's happening all over the country, but
it's really exemplified in the numbers in DC. But one of the things that
we've done in the past couple years to sort of we're about we're about two
and a half percent of the market, which doesn't sound like enough or a lot,
but it's it's enough that we really ride the trend of the whole
market. We're out of that growth cycle of being a new
brewery, and and we're pretty stabilized. So when the market goes up, we go up.
When the market goes down, we go down. And seeing this
flatness that was accumulating, we decided that we really needed
to invest in creating a contract brewing program.
And one of the things about the contract brewing program that I really
like, is that it it, in my mind, helps
alleviate some of the feelings of competition and helps to
nurture some of the feelings of collaboration that we often had in those
initial first years. You know, I would say, like,
2011 through 2014, '20
'15, everything really felt like the rising tide was lifting all ships,
and it was all of us independent locals against the world.
And, that's a feeling I really missed, you know, in the second part of
the teens and especially when the pandemic happened. That
feeling sort of fell farther away than ever. But getting into
contract brewing and brewing we brew for about a dozen breweries now.
We're invested in everybody's success, and they're invested in our
success. And it brings back those feelings, and it it helps to
sort of topple that wall of competition that can be isolating
and make every brewery feel sort of siloed. So,
that's just a little, you know, silver lining in there. But,
you know, the problem is real that the market is shrinking,
and the number the amount of competition is more than ever. Although, I think we're
also starting to see the competition start to shrink. This
past year, there's been several unfortunate closings, and our scene is
still small enough that when, we do have a brewery closing, unfortunately,
it's it's missed by everybody. Yet even as they talk about competition, we
are all friends, and, we are all in this together.
Yeah. That's an excellent point. I think, we now have numbers
from the brewers association, saying that in
2024, we saw a 4%
overall decrease in beer sold, beer produced,
manufactured. So, it does make sense
that with DC taking a hit even before
2024, we're gonna continue to see that play out.
We've only got a minute left, but, Alex, I wanted to ask you, what are
you excited about that we should expect? I'm having
a golden funk right now, which is delightful. What have
you produced? What have you sellered or packaged that's coming down the pike that we
should look out for at at DC Pier? Well, I am
really proud of the Dueling Grounds, so definitely, pick
it up when you're able to get your hands on it. As far as
anything super secret, super special, we pulled
out a, next round of golden funk out of the barrels a couple
of months ago. And we've got something super
secret and sour starting its, its aging process to come out in a couple
of years. That's very exciting. We're looking forward to it, and
I'll I'll commend you on on this golden funk. It's wonderful. It's
delightful. Looking forward to Dueling Grounds. What's your
preference? Do you like it out of a can? Do you like it on draft?
What's your preference? Oh, you know, having
access to bright tanks kinda spoils you towards draft, but it
tastes great out of the can too. I'd also like to quick quick mention,
for fans of, lagers, Keller pills
is coming back, and also be on the lookout for Space
Reaper, which will be returning this year. Oh. For the non
lager. Yes. I am right. If you like mellow malt and light
hops, check out Keller beer. If you like heavy handed, delicious,
hoppy aromatic, sweet smelling hops, check out
Space Reaper. Brandon, Alex, thank you so much for joining us.
Yep. Thanks for having us. Thanks, guys. Always a fun time. Once again, thank
you to DC Brau for joining us. We are very excited
to sample some of the, sour tart
funkier barrel aged beer that's coming down the pike that Alex
mentioned. Jordan, speaking of barrel aged beers, are there
any, unique one off barrel aged beers that
you are keeping an eye on? Not in the
immediate future. I know, so Chocolate City Porter that that that's
going in in a barrel or two. So folks have something to look forward
to come the fall, if not next winter, you know, during Black
History Month. But, nothing as immediate. You know, I I always I keep
a couple Monday night bottles, on me, so I got a couple Monday night,
barrel aged beers to dive into. I actually have a couple,
burial bottles that, one of my dear friends, Adrian, he
got he picked up from Downtown Crown up in Gaithersburg. So so it really
is those, but I don't know if anything too local that's
really top of mind. But, you know, one thing and I I think we'd be
remiss to not plug is, our next beer share will be
at DC. So, you know, folks that are really
excited for, what they've just heard, they can really look forward to
coming out on Friday, May 16, at
DC Brau for our May DC beer beer
share. So a lot of a lot of Brau happenings in the next three to
four weeks. And we'd love to have you guys come out and support. And if
you wanna learn more, obviously, you can, follow us on Instagram and all social
media. But also please please please consider becoming a Patreon
subscriber because, again, those funds allow us to do the things that,
you all enjoy and allows us to do the things that we need to do
to cover the craft beer industry. So, it's truly a group effort, and,
we need your support to support those that we all love. So cheers to you
guys. Thanks for the continued support. And,
Mike Sine, you wanna leave the folks with anything else? Anything else? Yeah. I'll just
say, as we mentioned, as we heard during our interview,
Brandon had said that, you know, 60% of DC
sales was in the hospitality business, and hospitality is
still kinda kinda sort of licking their wounds from the pandemic.
So if you are out and about, you know,
continue to support your local. If you
can't make it to, Pickett Brewing on Sunday
in Baltimore, check out Port City Brewing
Company. Right? If you're an Alexandria listener, go ahead and visit your folks in
Alexandria. There's no shortage of breweries there. If you're a Baltimore listener,
please check out your locals in Baltimore. Everybody is really
interested in your business right now. So we would just
encourage you to keep supporting your friends in the industry. We will
continue to soldier on and keep on
trucking here at DC beer. If you can, check out
patreon.com/dcbeer and support us. We will keep
supporting you in the local scene, but, please support
local. We know we do, and we hope you do too.
Jordan, what do you got to take us out on? Be nice to someone. You
know, tariffs are are not always the the best thing, and I know it's
creating a lot of, fear and a bit of a chilling effect, just
across the the country and specifically our our our little DMV. But,
you know, just support small businesses, you know, be nice to the
person next to you. You never know what someone else is going through. And, cold
beer doesn't fix everything, but it does make some things better. Drink responsibly,
but but, don't stress too much about what we can't control. Don't
let the macro control the micro. Right? So, so cheers to you guys. And,
have a good April, and happy Earth Day.