Brewery

The venerated 10-ounce cans of Budweiser and Bud Light have been altered, 56 years after they were introduced to Southern Maryland. Ten-ounce cans are immensely popular in the region, so much so that Anheuser-Busch's competitors also sell their brands in the smaller can here. The changes, which make the 10-ounce can a bit taller and slimmer, came about a month ago. Guy Distributing Co., the Anheuser-Busch distributor for St. Mary's County, had no idea the change was coming. "We didn't even get a message," said...

DOVER, Del. — U.S. Sens. Tom Carper and Chris Coons are co-sponsoring legislation to help small breweries. The bill introduced in Congress on Thursday would reduce the excise tax on each barrel of beer made by small brewers. Under current law, brewers generally pay an $18 excise tax on each barrel brewed. Small brewers, currently defined as those producing fewer than 2 million barrels a year, pay an excise tax of $7 per barrel for the first 60,000 barrels. The new legislation would reduce the...

On a recent Monday, two of the people behind Washington's Bluejacket brewery did something ambitious. Even though the place isn't scheduled to open until 2013, head brewer Megan Parisi and all-around ideas man Greg Engert produced their first beer by flying to Tampa and meeting up with counterparts at Cigar City Brewing and from the Boca Raton-based Funky Buddha Lounge & Brewery. The trip to Cigar City, one of the most acclaimed breweries in the South, marked the start of an unusual and perhaps unprecedented brewery launch strategy.

About six months ago, Thor Cheston's nascent beer business was strapped for cash. He needed $125,000. Without it, he said he couldn't move forward with lease negotiations for the location which he hoped would eventually hold the Right Proper Brew Pub, a neighborhood brewery, bar and restaurant. "We were coming to a crossroads," Cheston said. Cheston and his business partner, John Snedden, who owns Rocklands Barbeque and Grilling Company in Northwest D.C., had already raised about a quarter of their budget through private equity sales,...

A Japanese brewery will produce 100 bottles of beer from barley descended from seeds that spent five months aboard the international space station. Sapporo Breweries, which doesn't plan to sell the initial batch, participated in an experiment to learn about the ability of plants to adapt to environmental change and space travel. The "space beer" is expected to be ready in November. SOURCE: Associated Press

Alois Bube was urging us on. "Drink plenty of beer!" he cried. "I put plenty of myself into every keg!" Not needing any more prompting, I went up to the bar and ordered a Bube bock draft — rich, slightly sweet and with a hint of a coffee taste. As I sipped the dark brew, I wondered just what parts of Alois Bube I was drinking. This wasn't the real Alois Bube, of course. He died in 1908. Our Alois Bube was an actor portraying the brew master in the murder mystery we were about to...

"I'm a bug collector," Terry Hawbaker says, referring to the wild yeasts and bacteria swarming in the two oak barrels in his Alexandria storefront. At 39, with a divot in his forehead from a recent bike accident and a love of punk-inflected rock-and-roll, he has been maturing his sour beer since September, tasting it as it slowly grows tarter, funkier and more complex. It's the brewing equivalent of a baker's sourdough starter. Colonizing barrels of unfermented beer, the bugs will work their slow alchemy over months and...

Jay Irizarry, one of the founders of Chocolate City Brewing, is a jack-of-all-trades. After he's done helping his partner Ben Matz brew the beer, he delivers kegs to eight accounts in the District in a graffiti-spattered van. Then he pulls pints at the Wonderland Ballroom in Columbia Heights, where he moonlights as a bartender. "I don't like to let people know I'm the brewery owner," he says. "They give you a more guarded response that way. " "I'm a spy," he laughs. Among the more interesting comments he has...

About six months ago, Thor Cheston's nascent beer business was strapped for cash. He needed $125,000. Without it, he said he couldn't move forward with lease negotiations for the location which he hoped would eventually hold the Right Proper Brew Pub, a neighborhood brewery, bar and restaurant. "We were coming to a crossroads," Cheston said. Cheston and his business partner, John Snedden, who owns Rocklands Barbeque and Grilling Company in Northwest D.C., had already raised about a quarter of their budget through...

One year shy of 180, D.G. Yuengling and Son Inc. in Pottsville, Pa., is the oldest continuously operating beermaker in the United States. Depending on your definition of "brewery," Yuengling might soon boast another distinction: the largest brewery that's 100 percent U.S.-owned. Now that Anheuser-Busch (the nation's largest brewer, with an output of 102 million barrels last year) has accepted InBev's $52 billion buyout offer, the King of Beers will shortly be part of a Belgian-Brazilian conglomerate.

My wife and I biked home from work one humid spring evening to find an icy Mason jar sweating by the doormat. It was a gift from our neighbor, the widow of a Swedenborgian minister, an intrepid gardener known for her climbing roses. The jar was stuffed with a tangle of greens — a frilly ground cover she snipped each late April and early May called sweet woodruff. It gave off the warm scent of cardamom or maybe shavings of cedar. And steeped in white jug wine with sliced strawberries, it...

"I'm the lunatic who makes beer in Lebanon!" announces Mazen Hajjar as he rises to extend his hand. That's Lebanon in the Middle East — not Pennsylvania. Hajjar's brewery, 961 Beer (named after the international dialing code for Lebanon), is a five-minute drive from Beirut. With his shoulder-length dark hair and full beard, he might be mistaken for a graduate student who wandered into ChurchKey near Logan Circle to down a few drafts after banging out his thesis. But this youthful 39-year-old has a remarkably varied résumé:...

From the ground floor of the future Bluejacket brewery — the 7,300 square feet that will contain the bar, restaurant and storage space — a visitor can tilt back his head and gaze into a soaring atrium. Wrapping around the emptiness is a horseshoe-shaped mezzanine. The mezzanine, in turn, is surmounted by a small third floor, like an announcer's box at an amphitheater. Sparks flew and tools roared on a recent weekday as Megan Parisi, Bluejacket's head brewer, led me to the top. In this former Navy Yard building where...

Several new archaeological finds suggest that alcohol has been a social glue in parties, from work festivals to cultic feasts, since the dawn of civilization . In the December issue of the journal Antiquity, archaeologists describe evidence of nearly 11,000-year-old brewing troughs at a feasting site in Turkey. And archaeologists in Cyprus have unearthed the 3,500-year-old ruins of what may have been a primitive brewery and feasting hall. The excavation, described in the November...

Maybe brewing gets in the blood. Maybe it's the allure of an industry that saw double-digit increases in sales and volume in the first half of 2012 and now counts more than 2,200 breweries across the country. Either way, several movers and shakers have resurfaced from the early days of craft brewing in the Washington area, hoping the public's insatiable thirst, and maybe a little nostalgia, will enable them to resume their careers. Martin Virga was Capitol City's first brewer when the chain opened its initial location on H...

The venerated 10-ounce cans of Budweiser and Bud Light have been altered, 56 years after they were introduced to Southern Maryland. Ten-ounce cans are immensely popular in the region, so much so that Anheuser-Busch's competitors also sell their brands in the smaller can here. The changes, which make the 10-ounce can a bit taller and slimmer, came about a month ago. Guy Distributing Co., the Anheuser-Busch distributor for St. Mary's County, had no idea the change was coming. "We didn't even get a...

Today's start-up breweries don't want to be mere beer factories; they aspire to be beer destinations. Central to that plan is a tasting room. It's not just a place where guests sip samples out of plastic cups. It also serves as a storefront for selling growlers and six-packs to go; a laboratory for testing new recipes; and a community room where locals can jaw over sports, politics and the merits of the local beer. "It used to be that there were tasting permits for grocery and liquor stores but not for breweries," recalls Brandon...

Here are the 32 American craft beers featured in this year's Beer Madness competition, separated into four flavor brackets and listed alphabetically. They are all available year-round in the Washington area, in either bottles or cans. Last year's Malt category has been replaced with Crisp, to level the playing field a bit for (pale) lagers and lower ABV (alcohol by volume) brews. CRISP Fordham Helles Lager Fordham Brewing Co., Dover, Del. This golden, malt-accented lager is...

What to eat Someone always shows up to a well-organized tailgate bearing the most meager of contributions: a clammy package of Oscar Mayer franks for the grill or a bag of half-crushed potato chips. Don't be that person. Skip the last-minute trip to the supermarket and opt for fresh meat and half-smokes from local butchers. Here are a few of our favorite sources: Run by two D.C. bartenders, 13th Street Meats ' freshly ground half-smokes and spicy Italian and...

Over the past four years, D.C. Beer Week has evolved from a series of dinners and rare-beer tastings to a festival that celebrates the area's evolving beer scene. Local breweries collaborate on a special brew, and out-of-town breweries send hard-to-find kegs for one-time tastings. The 2012 festival, which runs from Sunday to Aug. 19, has more events than ever, thanks to breweries and beer-centric bars and restaurants that have opened this year. Check out these must-do events, and watch www.dcbeerweek.net ...