May 1997, Volume 20, Issue 5

East Cost Beer

by Ken Koupal

We took the whole family on vacation to the Washington D.C. area, which is a fairly bold adventure with very young kids.

One evening we went out to a "brewery" in downtown Washington D.C. called Capital City Brewery. It was housed in the old Greyhound station, a classic example of streamlined art deco. They had a kid’s menu too -- this looked promising.

Maybe we had a new waiter or something, but it took us about 20 minutes to get anyone’s attention. Others got good service, but we got the Bermuda Triangle table.

When we finally got a waiter, we found that they were out of 4 of the 6 beers they advertised on tap. So, we had some indistinguishable copper colored light ale to go with our over-priced hamburgers. Nice building; bad experience.

So, we stayed in Maryland. Unfortunately, they don’t sell beer in the grocery stores, so things were looking pretty dry for a couple of days.

Finally, we went to dinner at a ribs joint in Arlington, VA. It was called Red, Hot, and Blues, and this place was really cookin’. Besides the outstanding ribs and the best of the Blues music, plus a full kids’ menu, with really good service, they served beer from the Foggy Bottom Brewery. I don’t know anything about this local brewery, but when I go back I will definitely look them up. This was the first east coast beer that actually tasted like a west coast beer. It had body, it had hops, it wasn’t served at iceberg temperature, and it didn’t taste like any of the other metallic cornwater swills so popularly labeled "beer" out there. I was truly surprised.