Beers in DC: Capitol City Brewing Company’s Equality Ale

Cap City's Equality Ale

The beer: The Equality Ale is a German Altbier style that has a nice clear copper color. According to Cap City the Equality Ale has crisp hop bitterness with a touch of malt in the finish. The beer is a pretty every day strength beer with 5% ABV. The beer was brewed as a response to the poor choices presented at President Obama’s beer summit, where original none of the participants were planning to drink American beer or craft beer in general. Cap City’s brewers were highlighted in the Wall Street Journal where they offered to provide Obama with quality local craft beer for his summit. The Equality Ale is a limited addition batch.

Tasting: Capitol City Brewing Company’s Equality Ale starts off with a mild up-front hoppiness that gives way to an incredibly dry crisp beer. The dryness of the beer makes the malt rather mild and in some ways the best way to get any malty notes is in the after breath. You can’t call this beer sweet. I found a slight tang in the beer, but that might have been the bitterness. Overall I was struck by how the beer made a great summer drinker with it’s refreshing dryness and light mouthfeel. It’s definitely an ale for lager fans and much more enjoyable than many Kolsch beers that often fill this role.

Where to find it: Only one batch of this specialty beer was brewed, so if you want to commemorate the infamous Obama Beer Summit, you need to head over to one of Capitol City Brewing Company’s three locations: Capitol Hill, Downtown, or Shirlington. It was tapped August 4th, and each location should have a few kegs to go through, but it wont last forever. Also on tap is their limited run Black Out Milk Stout and a Blackberry Ale as well as the Organic Wit. We’ll be reviewing the Wit in the next few days.