Heurich House Museum leads the DC Beer Week education calendar
As you might suspect and may have heard, DC Beer Week runs from September 8-15, celebrates our local craft beer scene, and is all about drinking high-quality beer from the best local, regional, and national producers. Mostly.
Thanks to the DC Brewers’ Guild and the Heurich House Museum, the week is also about cramming some beer knowledge into that brain of yours while you sip some suds and debate “is this Citra too catty or…?”
One of the best DC Beer Week traditions, a slate of beer-focused educational events, is back for #DCBW2019, and this year that slate features five events from which beer fans will surely find something to appreciate.
Can you really appreciate good beer unless you know how to identify bad beer? Maybe, but it’s a pretty cool(?) party trick to be able to identify off-flavors and Pizzeria Paradiso Georgetown will offer beer fans that chance with an Off-Flavor Tasting on Sunday, September 8 from 2-3 pm. They’ll use the six-flavor tasting kit from the Cicerone Certification Program, and once you taste all of these mistakes it will make you appreciate clean-tasting beer all the more. Tickets are $25.
Pack your lunch on Monday, September 9 and head to the Heurich House Museum from 12:30-1:30 pm. Director of Education Jennifer Ezell will lead attendees through a guided tour of “HOME/BREWED: How the Chr. Heurich Brewing Co. Witnessed DC History,” an exhibit in the Carriage House.
The Chr. Heurich Brewing Company was DC’s largest and the last operating production brewery before DC Brau opened in 2011. The exhibit features “a collection of over 1,000 items – including bottles, cans, signs, and branded objects of every kind.” There’s a $5 suggested donation.
You might read “We Took A Beer Bath in Europe (But Not Together)” and think it’s the latest installment in the #eviltwinbeernames hashtag. You might be right someday, but in this case, Jamaal Lemon and Myron (Shep) Jenkins of The Wayfarer Study will “share their experiences drinking beer around the globe and what that taught them about beer, life, and drinking in the DMV.”
The two high school buddies were selected as beer interns for World of Beer in 2016 and seen all kinds of sights around the world. Lemon worked for Atlas for a bit, too. The event is from 6-8 pm on Wednesday, September 11; the pair will chat from 6:30-7:30 pm and a reception will follow. Tickets are $10.
Thursday, September 12 you can (and should) be at Red Bear Brewing Company in NoMA for a celebration of, and a panel discussion with, women in craft beer. If you’re not content to listen to Katie Marisic of the Brewers Association and Melissa Ramano of the Pink Boots Society, you should be, but the event will also include a special Belgian Blonde release, proceeds from which will be donated to the local DC Pink Boots Chapter.
The educational event series wraps on Friday, September 13 with a special DC Beer Week edition Brewmaster Tour of the Heurich House Museum. Tickets are $30 and include an hour-long guided tour of the museum and a craft beer tasting featuring beers brewed in DC in honor of DC Beer Week 2019. Each ticket comes with a beer flight featuring 4 oz pours of three local beers. After the tour, guests will be able to purchase full beers and hang out in the Conservatory. All proceeds benefit the Heurich House Museum, and although tickets are non-refundable, they may be transferred to a later Brewmaster Tour date.
The nice thing about the educational event series, aside from the fact that learning things is self-evidently good, is that the events are timed such that you can attend them and one of the many others on the DC Beer Week calendar. It’s not enough to just have access to all of the great beer, locally-brewed and otherwise, in our beer scene; it’s also good to learn more about where it came from, the people who make it, and what makes it good. Fortunately, beer fans will have plenty of opportunities to do just that.
