For the first time in twenty-five months, ChurchKey is open, and there are a few changes afoot. The five casks have been cut to three to allow for more turnover, and the space saved enabled Neighborhood Restaurant Group Managing Partner and Beer Director Greg Engert and his team to add four Czech-style Lukr faucets, so bartenders can pour pillowy soft lagers with varying degrees of foam.
To welcome everyone back, the bar is hosting four events in April with out-of-market breweries. The first is today, and, in a pandemic twist, some beers will be sold for retail.
Beginning at 4 pm, ChurchKey will feature ten hazy, hoppy cans from New York’s Fidens Brewing Company available to-go, plus seven beers on draft.
Fidens cans, to-go only, limit two cans per beer:
- Do You Know Allen? (Hazy Double IPA w/ Galaxy & Nelson Sauvin)
- Grade 10 (Hazy Pale Ale w/ Citra)
- Harmony (Hazy Double IPA w/ Citra, Strata & Simcoe)
- Johnny Valves (Hazy Double IPA w/ Citra, Nelson & Cascade)
- Rose (Hazy Double IPA w/ Citra & Galaxy)
- Socratic Questioning #39 (Hazy Double IPA w/ Simcoe, Citra & Talus)
- Teacher’s Pet (Hazy Pale Ale w/ Nelson Sauvin)
- Triple Jasper w/ Nelson (Hazy Triple IPA w/ Citra & Nelson)
- Triple No Couth (Hazy Double IPA w/ Galaxy)
- Tuneless Moonlight (Hazy Double IPA w/ Simcoe, Mosaic & Galaxy)
Want more bottles and cans to take home? We got you. Just select “Beer Bottles: Off Premise.”
Sticking around to drink on-site? Here’s the beer menu:
It brings a tear to our collective eye, but if you’re not moved there’s also about five hundred beers in bottles and cans, and some of them, like Schoenram’s Helles and Fresh Hop Pils, are priced to move at $4 each.
ChurchKey seats forty patrons at the bar and eighty at tabletops. We suspect the crowds will be in full force today and during the opening weekend. Next event up: Trillium on Saturday the 23rd, opening at noon.
Trillium to-go:
- DDH Stillings Street (Hazy IPA w/ Nelson Sauvin; 4 Pack x 16 oz. Cans)
- Launch Beer (Hazy Pale Ale w/ Mosaic & Citra; 4 Pack x 16 oz. Cans)
- Vicinity (Hazy Double IPA, Row 34 Collab; 4 Pack x 16 oz. Cans)
- Habitat: 2021: Blend 01 (Spontaneously Fermented Ale; 16.9 oz Bottles)
- Habitat: 2021: Blend 02 (Spontaneously Fermented Ale; 16.9 oz Bottles)
- Red Sorrel (Mixed Fermentation Ale; 11.2 oz Bottles)
- Woolly Mullein 11.2 Oz (Mixed Fermentation Ale; 11.2 oz Bottles)
ChurchKey will pour fourteen Trillium beers during the event, try before you buy.
The bar is open Monday – Thursday, 4pm – 1am; Friday 4pm – 2am; Saturday 12pm – 2am; and Sunday 12pm – 1am.
What’s next for the Neighborhood Restaurant Group? Look for them to reopen two Virginia properties, Vermillion and Columbia Firehouse, and then back to DC for The Partisan in Penn Quarter. Birch & Barley, downstairs from ChurchKey, will follow as well.
