Though it may be hard to believe today, the epicenter of brewing in the District of Columbia was once downtown. On 11th and H Streets NW stood Capitol City Brewing Company. On 9th and F Jason Oliver, now at Devils Backbone, plied his trade at Gordon Biersch, and on 7th between E and F stood the cavernous District Chophouse. Now the latter two are gone and while Cap City remains as a bar and restaurant, it hasn’t brewed beer in the District in a long time. Its sister site in Arlington closed in March, 2018.
With the closing of the District ChopHouse and Brewery, DC has lost its oldest continually operating brewery. Though Capitol City Brewing is technically older, their current beers, Capitol Kolsch and Amber Waves Ale, are both brewed at Atlas Brew Works. Since the pandemic eased, the ChopHouse hasn’t been able to make the money they once had. Brewing has not been happening at the 7th Street brewpub for some time.
For years, the name Barrett Lauer and the Chop were inseparable, but in June 2020 Lauer left to become Director of Brewing Operations at Right Proper, a position he held until the fall of 2023. The Chop hadn’t been the same since.
Opening in 1996, the ChopHouse was long known for its light lager and nut brown ale. Despite these classic styles, reminiscent of a 1990s brewing scene, there were things that the ChopHouse did which in retrospect were ahead of their time. Take, for example, their approach to IPA, their yeast management, and their commitment to selling on-premise, because there’s more money to be made over the bar than in distribution.
In 2009, DC Beer wrote that the IPA was “spiked with tons of Amarillo, Simcoe and Centennial hops and rings in at 7.6% ABV… will taste like grapefruit juice. Straight up juice–or as close as beer can get to it.” Nearly 15 years later “Juicy’ is suddenly what every beer, wine and seltzer wants to be.”
Light lager had been the brewpub’s best seller for years, but in 2014 or 2015 something interesting started happening: the IPA challenged the light lager to a popularity contest. The IPA didn’t replace the light lager, but that the brewpub sold both a pale lager and a pale ale perhaps forecasted what we would get a decade later in packaged beer. Consider that the DC Brau Core Beer 12-pack has their pale lager and two IPAs. Similarly, Right Proper offers a mixed 12-pack that features a pale lager and a pale ale. This one tidbit from 10 years ago is indicative of how the trends seen at the ChopHouse forecasted local and national trends we see today.
When Lauer spoke with DC Beer in a 2019 interview, he said of the beer scene prior to people having the internet in their pockets, “you found out about a beer release because you went to the brewery…” imagining a hypothetical conversation, “they’re gonna be dropping a doppelbock… what’s a doppelbock?”
In the 2019 interview on the DC Beer Show, Lauer mentioned switching out his Scottish ale strain of yeast for the Conan Strain. This choice was heavily influenced by then assistant brewer Rob Fink. Today, Fink works at Jailbreak Brewing and is regularly trialing different yeast strains to make the best beer possible. In 2019, Lauer was using yeast from Jasper Yeast to ferment ChopHouse beer. Jasper Yeast, a local yeast lab, has grown significantly since 2019, with many more customers buying his yeast, some of whom were not in business in 2019.
The District ChopHouse model was simple: sell all the beer over the bar. It’s still a good model and many local breweries and brewpubs are primarily selling their beer directly to consumers. Those who sell the majority of their beer that way are making better money because of it. There were times when ChopHouse beer left the brewpub and to me, those were very special times. My editor’s eyes would light up when kegs of a barrel-aged oatmeal stout or Inverted Jenny double IPA made it to an all-District tap takeover at Churchkey during DC Beer Week.
District Chophouse is where Jake had his first Wheatland Spring beer–at the 2019 caskfest, and where he first helped to write a recipe and commercially brew–the award winning collaboration with DC Beer, Decade Dunkel. Lauer put him through a rite of passage at the Chophouse, providing a trash bag poncho to mill grain in the basement before brewing on the second floor. At 2019’s Snallygaster, Lauer poured a firkin of Decade Dunkel with Sunbeam hops inside.
Going even further back to 2016, Lauer and Fink helped my beverage research firm, Lost Lagers, brew a historic Polish Porter. We served it to the Polish ambassador to the United States, Ryszard Schnepf. The beer went down wonderfully with kielbasa at the Polish ambassador’s residence and were it not for Lauer I would never have a picture with the Polish Ambassador holding a glass of Polish Porter that we all brewed together.
In 2019 DC Beer asked Lauer if he thought brewing was approaching a saturation point. He responded that in regards to brewpubs, things needed to be a little more neighborhood focused, “especially here in DC. You know the leases keep going up and up.” In 2019, Lauer said he thought a brewpub in a highly populated area where you’ve got good turnover could work. Sadly it seems the ChopHouse was a great example of a neighborhood without a highly populated area as much as it was during say the height of 2018, or perhaps when the Washington Capitals won the Stanley Cup.
The ChopHouse is gone and we hope the employees who worked there, some for 20+ years, find well paying jobs. The nut brown ale and light lager are gone, but they live on in our hearts and minds.
Jacob Berg assisted with this piece.
