On Friday, November 13, the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History will return with its evening programming, After Hours. The event, Brewing a Revolution, will feature Michelle Craig McDonald, historian, educator, and author of Coffee Nation; Favio Garcia owner of Dynasty Brewing Company; Thor Cheston owner of Right Proper Brewing Company; and myself, Mike Stein, owner of Lost Lagers beverage research firm. The panel will be chaired by Stephen Velasquez. Velasquez is a Curator for the Division of Home and Community Life at the National Museum of American History. If you have attended any After Hours events at the National Museum of American History in years past, you may have met Velasquez and seen him with documents, objects, or artifacts from the museum’s archives.
In addition to conversations on taverns and coffeehouses, there will be tastes of beer and coffee drinks served. Try cold brew from Cameo Coffee via Swings Coffee Roasters and tasters of a coffee cocktail, Coffee Bumbo, from Show of Hands. It features Puerto Rican Rum, Cold Brew, Madeira, Molasses, Cinnamon, Nutmeg, and Bitters. Per Show of Hands, the cocktail is “inspired by Bumbo, an 18th-century rum drink, this cocktail combines rum, molasses, cinnamon, and nutmeg, flavors commonly associated with the period. Madeira, a fortified wine popular in colonial America and favored by figures such as George Washington, provides another direct connection to the era. Cold brew reinterprets these historic ingredients as a modern coffee cocktail. The rum and molasses also offer an opportunity to acknowledge the Atlantic sugar trade and its reliance on enslaved labor in the Caribbean.” These drinks are created by Kenia Euceda, Coffee Director at Cameo.
Right Proper will be pouring Coffee Häxan, a porter brewed with locally roasted Zeke’s Coffee to a strength of 7% alcohol by volume. Per Right Proper, Häxan is “named after the Scandinavian silent film on witchcraft, Häxan has an assortment of roasted malts and oats.”
In addition to the Right Proper Coffee Porter, there will be a cask of Dynasty Brewing Company’s Virginia’s Porter, a beer I have brewed alongside Garcia for the past five years for George Washington’s Mount Vernon. This batch was brewed with small batch malts from Murphy & Rude Malting Company in Virginia and Bear Branch Malt in Maryland.
Dynasty is also bringing a batch of Wales Pale Ale to the event. This beer uses the name of one of George Washington’s brewers, Andrew Wales, a Scottish immigrant who sold kegs to Mount Vernon for nearly three decades. Wales Pale Ale uses Scottish malt and Scottish yeast, and is hopped exclusively with an expressive hop variety called Harlequin®. The Harlequin® hop was released in 2019 by Charles Faram Hop Development Programme, with flavor descriptors like pineapple, peach, and passion fruit. It is the daughter of Godiva® and a grand-daughter of the Jester® hop varieties. The British Hop Association rates it 9/10 in regards to flavo(u)r intensity.
Wales was not only a brewer, he was also a tavern owner. Thanks to the Arlington Public Library and their Charlie Clark Center for Local History, I was able to locate a thesis titled The Development of Taverns in Alexandria, Virginia, 1750-1810, by James Cobham Mackay III. The thesis outlines some key contexts for taverns in the 18th century, not least that “tavern” and “ordinary” were used interchangeably. Though “tavern keepers” often had multiple trades, and the tavern industry evolved greatly in the first half-century of Alexandria’s founding. Mackay describes one of Alexandria’s first lot purchasers, Nathaniel Smith, who listed his occupations as “carpenter” and “ordinary-keeper.” Another tavern license holder was Michael Gretter, who was granted an ordinary license in 1759 but was also Alexandria’s jailer. William Sewell worked as a barber when he wasn’t providing drinks. While the role of the tavern keeper may have varied, so too did the names for these places: tavern, inn, ordinary or public house. Keeping within our theme of the evening on November 13, I would be remiss not to mention Henry Lyles’ Alexandria Inn and Coffeehouse.
A bit further outside DC is the Red Fox Inn and Tavern who claim “the oldest continually operating inn in the nation” and the historical date of 1728. In 1728, “Chinn’s Ordinary” was established according to the nomination form found on the page of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources. The tavern turns 300 two Januarys from now!
We would love to have you join us for this event and tickets can be purchased here. The event will have American Sign Language interpretation.
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