“Music is an integral part of everything we do here,” says Brandon Skall, a co-owner at DC Brau Brewing Company in Washington, D.C. “The first step of the day is plugging the iPod into the sound system—it unfolds from there.”
Brandon Skall and Jeff Hancock, both drum and bass DJs in their former lives, met when Skall was DJing at a house party. “I had intentions to open a brewery; Jeff had been a brewer for eight years, most recently at Flying Dog Brewery [in Frederick, Maryland]. It made sense.”
The duo opened DC Brau in 2011, making it the District of Columbia’s first packaging brewery since 1956. They have since crafted about sixty different beers. “We brew a lot because we get bored a lot,” Skall jokes. The brewing process can get mundane, he says, “a lot like writing music. You copy and paste a lot . . . but it’s part of the creative process, part of the greater goal.”
DC Brau has five flagship beers and usually two or three seasonals at any given time. To alleviate the “boredom,” about twice a month they create a “crazy one-off beer” such as the 100 IBU Alpha Domina Mellis that was brewed with thirty pounds of local wildflower honey from Burnside Farms in Haymarket, Virginia, in each 15-barrel batch.
“We use local honey whenever we can,” Skall says. The brewery would also use more local hops if they could. However, there isn’t a lot of local hops product available. “Hops are divided already among brewers. There are enough for maybe one brew a year.”
On top of limited hops availability, another challenge of DC Brau’s location is the lack of political decision-making power that the District of Columbia’s residents have. “We exist in a territory where we pay more taxes than most states, but don’t have much say on how [government money] is spent. We don’t vote politicians into office. It’s annoying and discrediting that we don’t have the same sort of rights as a business five miles down the road.”
But despite geographic challenges, Skall and Hancock can’t imagine DC Brau located anywhere else. “This is where we grew up,” Skall says. “We saw a gap in the market that became an entry point for our brand.”
That brand is rooted in a sense of place. “It took us about two seconds to decide on the name DC Brau. Brau or brauen is the traditional German verb for to brew,” Skall says. “DC Brau sounded sort of comic, localized, and communicative of our local mission.”
In large part, that local mission is fueled by the community of Skall’s and Hancock’s artist friends who have congregated at the brewery. Perhaps one of the most aesthetically pleasing breweries around, DC Brau’s walls are adorned with murals and paintings. It all started with their friends at ArtWhino gallery who were hosting Pixel Pancho, a graffiti artist from Italy who was looking for a wall to paint.
“We’ve really got some large spaces, so we offered up a wall for him to paint and then started inviting artists to come fill our walls. [Our brewery] has become a space for our friends who are artists to come and express themselves.”
Skall’s favorite art installation at DC Brau is a painting by James Walker (below) of “two ferocious wolves that are really just domesticated border collies playing with tennis balls in his backyard.” His dog Pig Rabbit, a French bulldog–Boston-terrier mix, is also hidden among the images on the brewery’s walls.
Since its opening, DC Brau has made a production jump from 1,600 to 16,000 barrels of beer each year. Surrounded by the work of friends, with eclectic playlists booming in the background, this company is cranking out the beer, exponentially. There’s no telling what music might be playing—on any given day, it could be anything from sixties soul to aggressive metal—and there’s no telling what they’re going to brew next.
DC Brau brews + the tunes that inspired them
The Corruption + “We Gotta Get Out of This Place” (The Animals)
The Corruption IPA is DC Brau’s take on a Pacific Northwest IPA, brewed with Pale 2-row, C-10, Honey, and Victory malts and hopped with Columbus hops. This “nearly double” IPA has a prominent malt base with an assertive hop presence and a dank, resinous bitterness that’s a lot like the bluesy, gritty sound of this rock song circa 1965.
El Hefe Speaks! + “El Jefe Speaks” (Clutch)
Ele Hefe Speaks! was crafted in collaboration with John Solomon and Chris Frashier, who brewed together at Old Dominion Brewing Company in Ashburn, Virginia, in the mid-nineties. The song “El Jefe Speaks” and the brewery both got the spotlight around the same time. This traditionally brewed German-style Hefeweizen can cool down the intensity of this grunge metal jam.
On the Wings of Armageddon + “Lament for the Aurochs” (The Sword)
Big hops meet heavy metal. This imperial IPA hits the palate subtly with citrus and biscuit notes and then builds in hops intensity, much like the deceptively smooth, heady sound of “Lament for the Aurochs.”
Everyday Junglist + “Mutant Revisted” (DJ Trace)
Here’s an American pale ale hopped with Chinook and Mosaic hops, resulting in exotic flavors of grapefruit and clementine. “Mutant Revisted,” a pioneer of drum and bass music, is a lot like the beer—bright and effervescent.
The Rider + “I Know You Rider” (various artists)
The original 1930s folk song “I Know You Rider” has been adapted by Bob Coltman, Janis Joplin, James Taylor, and The Grateful Dead, among many others. DC Brau’s website describes this pairing best: “Just like this relic of American folklore, The Rider has done its share of wandering. This West Coast red has been around the world. It represents the nomadic combination of our house Belgian yeast strain mixed with the West Coast giant Simcoe hops and an anonymous experimental variety that will forever remain nameless, as do the men who rode those rails so long ago.”
Availability
Connecticut, District of Columbia, Maryland, New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, Virginia