“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.”
