Pic(k) of the Week: Ocelot brewhouse

Like shiny steel sentinels, fermentation and maturation tanks line the path to the brewhouse at Ocelot Brewing Company, a production-brewery (that is, not a brewpub) in Sterling, Virginia (a suburb of Washington, D.C.)

The brewhouse is sized at twenty barrels. But in an interesting variation, the mash tun is sized larger, at 25-barrels, to allow for larger malt bills when brewing 'bigger' beers. And Ocelot's beers are indeed 'big' (higher alcohol) and but well-made, especially considering the brewery only recently opened to the public, on 9 April 2015.

But why the name Ocelot Brewing Company? Ocelots are feral cats native to Central and South America, not to Virginia.

The brewery is named not for the animal but for a song of the same name by the band Phish, a favorite of the owner/brewer Adrien Widman. Indeed, the names of the brewery's beers are other song titles or lyrics, such as Lemon Yellow Sun, Tangerine Trees, and My Only Friend, all three of which were on tap the day I visited, 12 April 2015.

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• Ocelot's taproom is open to the public. Its beers, draft-only, are distributed in the area. Website: ocelotbrewing.com.
• More photos: here.
• A beer barrel isn't an actual thing; it's a unit of volume measure equal to thirty-one U.S. gallons. Thus Ocelot's brewhouse, in one batch, will produce six-hundred and twenty gallons of beer.


• Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of personal photos, usually posted on Saturdays, and often, but not always, with a good fermentable as a subject. Camera: Olympus Pen E-PL1.
• Commercial reproduction requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.


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