Birch & Barley/Churchkey Beer Manager Greg Engert climbs a ladder behind the bar at Churchkey, to gain access to the three refrigerated keg rooms located on a balcony over the pub.
Birch & Barley/Churchkey, Washington DC's newest beer bar and restaurant, opened its doors at 5:45 Thursday afternoon. The line to get in snaked around a couple of city blocks, at 14th St. and Rhode Island Avenue, NW.
Your friendly neighborhood caskman was there to enjoy the beers (500 different bottles 50 different draughts, 5 cask ales), and was impressed into volunteer cask service. Gladly!
After helping out, I enjoyed pulls from two casks:
- Olah Dubh: a dark ale from Harveistoun Brewery in Scotland, called Old Engine Oil, that has been aged —before being cask-conditioned— in casks of 40 year old Highland Park Scotch Whisky.
- Stone Brewing's Double Bastard
"Churchkey"--lovely name for a beer bar.
ReplyDeleteI remember when it used to be traditional to include a venue's address when writing about it's grand opening. Not that it isn't easily google-able, but still....
ReplyDeleteAnonymous:
ReplyDeleteThanks for catching that. I've corrected the story to supply the 'traditional' hyperlink. By the way, in my story posted just the day before, I DID supply both the physical and web addresses. Here again:
1337 14th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 2005. http://www.birchandbarley.com.
Thanks for reading.