In this episode, we talk about craft beers
in Arlington.
How's it going everyone, Matt Leighton, and
welcome to episode 4 of The Arlington Insider.
Today we're at The Brew Shop in Courthouse
talking about beer and beer and more beer.
Pretty much.
It's just about beer.
It's about craft beer in Arlington and in
Northern Virginia because there's been a lot
of, I don't want to call it a resurgence,
because I don't think it was ever here and
then back.
Don't call it a come-back.
Don't call it a come-back, it's just a lot
of increase in popularity recently and I have
an expert with me.
I have Julie who is the co-owner of The Brew
Shop.
So Julie, why don't in 30 seconds you introduce
yourself and tell the audience a little bit
about who you are.
I'm Julie Drews, one of the co-owners of The
Brew Shop here in Courthouse.
Together with my business partner Beth, we
started The Brew Shop.
We were CPAs before that, we did consulting,
accounting, working the corporate life, wearing
the suits and ties and stuff.
So yeah we decided, it's been 10 months since
we opened the shop.
A little more than a year and a half ago we
both quit the day job and started this.
That's pretty much the dream.
Is to quit your 9-to-5 job.
I'm sure you spent a lot of time on the weekends,
maybe every single moment of your free time
learning your craft and then you open up a
shop here in your town.
Do you live in Arlington?
I am just on the other side of the boarder
of Falls Church.
But Beth is in Arlington so we both consider
Arlington to be our home and our community.
Excellent we're coming up here on 1 year at
The Brew Shop has been open and like we said,
there's been a lot of increase in popularity
and let's talk about the factors that go into
that.
Because I think you're always going to have
a certain demographic that will just go to
7-11, buy an Icehouse or buy a Steel Reserve
and be completely fine with that.
Whether they're a 21-year old grad right out
of college or a 60-year old, it doesn't matter.
I think you're always going to have that demographic
that says beer is beer, I don't care and I'm
just going to get the most simple thing.
But at the same time, I think people are now
realizing there's more to beer than just Coors
Light and Corona Light and maybe they're looking
for the next level of quality.
Again, I'm not an expert, so Julie what sort
of factors are you seeing that has caused
an increase in popularity to the craft brew
market?
I think that the want to explore new tastes,
new profiles.
It's sort of like food, you can eat the same
hamburger every day and for some people that's
all they want and they know they really like
that one and that's it.
And that's perfectly fine.
And some people want to try a different burger
every day of the week so it's sort of like
that in that sense.
There's so much to explore.
There's so much that can be done in making
a beer.
I think a part of it to is that sort of dream
looks very achievable, you quit your day job,
you go open a brewery.
You've been home brewing for several years
and you've made good beer.
Let's do this, let's open a brewery.
And the market is certainly there.
People want to try new things, people want
to support local.
That's another big thing that's helping drive
the craft brew industry is sort of this knee
jerk reaction against big beer and against
big industry to go back to a local place and
things that are close to the Earth.
Definitely we're right across the street from
Colonial Village, there's like 1,000 units,
I mean your market could literally be only
Colonial Village, I know it's not.
But I think the running joke right now in
Arlington is that every new business coming
in is like a 7-11 and people are against that
and they want a better quality and they're
kind of with the little guy so to speak.
And especially in Arlington, we're seeing
a lot more craft brew, I don't know if you
call it craft brew or micro breweries.
Sehkraft in Clarendon, New District in Shirlington.
So especially in Arlington, in D.C. too in
Northeast there's a bunch of new places that
just opened up.
Right by Nats Park you have Blue Jacket, it's
pretty good beer.
There's a lot of good locations.
In Alexandria, you have King Street, there's
a nice little strip right there.
You could have opened up in a vibrant neighborhood
in D.C.
I hate that they call it a vibrant neighborhood.
It's just a neighborhood, like what does that
even mean?
But why Arlington because there are a lot
of good other pockets of communities in this
area.
Sure, and I think it's hard to open in Arlington
because of the laws in place so to be a brewery
you've got to be in an industrial-zoned area.
So you see New District is down in an industrial-zoned
area.
Sehkraft is not.
Sehkraft is right on the strip up in Clarendon
but they're a brew-pub.
So if you are also serving food and you're
a full restaurant then you can put yourself
anywhere where a restaurant can go.
So they're like Capitol City, where it's a
restaurant that happens to brew beer.
I mean I think they're a brewery first, I
think they want to be a brewery first and
you look at their beer menu as well.
They have their own beers, but they have a
great selection of other craft beer, including
a lot of locals.
So I think they want to be a beer place first
and a restaurant second.
But they have to be both to be located where
they are located in Arlington.
Gotcha, speaking of Arlington, how was it
working with the county because we're obviously
not brewing beer in here, but we are selling
a lot of alcohol behind us, all different
types, no liquor, but I am curious how it
was as a first-time business owner working
with the County and anything you might have
liked to go differently or any sort of things
like that.
I did a lot of reading.
The information is pretty much all there.
Arlington is pretty transparent I think as
a county.
They're clear about what you need to do.
Some of the rules seem to be unreasonable
or unnecessary but they're pretty clear about
what needs to be done.
I don't think it was hard to work with them
in the sense of I didn't have a lot of surprises.
It wasn't like you go in and you're drawings
are all done and they come back and say 'Nope,
you need an extra bathroom'.
You knew what you needed going in.
I think streamlining the permitting process
could be nice.
There's building and also zoning in the same
area as the permitting office but they don't
really talk to each other as much as I would
have liked to see.
That's really the only change I would make
with them is to lower the wait time while
you're in there.
Is to have zoning and building work together
a little bit more to save you from talking
to one and waiting and talking to the other
and waiting.
Sounds like communications between the two
offices and maybe a lot of time spent in the
permitting office but overall it sounds like
a pretty good experience working with the
County, which is always good to hear.
Absolutely and I expected to wait.
You expect to wait at the permitting office,
you expect to wait at the DMV.
There's a lot of people that need to get things
done and every questions requires a conversation.
There is no sort of check the box type thing
when it comes to building, whether it's this
retail spot or someone doing an addition on
their house.
I understand there's going to be some waiting
invovled.
But all in all I think Arlington is pretty
transparent.
Good to hear.
Let's talk about the future of the craft beer
market because maybe 5 years ago, that was
like 2011.
2011 seems like it was just last year I don't
know about you.
Maybe like 15 or 20 years ago.
New places were just starting to introduce
craft beer in this area.
I think this spot actually is the old spot,
you know where I'm going with this?
Is the old spot of Dr. Dremo's.
I am obviously too young for those that can't
see me too well but did you go to the bars
here?
I did.
Aside from the knock on my age.
I did go to Dremo's.
I did learn a lot about beer at Dremo's.
I learn a lot about playing drinking games
outside in the sand as well.
That was actually one of the places that I
learned about craft beer.
But yeah like you say that had to be 10 years
ago at least, but even 5 years ago there were
maybe two craft breweries in this area that
I can think of.
Mad Fox and Port City and Port City just turned
five.
And Mad Fox I think just turned six.
So even five years ago there was not a lot
here in Northern Virginia as far as craft
beer that was being made right here.
So where are we thinking 15 years down the
line because Arlington I don't know how New
District opened but I would imagine it's very
difficult A) to get industrial space in Arlington
because land is crazy impossible to get and
if you do get it or if you rent out a spot
it's really expensive and B)
I don't have a B.
Yeah there's not a lot of industrially-zoned
spaces in Arlington that's available.
So in 15 years, do you think new micro-brews
will open up, do you think more brew-pubs
or where do you see that going?
I don't know.
I think right now there's a lot of good breweries
that are just outside of Arlington.
You look in Herndon, Reston, Dulles, go a
little further to Purcellville, Ashburn, there's
a ton of good breweries that are in driving
distance.
They're just a little further outside of Arlington
and they seem to be able to sustain on not
just their local crowd, but Arlington people
leaving and going out.
Making a day trip out to Ocelot or Asland,
that's what people do every weekend.
It's just a drive away and I think it's easier
to find space, it's cheaper to find space,
I think breweries will continue to open just
out on the fringes.
I don't know if anyone else will try like
Sehkraft did to find a spot in Arlington proper.
I've heard some rumors that there's another
brewery looking to open in one of the vacant
restaurant spaces in Clarendon which would
be great.
But they would have to be a brew pub.
In Arlington it's tough, I think the dream
business plan and you maybe you can steal
this one guys out there is to open up and
New District kind of did it, it's not really
original.
Is to open up a brew shop, micro brewery,
brew pub right along the bike trail out in
Fairfax where the Whole Foods is and a little
bit out there.
There's a lot of run down buildings.
I think people highly under-estimate the biking
crowd when it comes to beer.
Yeah Kaboose brewing is right off the trail
in Vienna.
Not too far from the Whole Foods.
They bring a huge crowd of people coming off
the trail.
I think New District is right off the trail.
So I'm just stealing a business plan, it's
already been done.
But yeah go check out Kaboose.
Cool.
So let's shift it now and talk about you all.
The Brew Shop.
So to start it off, what was your motivation
opening up a shop like this?
It sounds like on the weekends you were doing
networking groups a couple home brewing groups,
what kind of got you started on this?
I'll give credit where credit is due.
My husband and Beth's husband were homebrewers
first and they got us into the hobby.
Careful what you get your wife into.
They're working their day jobs while we're
running the beer store.
It started as home brewing in the end.
The idea was to open a home brew shop.
And we started looking into are there a lot
in the area?
What's the demand?
And as we're looking at home-brewing, we started
to look just at general beer consumption statistics,
what stores are where and there weren't a
lot of beer stores really in Arlington.
There's a lot of great wine shops that happen
to have a great beer selection.
And we kind of wanted to be the other way
where we're a beer store that happens to have
a good wine selection.
That's what we've done here is to try to build
a place that's just dedicated to all things
brew and you can see behind us, this table
is full of all different kinds of grain for
brewing.
We have all of our brewing equipment wrapping
around this corner as well.
In addition, tons of beer.
Yeah, there are tons of beer, how do you go
about selecting your beer, importing your
beer.
Because me, myself, I consider myself above
average in many aspects of life but above
average in choosing, knowing different types
of beer.
I'm walking around this place, I don't know
what I'm doing.
I don't know what I'm looking at.
I'm lost.
I feel like a complete noob.
So how do you go about, and I saw a lot of
places from Dulles, from around here, how
do you go about, is it like wine where these
are the French, these are from California,
what's the process there?
Yeah it's not, wine typically is made, or
you can tell something about it by where it's
made.
So a lot of times you have an expectation
of what a California Cab is going to taste
like.
You don't necessarily have an expectation
of what a Dulles IPA is going to taste like
compared to a Flordia IPA.
And I think that's partly due to grapes can
only be grown in certain areas.
And some do well in certain places, some do
well in others.
With beer you can get your ingredients really
anywhere.
So you can get ingredients, almost everyone
gets their hops from the Pacific Northwest.
Out here, even on the east coast, same hops
as what they're using in California.
The ingredients are a little bit different
for beer than wine.
And I think that might drive a little bit
of that idea that you can make a great stout
anywhere.
But you can't grow great Chardonnay grapes
just anywhere, well, Chardonnay is easier
to grow than others..you can't grow a great
Pinot Noir grape anywhere.
So I think that's one of the main differences
between beer and wine.
But how do we know what to stock the shop
with?
I read a lot about beer.
We talk a lot about beer.
The sales reps are in and out, obviously they're
always trying to sell you something.
I get very good exposure to new stuff people
coming in and sampling out for us.
Or even just talking about it.
But we organize the fridge by style.
We kinda go light to dark.
The Crisp door has your Kolsch and pilsners
and your light stuff.
And the Haze is your Belgians and we move
to IPAs and on around to the Malty and Roasty
beers.
So in addition to the beers, there's also
a lot of home brewing kits.
Which, I don't think I've ever, maybe if you
go to Costco they might have like 1 home brewing
kit for like $30 and it's super cheap.
But these, it's literally grains like you'd
get at a farm and I think there's been a lot
of resurgence, an increase in popularity in
home brewing as well.
Because I'm a marketing guy, part of me wants
to say, and I know this might sound crazy
but have you seen that movie Drinking Buddies
with Olivia Wilde?
I mean nothing happened, I wanted to like
the movie but nothing really happened.
But it's a main stream movie that is about
making beer and even in, this is going a little
bit off on a cliff here, even in Breaking
Bad there's one scene where what's his face
(Hank) is in the garage making his own beer.
I want to say this little 10-second scene
contributes to people becoming interested
because if 50 million people watch that, they
might say hey, why cook the blue stuff when
they could make beer.
Do you sell a lot of these or what are you
seeing here?
Yeah absolutely.
I think our biggest sellers is cold six-packs
and that makes sense, we're in a walking neighborhood.
Cold six-packs are a grab-and-go kind of item.
Yeah, the home-brewers have definitely found
us.
We have a big prescene as far as in the shop,
what percentage do we sell of home brew?
It keeps growing on the home brew side as
well.
We've got all the equipment that you need,
all the ingredients.
It's kind of a mix between people who are
already brewing and just are here for ingredients.
They got all the equipment they need and they're
just trying to brew the next batch.
But then also people who are new to it and
just discovering it and want to learn how
to brew their own.
Part of that too is the mystic quit the day
job open the brewery.
You got to start typically with some sort
of home brewing.
Yeah I would imagine your own beer that you
make in your bathtub maybe not literally in
your bathtub.
Your own beer that you make in your own house.
You want to say it tastes better, it might
taste better psychologically.
You put in the hard work and you're making
your own beer.
So I think that's pretty cool.
It is the freshest beer that you will ever
drink is probably going to be beer you just
made.
It's good that thome brewers have found out
about you.
I think you guys do really cool online social
media marketing.
I've seen your Instagram, I'll link up the
Instagram below here about different things
you all do in the store.
But in terms of marketing and competition,
I think we're sseeing other businesses also
try to go into this market whether it's Whole
Foods up the street, whether it's Total Wine,
part of me thinks that you can create your
own market of right here and something a mile
away or two miles away is not your competition.
But then again, part of me thinks that everything
is your competition.
Every restaurant, every 7-11, every CVS is
your competition.
So where do you come in against your arch
rivals, your arch nemeses.
The beer community is a collaborative community.
It's sort of the opposite of what you see
in every other industry.
People want to be friends.
Brewers are wearing other breweries t-shirts.
They're brewing collaboration brews.
They're going to each other's beer festivals.
I don't see why that has to end when we get
to the retail side of it.
I think in some sense, the rising tide helps
us all.
And the more exposure there is to craft beer,
the better it is for me but also for Dominion
and Norm's and some of the other, certainly
the small independents are what I like to
support.
And when I'm counting on people to support
us as well, it's the small independent, they
care a lot about beer.
We hand-select all of the wine and in some
sense the beer as well.
But yeah when you come in, you know the people
that work here, including myself care about
beer.
Know a lot about it, care a lot about it.
We want to talk about it and help people learn
and grow.
Yeah I think in business some people get caught
up on I need to win and everyone else needs
to lose and go out of business.
Well it's not really how it works.
Why can't we all just win, not in a case where
everyone gets a participation trophy but why
can't you do well AND also Dominion do well
and also Port City do well?
Didn't Port City just win an award?
I feel like they just won something.
Like top micro.
Last year they won best small brewery in the
country.
Best small brewery in the country is Alexandria.
That's crazy.
So you said your top seller is a cold six-pack
on a Friday evening or whatever.
So also people buying six packs are those
people that are going to 7-11 and spending
like $8, $10 for whatever beer, which is fine
.
So in terms of cost, maybe that's the first
hurdle that people need to get over.
How much is a six pack, how much are these
twelve-packs?
Are they a lot more expensive than your bottom
rung?
Where do they come in?
I guess that depends on where your bottom
rung is.
The average six-pack in here is probably $10
- $12.
Probably $11 is our most average six-pack
price.
But we do have six-packs that are $18 so it
depends on what beer you're looking at and
your lower rung I don't know there's probably
six-packs for $6.
Yeah I think your average is like $2 maybe
$2.50 higher than a gas station six pack.
But that's interesting.
So on your Instagram I see a lot of tastings,
I see a lot of events.
What sorts of things, are you doing things
in the community, do you have weekly tastings,
daily tastings, how are you getting people,
we're right on Wilson Blvd.
How are you getting people through the door?
We taste every Friday and Saturday.
Fridays 5:30 - 7:30 in the evenings and we
have the breweries come in and do the tastings
for us which is always cool to see someone
from the brewery.
They know so much more than I could possibly
know about their beer and their brewery.
Just to come in and really shoot the shit
with people.
That's a win-win for everyone.
Cuz they want to be there to sell their stuff
and you want people to come in and like it.
Friday nights is a great crowd.
That's probably our busiest time as Friday
evening hitting the after-work crowd.
And people who live here too once they get
home come down for the tasting.
We do some tastings also on Saturday from
1pm - 4pm.
Those we usually do ourselves but sometimes
we do have a brewery come in.
Sometimes we do wine.
Saturdays are a little bit more of a crapshoot
as far as the format goes.
So we're going to get into a tasting real
quick but before that, Julie, why don't you
tell the people the top 3 things that someone
needs to know about The Brew Shop.
The first thing is our huge and ever-varying
selection of beers.
In all styles and all formats for you going
home.
We have cold six-packs, growler fills, a singles
wall which you can see here.
Any beer in the shop is available for purchase
as just one beer.
So if you see a six pack and you only want
one, just bring it up to us and we can make
it happen for you.
The selection rotates every week, every day
almost.
I think we face about 360 different kinds
of beer but any given week you're probably
seeing 400 - 450 different kinds of beer rolling
through here.
That's crazy.
That's so much beer.
I love it.
That's awesome.
So number two.
Number two I would say Home Brew and Wine.
So we are a beer store dedicated to sort of
all things brew.
We got 65+ bottles of wine on the wall.
I've tasted every single one of them so if
you have any questions about them, let me
know.
That must be good, you get to just taste a
lot of alcohol.
A nice little write-off on the business expense.
It's sometimes a tough job.
The wine rep brings in a dozen bottles, you
gotta try them.
I guess I have to drink these, I don't know
what I'm going to do.
So wine and also the home brew stuff.
We've got all the ingredients and equipment
you need to start your own brewing set-up
or to just continue on to what you've already
got and sort of expand out.
We've got all our hops and yeast in the fridge
behind us as well.
And lots of little things that we can't quite
see in the shop but all sorts of additives
and extracts as well.
Yeah that's intense.
So you get beginners that come in and say
hey I just want to start my own, just start
it up and I'm sure you have people that are
just way above everyone else that are coming
in and know their grains they know everything.
All different types of levels.
Cool.
Number three.
Number three I would say...the people who
are here, the people who work here, the peple
who come here all care very much about beer
and want to learn and share and it's a really
collaborative environment that we've tried
to set up here as a place for people to just
learn and grow and love beer.
Yeah I think one thing is sometimes people
can be a little intimidated because people
are like well I don't know if it's going to
be hoppy or I don't know how it's going to
taste but I think the atmosphere here is pretty
relaxed where nobody really cares too much,
nobody is too serious about it.
I think a problem is some people try to shame
other people, "oh you're drinking Corona,
why don't you drink a real beer'.
Well, I have a friend that drinks Corona and
I try to push him on to a couple beers and
to give him credit, he'll try it and say 'Yeah,
this was really disgusting, I'm going to go
bak to my Corona'
And hey, good for him.
I'm glad that he tried it.
And he's confident that he knows that he's
not missing out on anything.
Corona I think consistently gets ranked as
the worst tasting beer.
They have the greatest marketing team ever
so I think people still buy it.
Awesome, well there you have it, the top 3
things that you need to know about The Brew
Shop.
Let's finish it up, there are some cold beers
just hanging off camera here.
I'm a little parched and we are going to try
this.
So Julie what do we have in front of us?
So we thought we'd go local so this is Sehkraft's
Hoptastic IPA.
Sehkraft so when we say local, we mean Clarendon,
one neighborhood.
This is the closest brewery to us.
You could walk there.
Is there any, now this might be a dumb question,
is there any technique to trying a beer.
I know with wine you just kind of do the little
thing and spit it out.
You always want to smell it.
It's sort of like wine.
There's not really as much need for swirling
as there is in wine to open up the beer.
I always like to smell first because something
like this has such a floral bouquet.
It smells amazing.
This is due to the huge amount of dry hopping
they do.
Yeah there's a lot going on in there.
I'll let her describe what the smells are,
I'm just going to.
Here let's do a little cheers and we'll give
it a taste.
It may or may not be 10:30 in the morning,
never too early for a nice little cold one.
So, what do we think?
This beer, I've been really happy with it.
I was really excited for Sehkraft to open
and start brewing their own and I really wanted
them to be good because they're very close
and I'm really happy to see beers like this
where it's a pretty complete IPA, it smells
very tropical, it has a good punch of bitter
on the backend.
This is not a windy IPA by any means.
7.2% but just a nice beer, pretty complete,
a little bit of piney in the background there.
I think that's what I'm tasting.
SomeI PAs they're just so so bitter on the
backend, you just get that after-taste where
if you try to drink one a little fast, maybe
you got somewhere to be, maybe the Uber is
outside just waiting on Wilson Blvd and blocking
the lanes like they always do, you drink it
fast and it doesn't taste good.
This is a little bit lighter, you can see
that there's a nice little amber, a nice little
piney color to it.
So we're going to finish these off-camera
maybe we'll have more, probably not because
I need to drive to my next appointment.
But as always, thank you very much for watching,
until next time, create a productive day.
Take care.
