American Craft Beer Week: Where To Celebrate In Arlington

ARLINGTON, VA — Eighty-five percent of adults age 21 or older, as the Brewers Association puts it, live within 10 miles of a brewery, including the residents of Arlington.

With four breweries in or near Arlington, the Brewers Association is urging craft beer drinkers to support local breweries as American Craft Beer Week approaches. The 15th annual weeklong observance will run from May 10-16 this year.

• Board Room Brewing Company, 925 N Garfield St.Arlington, VA 22201
• New District Brewing Company, 2709 S Oakland St., Arlington, VA 22206-2309
• Audacious Aleworks Brewery & Taproom, 110 E. Fairfax St., Falls Church, VA 22046
• Settle Down Easy Brewing Co., 2822 Fallfax Drive, Falls Church, VA 22042

"With COVID going on right now, nothing is set in stone at the moment," said David Warren, general manager at the New District Brewing Company. "Restrictions in Virginia limits crowd size to 100 people for outdoor events. Hopefully, once we get everybody vaxxed up that will change."

While New District Brewing isn't planning anything in particular for American Craft Beer Week, they are hoping to participate in some festivals this year, including the return of their own Valleyfest.

"We're going to do whatever the governor lets us do," Warren said, adding that customers can check the brewery's Instagram account for updates.

Jamie Walther, managing partner at the Board Room Brewing, said the brewery wasn't planning to do anything special for American Craft Beer Week. However, Board Room is one of the 200 breweries across the country taking part in the #BrewStacheStrong effort to raise money for brain cancer research.

"That's our focus for the month of May," Walther said. "Everybody brewed their own single malt, single hop beer. We're going to debut that this Tuesday."

Settle Down Easy Brewing Co. in Falls Church will be offering nightly specials all through American Craft Beer Week.

For Star Wars Day on Tuesday, May 4, the brewery will be releasing Revenge of the Pith, a West Coast IPA made with natural blood orange juice.

"It's bright, light, summery, bitter-edge beer," said brewer Derek Stillwagon. "It's a lot of fun."

Many other breweries have had special releases for the week in years past. Those included on the South Side of Chicago in 2018, when two breweries — Open Outcry Brewing and Horse Thief Hollow — teamed to create a flight of beers as a tribute to the four flavors offered by the “Rainbow Cone” ice cream shop.

Newer releases, discounts and other creative ideas will be offered at craft breweries across America this year as well, the Brewers Association said in a statement.

American Craft Beer Week in 2021, which takes place 14 months after the coronavirus pandemic began its significant financial impact on local businesses nationwide, presents a prime opportunity to support local brewers, association officials said.

“America’s small and independent craft breweries have faced many hardships over the past year,” Brewers Association marketing director Ann Obenchain said in a statement.

In recent decades, craft beer has become the more popular choice for Americans. Craft breweries in the United States date back to the late 1970s, the first opening shortly after President Jimmy Carter signed legislation that made home-brewing legal in 1978.

Now, craft breweries are opening in communities across America. Small and independent brewing companies accounted for 40 of the top 50 top producing craft brewing companies in 2020 based on beer sales volume, according to the Brewers Association.

Even as in-person craft beer consumption and unique local events were shut down for months following the pandemic’s start, craft breweries in the country provided more than 138,000 full- and part-time jobs in 2020, according to the association.

At Board Room Brewing, the pandemic and restrictions had a big effect on their business.

"For the first several months when we were to-go only, we relied on growlers and crowlers in total," Walther said. "We were lucky because we've always done growlers, but we'd just bought a crowler machine and gotten some crowler cans in the middle of February last year. So, the timing worked out pretty well for us."

This helped sustain Board Room Brewing for a few months until they were able to open their patio for outdoor dining.

"It was definitely a struggle for all of last year and the first part of this year," Walther said.

With the restrictions starting to be lifted and the warmer weather encouraging people to go out more, Walther was hopeful that things would be better soon.

"Everything's coming together nicely and we're ramping up along with everybody else," he said. "We're back on basically a full brew schedule. We're obviously not to where we would want to be, but we can at least see that we're moving in the right direction."

Now, with COVID-19 restrictions eased in many areas, 2021’s American Craft Beer Week “is about more than just delicious craft beer,” Obenchain said.

“It’s about community and showing support for hometown taprooms, brewpubs and breweries,” she added.