Fermentation Friday: First Look at Bluejacket!

"Fermentation Friday":  An semi-regular look at the holy fermented trinity:  beer, wine and cheese.

As the holder of a Nats season ticket package of one type or another since Day One, I've spent plenty of time lamenting the fact that there's not much to do around the ballpark except go to the game. Sure you can hike to Barracks Row, but that's a haul. This year, that finally changed with the opening of a Gordon Biersch near the stadium. And while that's fine (and certainly better than nothing), what I've been really watching with great anticipation for the better part of two Nats seasons is Bluejacket Brewery.


Bluejacket is part of the Neighborhood Restaurant Group, which owns a number of places in the area, starting out in Northern Virginia in 1997 with Del Ray's Evening Star Café and expanding over the years to include (in no particular order) Vermillion, Talula/EatBar, Rustico, Columbia Firehouse, two Buzz Bakeries, two Planet Wine locations and a Red Apron Butchery in Northern Virginia, and moving into the District with Churchkey/Birch and Barley, another Red Apron at Union Market, the soon-to-reopen Iron Gate Restaurant in DuPont Circle and Bluejacket. I think with the exception of Iron Gate, we've been to all of them. They're some of the area's best neighborhood restaurants (hence the name).

The folks at NRG are nationally known for their beer expertise but this is the first time they've expressed that expertise by actually building a brewery. The effort is led by Greg Engert, who has been the beer director for the group for several years, and has driven their more beer themed eateries like Rustico and Churchkey. Greg is taking the lead at Bluejacket, along with Megan Parisi, who is the brewmaster there (and yet another of the seemingly growing list of female brewmasters in the DC area).

Bluejacket is a full-scale brewery in a building that formerly housed munitions manufacturers associated with the Washington Navy Yard. The space is phenomenal, with high ceilings and lots and lots of tanks for lots and lots of beer. It almost feels overwhelmingly big inside with rows of booths, several large TVs and a big bar area. The night we went there it was all completely packed.

Of course, we weren't the best planners in terms of our visit. We went there mid-evening on the second Saturday it was open. As we walked the 2-3 blocks from where we'd parked, we saw more and more people filing through the neighborhood going the same direction we were. And with it not being baseball season and Nando's Peri-Peri not being *that* big of a draw (though we do love us some Nando's, but that's another story), we knew that everyone was angling to the same place we were.

As a result, we'll definitely have to classify this as a "first look." There were three of us, and they pretty much told us when we walked in that getting a table was out of the question. That said, they encouraged us to go into the bar, so we waded in -- I was determined to at least get a beer or two to fulfill what I'd been waiting for.

And we definitely did. After a round, we were able to get a toehold at the bar, so we could have unfettered bartender access, a chance to order some bar snax, and we made the most of it.

The beer list is plentiful, with 20 beers on tap, plus five casks. They make just about every type of beer imaginable. Between the three of us and about three rounds, we were able to put a decent dent in the list and if I had to describe them across the board, I'd say they were "big." Each one was a very full-flavored, not super subtle example of whatever type of beer it was. Nothing was held back. And it was all a bit overwhelming -- I'm looking at the list now and I'm trying to remember which one I liked best. Guess I should've taken notes, but who does that in a crowded bar?

The bar snax we had were good. They have a decent variety that was reminiscent of the food in Church Key, including three different types of smothered fries that appeared to hail from the poutine family, pickled sausages, wings and the like. The smothered fries we had were good, as were the pickled sausages.

With a facility like this, it's important to point out that this is not a brewpub, it's an actual brewery. As in producing large quantities of beer that will be distributed elsewhere. From what I've read in the press, Bluejacket will be available around the area. I suspect it'll be available in a lot of NRG's other outposts, but hopefully we'll be seeing it on the shelves of our local beer store sometime soon.

All-in-all, I'm intrigued, and I'll definitely look to get back there more than once before baseball season. I may make it a holiday time project on one of my days off to head down there when they open late in the afternoon, grab a spot, hole up and really do a sampling. I feel like I've barely scratched the surface. And it may take multiple visits. Oh darn!