Our third stop on the Washington beer scene was another departure, no pun intended. First we had been at a fairly large production brewery with brewpub, then a midsized brewpub, and now arrived at tiny production brewery in a sprawling office park. There was a tiny carboard sign out by the curb saying "Beer" with an arrow pointing to deeper amongst the rock-lined soulless walls of this park. With a shrug, we entered this miniscule tap room and bellied up to the bar to try some beers, don't judge a book by its cover after all.
We were greeted by ex-homebrewer Alex Dittmar and his wife Dione who served up some tasty samples and told us their story. Despite this being the smallest brewery we saw on the trip, everyone was impressed by Alex and the similarity of what he was doing to expanded homebrewing, including mistakes and advice about how to make that jump. He had started out his career as a commercial pilot, hence the name of the brewery. The brewery even has an old Boeing nose cone over the boil kettle.
His first big "hit" with a beer was the Sky Hag IPA, named after the crusty and cantankerous old stewardesses who fly the not-so-friendly skies. He was out of the beer, but opened up a spigot and served us some directly from the secondary fermenter where it was dry-hopping nicely. Based on that sample I really want to try the finished product!
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