On April 27, my friend Mark and I did an excursion to a few breweries in DC and Columbia. Our first stop was Other Half Brewing. I'd been to their original Brooklyn NY location during my New Jersey / New York trip three years earlier and enjoyed their NEIPAs. They have since opened several other locations throughout the northeastern U.S. We went to the one they opened in a section of Washington DC called Ivy City a year and a half earlier. It's next to an old rail line where a rail car sits between the two halves of the brewery. They plan to turn the rail car into a separate bar that focuses on lagers. We sampled the following, the first 9 of which were NEIPAs.

• DDH Mylar Bag (nice aroma and flavor)
• DDH All Citra Everything (nice flavor with no bitterness)
• DDH All Simcoe Everything (nice and piney)
• TDH Broccoli (nice, smooth, and juicy with little bitterness)
• DDH Heavy Cheddar (nice and juicy with some bitterness)
• Crudité (nice flavor)
• DDH Spinach (good and dry)
• Cabbage: Experimental (good and semi-dry)
• DDH Gouda (nice and juicy)
• Ivy City (nicely made lager with a touch of diacetyl)
• Boxcar (nice grainy helles lager)
• Mmm... Fruit Raspberry & Blueberry (quite good tart fruit sour)
• Wangies (fairly good imperial rye cream IPA) (can)

The future Lager Train.

As we left I bought a mixed 4-pack of 3 of my favorites: All Citra Everything, Heavy Cheddar, and Crudité.

We headed north to Columbia, stopping at H.J. Poist Gas Company in Laurel so I could fill a CO₂ tank. They have the lowest CO₂ prices around.

In 2015 Black Flag Brewing opened as the first production brewery and taproom in Columbia. We sampled:

• Who Gives a Fuck About an Oxford Comma (nice 11.6% ABV barleywine aged in Epoch Rye bourbon barrels)
• Unmarked (quite good 12.2% ABV imperial stout aged 12 months in Makers Mark barrels)
• Nerf Herder (good NEIPA)
• Lucky Island (good smooth triple NEIPA)
• Mai Tai Fighter (mai tai sour)
• Vanilla Infiltrator (ice cream and terpene mai tai sour)
• Lager (good clean lager with a hint of diacetyl)
• Cold Nugs (good clean dry-hopped lager with Citra and Motueka hops)
• Sunken 0bsidian (pretty good Baltic porter)

	Nic Cage.

A few miles up the road is Sapwood Cellars, which is my favorite brewery within a half hour of my house (Other Half is 45 minutes away). We tried:

• Arillus (good 10% ABV pomegranate dark sour)
• Snowball Earth (quite good very smooth 11.1% ABV TIPA with cryo hops)
• Edge Piece (good 10.6% ABV chocolate vanilla imperial stout)
• Fullest Measure (great NEDIPA with Nelson hops)
• CBW (great complex 11.8% ABV cognac barrel-aged barleywine)

Another successful day of brewery hopping.