Opening night at Birch & Barley

Birch & Barley/Churchkey Beer Manager Greg Engert climbs a ladder behind the bar at Churchkey, to gain access to the three refrigerated keg rooms located on a balcony over the pub.

Birch & Barley/Churchkey, Washington DC's newest beer bar and restaurant, opened its doors at 5:45 Thursday afternoon. The line to get in snaked around a couple of city blocks, at 14th St. and Rhode Island Avenue, NW.

Your friendly neighborhood caskman was there to enjoy the beers (500 different bottles 50 different draughts, 5 cask ales), and was impressed into volunteer cask service. Gladly!

After helping out, I enjoyed pulls from two casks:

• Olah Dubh: a dark ale from Harveistoun Brewery in Scotland, called Old Engine Oil, that has been aged —before being cask-conditioned— in casks of 40 year old Highland Park Scotch Whisky.
• Stone Brewing's Double Bastard

Physically impressive, the restaurant —floor level Birch & Barley, seating 90, with a few seats at the bar, and the less formal upstairs beer bar Churchkey (130 capacity) — makes a strong beer statement for Washington, D.C.

In Birch and Barley, the downstairs dining room: Copper tubing house beer lines carrying 50 beer draught lines beer from two stories up, looking very much like the pipes of a church organ.

• Menu here.
• Beer register here.
• Photos here.
• Earlier YFGF.com stories here and here and here.