There are three in Virginia, two branches of the Capitol City Brewing Company in DC, two brewpubs in nearby Maryland, and several more in Baltimore. Others are on the drawing board for DC, Centreville, Bethesda, Shirlington, Frederick, and Alexandria. While commonplace on the West Coast since the early 1980s, brewpubs were slow to start in the Washington area. In DC and Maryland it was necessary to change the liquor laws, allowing brewpubs to brew on their own premises and to bypass the three-tier system that prohibited brewers of beer from selling directly at retail. Beer is a fermented beverage made from grain.
Every beer sold in the United States is made from barley malt, hops, and water.
Popular beers like Bud and Coors are made with some rice or corn that lightens the body of the beer. The shiny tanks you see in brewpubs serve three purposes. Hops, green flowers that grow on climbing vines and are smaller than a person's thumb, are the spice of beer. They provide bitterness to counter malt's sweetness, and they give beer a floral, herbal taste and aroma. Mainstream beers use hops at a level that is barely perceptible, sometimes even undetectable.