Photo courtesy of Bardo (as are all photos in this post)
Bardo (1200-1216 Bladensburg Road), the popular outdoor (though they now have an indoor space as well) brewpub, has been up and running for about a year now. Bardo has spent that time serving up other people's craft beers (and a 14 year old keg of their own White Lightening Barleywine). But now they are ready to pour their own freshly brewed selections. On August 8th they will tap multiple kegs including versions of IPA, stout, ginger beer, and pale ale.
Press release:
Bardo Brewpub debuts first brews
Multiple versions of IPA, Stout, Ginger Beer and Pale Ale will be introduced at the inaugural tapping August 8th, at Bardo Brewpub's NE DC location. Over the last few months, the brewery has been assembled, permitted and inspected as brewing commenced in mid-July. With these first beers, Bardo is now brewing again for the first time since 2000. One week after the one year anniversary of the new location opening it's doors, Bardo fired up the brewhouse for the first time. Bardo will be showcasing dry hopped and oak aged versions of each of the four debut brews.
To commemorate the 20th anniversary of their first brew, Bardo is pricing all beers like it's 1994. For a limited time, you can enjoy $3.45 pints and $9.91 pitchers of Bardo brew.
Bardo Rodeo operated in the 90's as the largest brewpub in the country. The 22000 sq. ft. former car dealership included 900 indoor & 700 outdoor seats as well as a 25-barrel brewhouse. As one of the first bars in the Clarendon neighborhood in Arlington VA, Bardo brewed 4000 kegs a year and enjoyed thousands of visitors each weekend.
The decision to put the brewery in storage for more than a decade proved a fortuitous one. Bardo head man, Bill Stewart, had been living overseas for years when his brother, Andrew, convinced him to come back stateside a start making beer again. "I didn't know craft brewing had become cool again. We rode the last wave, we decided to jump on this wave." Bill stated.
Stewart is excited about the advancements in the brewing industry since he last ignited the boiler over ten years ago. While anxious to brew with the new strains of hops available, he is equally interested in incorporating wood aging into Bardo cellaring techniques. Bardo has amassed a generous stockpile of cherry, apple and oak wood they plan to use over the next few years. Yeah, there's THAT much of it. Plans also call for smoking their own malts and reviving past techniques like brewing with pine and sour mashing.
Bardo is fortunate enough to have procured numerous mid-century cellaring casks from some of Europe's oldest breweries (the McEwens and Fullers insignias still visible on some of the vessels). The tanks themselves may be worth more as antiques but Bardo is using them for their intended purpose. Bardo purchased the 7 bbl stainless tanks over a four year span in the early 90's. "The importer would call every year or two to tell us he had found another container-full" according to Bill Stewart. "I can't remember if we took 3 or 4 shipments, but we had around 80 tanks at one point".
Bardo Brewpub is the largest beer garden in the city. A newly renovated interior boasts one hundred year old pine floors, brick walls and early century, tin, press plate ceilings. A wide variety of GABF award winning house brews are available in pints and pitchers as well as growlers. Bardo is 100% dog friendly every day with 15,000 square feet in our beer garden to roam off leash. Located at 1200 Bladensburg rd NE, Bardo has cornhole, outdoor movie screenings/sports and is available for private parties/fundraisers, large and small, with no charge for the space.
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11 comments:
Good to hear and surprising. My only trip to Bardo was a little over a month ago. I knew it was no frills, but it was kind of a dump. I think they actually pulled their ricketty plastic picnic tables out of the trash. Anyway, there was brewing equipment all over the place and even the stuff that looked like it was going to be used didnt appear to be hooked up to each other. So I figured they just lost interest and were trying to milk the last couple dollars they could out of the venture.
Are they actually brewing beer outside? Doesnt that need some kinda of temperature control? Or is that stuff just decoration
I stopped reading after this part, "My only trip to Bardo was.." j/k
Good for them for offering their own beer. I will swing by and bring the entire family with me so the kids can terrorize the hipsters while I enjoy my outdoor brewed beer outside.
and I'll be their to show your kids what debauchery looks like up close
believe me...the know what that looks like. :)
Wow....a promotion where the beer is a normal price. $3.45 really isn't even a great deal.
5:10,
Where are you drinking your microbrews? $3.45/pint and $9.91 a pitcher sound like great prices to me.
oh man, cant wait to get shitfaced there and stumble home through norff trinidaaaad! yeaah!
"Where are you drinking your microbrews?" Ya sound ridiculous. Not everyone drinks microbrews, and that's ok.
5:36,
Not everyone drinks microbrews, but $3.45 is an excellent price for a microbrew.
Went to sneak peak tasting Thursday. Stout was awesome, but the two IPAs and Ginger beer either weren't ready to be served or downright awful. Hope they resolve the issue or this will really hurt their business.
Finally tried this place out. The IPA was undrinkable. Definitely not ready to be served. The other beers were better but still pretty bad. Definitely not worth more than they are already charging unless they greatly improve. I love the vibe of this place but they can't sell me some yeasty disgustballs homebrew and charge me microbrew prices.
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