Haunted Hops: DC’s Long-Lost Lager Is Back From The Dead At The Brewmaster’s Manse

Cans of the District’s long-lost Heurich, pre-Prohibition lager is back.

That’s the news, and I wanted to get to it first, because it’s been gone a long time. Sixty years, in fact.

For newcomers and recent residents, it might be hard to imagine a D.C. without its own beer. From DC Brau to Atlas, Three Stars to Bluejacket, today there’s barely a corner of the city where a parched man can’t find a beer made next door. But for half a century, that wasn’t so.

At a bend in the Potomac where the Kennedy Center now stands, the Heurich Brewing Company’s massive factory once towered. Built by Christian Heurich in 1895, it was the life’s work of a brewer born in central Germany, trained in Vienna, and then moved to the United States when he was just 24.

Prohibition threw a wrench in his gears, but he survived, even retaining most of his employees. First, he brewed Liberty Apple Champagne, but when that fermented, proving too alcoholic for the law, he expanded his ice factory. In 1933, he got right back to brewing and kept going until he died in 1945, aged 102. Eleven years later, suffering from declining profits and knowing the city was preparing to take the land for development, Heurich Brewing Company closed its doors. D.C. would go 55 long years before another brewery — DC Brau — opened within its limits, with only Heurich’s Dupont mansion, the “Brewmaster’s Castle,” guarding the city’s legacy.

And so DC Brau was the perfect company, and the Brewmaster’s Castle the perfect setting, to celebrate the return of Heurich’s Lager:

Christian Heurich was a meticulous record-keeper– a meticulous record-keeper and a frequent victim of fires. Likely because of this, there is no known copy of a recipe for any of the 13 different beers he brewed. That meant that Mike Stein, a beer historian and amateur brewer, would have to rely on the great many records of food-orders and production that exist, plus a careful study of Christian Heurich’s influences and preferences, to remake this beer. That, and a few “rusty cans” used to inspire the stunning design:

Working with fellow homebrewer Pete Jones, Mike Stein put together a beer using Czech Pilsner, Wheat and Vienna malts; Czech Saaz hops; and flaked corn and rice, to brew a beer that passed muster at the Heurich museum, leading to his eventual collaboration with DC Brau.

Now let’s get to the beer.

Heurich’s Lager is beautiful. Golden, with a quick carbonation and a feisty white head, it’s what a brewer wants to see when they pour their beer from a keg.

The nose is not strong, but there are clear scents of doughy malts, not too loud, with slight hints of lemon.

Finally, the tasting: Maltier than expected, Heurich’s Lager has a crispness on the tip and a slightly bitter end. “Heineken done right,” the scribbled notes read. Heavier than a Bavarian pils but lighter than, say, Budweiser or Coors.

Touring the house, enjoying a taste of history, we wandered down to the Christian Heurich’s stunningly preserved bierstube, a cool, dark gathering place in the cellar decorated with old German steins and beer sayings, like “He who has never been drunk is not a good man.” Even after his adopted country’s mood toward Germans soured with the onset of World War I, the old man was always comfortable with friends and family down here.

It’s over 70 years since Christian Heurich passed, but his once-lost beer, restarted as a five-gallon batch brewed in an apartment in Logan Circle, is now 1,000 gallons, served up by DC Brau, a successor of sorts, at their brewery on Bladensburg Road. It’s still a few months before Aug. 12, when we can look for Heurich’s Lager at the bars around town, but what’s a few months in the life of this story.

A lot has changed in D.C. and the country since Christian Heurich brewed his beers, but down in the bierstube, that didn’t matter one bit.

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