The Brickskeller

7/11/2008 5:32:10 AM, friday, july 11, 2008
must have hit this place on an off day. the beers and the selection available was great pity about the waitress service. May try again if i get back to washington.

7/1/2008 8:18:01 PM, tuesday, july 01, 2008
The food was great, the atmosphere was good, the service was excellent but the beer was Oh My God overwhelming. Great place but costly because I wanted to try them all, but would end up dead.

6/23/2008 3:20:06 PM, monday, june 23, 2008
A must have for any beer geek visiting DC. The bottle selection is overwhelming, but the staff seems helpful. Seemed like the prices were a bit high, although happy hour lowered them a little. Didn’t try the food or the upstairs portion, but I did sample some fine beverages.

6/16/2008 12:56:29 AM, monday, june 16, 2008
I could see how this place could be hit or miss. I went close to opening before upstairs was available...but the tap selection sounded respectable. The bottle list was huge, but not terribly impressive for the seasoned well traveled beer hunter. Still, i imagine some of there stuff is quite novel for this part of the country. My bartender was great...a very knowledgeable and friendly beer chick. During my short visit I had a schneider brooklyn hopfen weiss...a 1993 St. Louis Gueuze Fond Tradition (pretty cool actually). After they could tell i was a beer geek I was also offered a 1988 Thomas Hardy’s and a 1996 De Dolle Stille Nacht, but time and my pocket book limited. So selection is awesome if the stuff is new to you or if you make friends. I figure without a good server or at a busy hour this place would be little more than a over priced trendy shit hole, but my experience was great.

6/14/2008 10:42:44 AM, saturday, june 14, 2008
The upstairs section was closed on the day I arrived. Lots of bottles and friendly service from the bartender, who certainly knew her stuff. Having said that, I can’t abide by a place that is out of more than half of the things that I asked for. It isn’t as if the menus they provide are laminated and they could easily be updated on a monthly basis. It was like playing hide and seek with the bartender. I really want to like this place, but it’s more annoying than anything. I’d like to revisit the next time I’m in town.

5/25/2008 9:04:37 PM, sunday, may 25, 2008
Visited in early April 2008. A real treat for an isolated country bumpkin who loves good beer. Not overly crowded on an early Friday evening, and our party of eight was able to get a table downstairs within about ten minutes. The young lady serving our table of swillers was friendly, knowledgeable, prompt, attentive and easy on the eyes. As others have stated, ordering from the beer menu was something of a hit-or-miss proposition but, with such a huge inventory, it wasn’t difficult to obtain any number of brews really worth having. Food was forgettable pub fare, but we didn’t go there to eat, after all. Would definitely make a point of visiting the Brickskeller again on my next trip to D.C.

5/13/2008 1:41:47 PM, tuesday, may 13, 2008
A fun place in DC. The menu is enormous, although many have mentioned a lot of stuff is out of stock, which is very true. Prices are high too. We still managed to get a 1.5L Anchor OSA 2004 (only $25, nice!) and a Russian River Salvation ($29), though. Not bad.

3/3/2008 4:04:26 PM, monday, march 03, 2008
A DC beer institution. The Brickskeller is a must visit for anyone stopping through DC. They claimed the Guinness World Record for most beers a few years back, but I think Delirium in Brussels reclaimed it. The menu is huge but a serious chunk of the beers are long gone, some for years. I find the prices on the imports a little excessive, but the Americans are quite reasonable. A classic spot with an awesome old school can collection.

2/29/2008 6:29:03 PM, friday, february 29, 2008
Smokey? I didin’t smell or see a cigarette. The downstairs is the place to be and the bartenders down their rocked while the server upstairs was horrific to put it mildly. There is a huge disparity in beer prices as the rarer beers run $19-$30 (Port Brewing, Russian River, etc) while something like Victory Old Horizontal was $4.00. Beers on tap like Hop Slam were $6.95. The food was nothing to compliment. My pizza was cold. I dispute the 1000 beers, seems like 500. I did love the atmosphere downstairs and had a ball. If I could, I would rate the restaurant upstairs as a 45 and the bar downstairs as an 80. The bartenders down there knew beer pretty well (all female-they rock). I don’t understand the comment about the cooler not being viewable because I could see it in front of me behind the bar with no problems.

1/21/2008 5:23:40 PM, monday, january 21, 2008
When your claim to fame is the number of beers you hae available it owuld be nice if you actually had them avaialbel. I’ll echo the sentiments of others when i say that we had more misses than hits when trying to order some of the more exotic beers. Our server was lousy too. He’d come by once every 10 minutes, take a beer order from one person and then leave before anyone else could get their order in. Fairly hit or miss experience. Maybe on a weeknight it wouldn’t be so nuts.