Christian Heurich (1842-1945) was not only Washington D.C.'s most successful brewer, he was the world's oldest, with 90 years' experience. He walked across central Europe learning his craft, survived a shipboard cholera epidemic, recovered from malaria and worked as a roustabout on a Caribbean banana boat--all by age 30. Heurich lived most of his life in Washington, becoming its largest private landowner and opening the city's largest brewery. He won a "beer war" against his rivals and his beers won medals at World's Fairs. He was trapped in Europe while on vacation at the start of both World Wars, once sleeping through an air raid, and was accused of being a German spy plotting to assassinate Woodrow Wilson. A notably odd episode: when they began to tear down his old brewery to build the Kennedy Center, the wrecking ball bounced off the walls. Drawing on family papers and photos, the author chronicles Heurich's life and the evolving beer industry before and after Prohibition.

Capitol Hill began as a thinly settled agricultural area. Beginning in the 1790s, the Capitol and the Washington Navy Yard, a large industrial employer, spurred a building boom in new houses, hotels, and stores, a trend that continues to present day. This book focuses on buildings lost and saved.

An effervescent history of beer brewing in the American capital city. Imagine the jubilation of thirsty citizens in 1796 when the Washington Brewery—the city’s first brewery—opened. Yet the English-style ales produced by the early breweries in the capital and in nearby Arlington and Alexandria sat heavy on the tongue in the oppressive Potomac summers. By the 1850s, an influx of German immigrants gave a frosty reprieve to their new home in the form of light but flavorful lagers. Brewer barons like Christian Heurich and Albert Carry dominated the taps of city saloons until production ground to a halt with the dry days of Prohibition. Only Heurich survived, and when the venerable institution closed in 1956, Washington, D.C., was without a brewery for fifty-five years. Author and beer scholar Garrett Peck taps this high-gravity history while introducing readers to the bold new brewers leading the capital’s recent craft beer revival. “Why’d it take us [DC’s brewing culture] so long to get back on the wagon? Capital Beer will answer all your questions in the endearing style of your history buff friend who you can’t take to museums (in a good way!).” —DCist “In brisk and lively prose Peck covers 240 years of local brewing history, from the earliest days of British ale makers through the influx of German lagermeisters and up to the present-day craft breweries. . . . Richly illustrated with photographs both old and new, as well as a colorful collection of her art, Capital Beer is almost as much fun to read as “sitting in an outdoor beer garden and supping suds with friends over a long, languid conversation.”” —The Hill Rag

Imagine the jubilation of thirsty citizens in 1796 when the Washington Brewery--the city's first brewery--opened. Yet the English-style ales produced by the early breweries in the capital and in nearby Arlington and Alexandria sat heavy on the tongue in the oppressive Potomac summers. By the 1850s, an influx of German immigrants gave a frosty reprieve to their new home in the form of light but flavorful lagers. Brewer barons like Christian Heurich and Albert Carry dominated the taps of city saloons until production ground to a halt with the dry days of Prohibition. Only Heurich survived, and when the venerable institution closed in 1956, Washington, D.C., was without a brewery for fifty-five years. Author and beer scholar Garrett Peck taps this high-gravity history while introducing readers to the bold new brewers leading the capital's recent craft beer revival.