A Visit to Sapwood Cellars

Last Friday, I went to the soft opening of Sapwood Cellars in Columbia, MD. For fans of the hazy IPA and complex sours, it’ll be well worth the trip up 95.

Location-wise, this is a hike for most of us living in DC, but it could make for an easy stop on a weekend drive or on the way to/from Baltimore airport.

Sapwood Cellars is the brainchild of two homebrewing stallwarts in our area, Scott Janish and Mike Tonsmeire. Scott is the purveyor of scottjanish.com, an uber-sciency brewing website focused on hops. Whereas Mike literally wrote the book on brewing sour beers and continues to post at The Mad Fermentationist. If there are a couple folks who are already set-up for success, it’s these two.

Upon walking in, the taproom itself is of good size, but the bar is what you notice – it’s huge. When we went, they were pouring five beers but they have lines set up for 16 drafts.

The featured five drafts were a house saison, a hoppy wit, hazy pale ale, double dry hopped IPA, and a “winey” rye p