The Greg Engert Interview, Part One

Over the past five years, perhaps no other venue has raised the local and national profiles of craft beer in DC than Logan Circle’s craft beer temple, ChurchKey. ChurchKey, like the other 18 venues in the Neighborhood Restaurant Group, has its beer program overseen by beer director Greg Engert. ChurchKey celebrated its fifth anniversary at the end of October, but due to some conflicts in schedules (I was getting married), we weren’t able to sit down with Greg Engert until recently. Our wide-ranging interview, surprisingly this site’s first with Greg, covered not only the development of Birch & Barley/ChurchKey but also topics like beer freshness, buying beer for a restaurant group, beer culture, and many others. This week, we will release the interview in four parts. As today’s portion of the interview starts, Greg reflects both on how he got into craft beer and DC’s famous (and now-defunct) original beer bar, The Brickskeller, which was where his beer career started. 

On Getting Into