How One Corner of D.C. And Maryland Became Craft Alcohol Row

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How One Corner of D.C. And Maryland Became Craft Alcohol Row

Customers trickle in, grabbing six-packs out of the fridge in the corner or getting growlers of beer filled to take home for the holiday. Chris Olson of Brookland stops in to replenish a pair of 64-oz. DC Brau opened in 2009 as the first business to brew, package, and distribute its beer in D.C. proper in more than five decades. Additional breweries followed, and with them came distilleries, cideries, and other craft alcohol producers. These businesses have sprung up along Rhode Island Avenue and just across the train tracks on Bladensburg Road and New York Avenue, many of them in old warehouses and industrial spaces. They’re joined by City Winery and, down the street in the Arboretum neighborhood, Supreme Core Cider. Beyond a bit of healthy competition, the concentration of booze makers has also fostered a sense of unity, according to the roughly half a dozen brewers and distillers who spoke with DCist.

Franklins laid the groundwork for the downtown areas craft alcohol scene more than a decade ago. Owner Mike Franklin opened a general store in 1992, and was ahead of his time in selling a variety of craft beer for off-site enjoyment. Franklin says “Maryland Sen. Paul Pinsky, (D-Prince Georges), sponsored state legislation to allow for a liquor license in a specific area of Hyattsville, located in his district that would allow retail businesses to also sell beer made on-site”. The brewpub owner says “the development of Hyattsville’s arts and entertainment district eventually helped to draw other producers, including Vigilante Coffee Co. Streetcar 82 Brewing Co, a deaf-owned operation, began serving this summer and held its grand opening in September”. Ken Carter, owner of Maryland Meadworks and a longtime Franklin’s patron officially opening Maryland Meadworks in October. It was a “conundrum” when DC Brau opened in 2009, DC Brau co-founder Brandon Skall recalls. “We were able to sell beer to-go to people, but couldn’t sell them beer for here, and we couldn’t even let them taste beer from here,” he says.

Harry Thomas Jr., who introduced the Brewery Manufacturer’s Tasting Permit Amendment Act of 2011, which would enable production breweries to serve small samples on-site. Three years later, the council expanded that freedom to allow breweries to sell and pour pints. Thomas successor Kenyan McDuffie has carried the torch in his ward, which includes most of the city’s alcohol makers. ISkall of DC Brau and John Uselton, co-founder of Green Hat Gin maker New Columbia Distillers, both say “the arrival of peers in the industry has made it easier to lobby successfully to change the rules for what they can do”. When New Columbia first opened in 2012, it was the first spirits maker to open in the District post-Prohibition. It was tougher to get lawmakers ears as the city’s lone distiller, Uselton co-founder of Green Hat Gin maker new Columbia Distillers says. “Once we got a couple of distilleries, we were really able to get our voice heard by Council”. “There’s now more than half a dozen in the District, and that’s brought some sense of camaraderie among most of them”, Uselton says. The entrepreneurs there have arrived amid a wave of development driving up property values and bringing new residential and retail investments to a historically black, low-income neighborhood.

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9 Clean Habits That Are Actually Making Your Kitchen Dirty?

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9 Clean Habits That Are Actually Making Your Kitchen Dirty?


You probably have plenty of simple tricks to keep your kitchen clean, but it turns out some of these habits may actually contribute to the mess and spread germs. Here are 9 “clean” habits that are making your kitchen dirtier, and what you should be doing instead.

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Mistake: When you rinse your chicken and meat, you are causing water and bacteria to splash on countertops and around the sink.
Instead: Avoid rinsing, as cooking your chicken and meat to the proper minimum internal cooking temperature should destroy any bacteria lingering on it.

Mistake: Bacteria love to grow at room temperature and can do so if your food is left out for over two hours.
Instead: Piping hot food should never be placed in the fridge (it will warm the interior), but the fridge can handle temperatures of 70-degrees or below, so don’t let you food sit for more than two hours.

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Mistake: Tasting the food you’re about to serve to check if its “good” thinking you are preventing illness of family members or guests.
Instead: When in doubt, toss the food out.


Mistake: Returning leftovers to the fridge.
Instead: Toss food that sits out at room temperature for over 2 hours, or 1 hour if temperatures exceed 90-degrees.


Mistake: Checking the color of chicken or meat for doneness. Although you may be eyeballing your chicken and meat for doneness, visual cues can be deceiving.
Instead: Use a thermometer to check the internal temperature of the food.


Mistake: It’s correct to place raw chicken or meat in the refrigerator to defrost, however, if you’ve put it at the top of your fridge the juices can drip over ready-to-eat foods.
Instead: Store raw chicken or meat that is defrosting in the fridge on the lower shelves and make sure to wrap or cover it to catch any juices that may drip.

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Mistake: Putting a clean knife in the knife block.
Instead: Wash the knife and use a small brush to scrub the slots of the knife block. Rinse the block in cool water, and then sanitize in a mixture of water and bleach.


Mistake: Storing glasses and stemware upside down to prevent dirt from getting inside.
Instead: Store the glasses right side up in a closed cabinet. This will help keep them intact and dust-free.


Mistake: Quickly cleaning your blender.
Instead: Before washing the blender, completely disassemble it, including the blade and gasket at the bottom. If hand washing, wash all the separated pieces in hot soapy water, rinse, and dry before re-assembling.

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Amazon’s Amazing Plans for National Landing

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Amazon’s Amazing Plans for National Landing

In case you haven’t heard, Amazon is bringing its second headquarters to Northern Virginia’s newly dubbed “National Landing.” Encompassing parts of Crystal City, Pentagon City and Potomac Yard, the new headquarters will rely on local developer JBG Smith to house the anticipated 25,000+ employees. A new website, NationalLanding.com, provides a peak into the future development plans for the soon-to-be local hot spot.

 
 

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Is it Meridian Hill Park or Malcolm X Park?

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Is it Meridian Hill Park or Malcolm X Park?

The National Park Service, which oversees the park, calls it Meridian Hill Park. News outlets, including The Washington Post, have used both names at different times. In 2006, the D.C. Department of Transportation erected royal blue signs by the park that employ a run-on version of the name “Meridian Hill Malcolm X Park” because “the community requested the sign include both names on the panel agency”, says Terry Owens, agency spokesman. The evolution of the name is a bracing reminder of how different D.C.’s history and present has been for various groups of Washingtonians.

In 1804, President Thomas Jefferson ordered a small obelisk placed a mile and a half north of the White House to serve as a longitudinal meridian for the new capital city. An owner who acquired the land after the War of 1812 was the first to call it Meridian Hill. Meridian Hill Park officially opened in 1936. By the 1960s, it had become a gathering place for black activists. “One of the things that the activists that renamed the park wanted to ensure was that that area was black people’s land”, says George Derek Musgrove, co-author of “Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital”. A 1970 congressional measure to rename the park for Malcolm X failed, but the name stuck. Starting in the early aughts, an influx of affluent millennials and empty nesters to the neighborhood drove up home prices, displacing many longtime black middle-class and working-class residents. Old-timers began to notice that with the population shift came an increase in the use of Meridian Hill Park. “People who have shown up in the past 15 years are changing the lexicon of the city” says Blair Ruble, local historian and author of “Washington’s U Street: A Biography.”

An unscientific 2014 poll on the neighborhood blog Popville, which describes its readership as “affluent young professionals,” seemed to back up those observations. Seventy-one percent of the 2,000 respondents called it Meridian Hill, 15 percent referred to it as Malcolm X, and 13 percent favored the synthesized Meridian Hill/Malcolm X Park. D.C. Council member Brianne Nadeau, who used to live just south of the park and represents the neighborhoods around it, refers to it both ways and even as “Meridian Hill-slash-Malcolm X”; as her chief of staff Tania Jackson explains, Nadeau is “aware that people identify with both versions of the name for different reasons.” So is it Meridian Hill or Malcolm X Park? Well, I guess it just depends on who you ask.

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What Is the Cost of a Home Appraisal and What Should You Know?

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What Is the Cost of a Home Appraisal and What Should You Know?

The home appraisal is a critical issue for home buyers, sellers, and mortgage lenders. According to U.S. real estate industry figures, the average cost for a home appraisal is $331, with the low end of that range at $250 and the high end at $450. However, in the DC area, it’s common to see appraisals cost as much as $600. Home appraisal costs depend on a variety of factors, including the size of the home, the state where the residence is located, and problematic issues in doing a home appraisal that might keep the appraiser on the property longer than expected.

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