Discover Loudoun: Craft Beer Capital of the Capital Region

Loudoun is famous wine and horse country, but it’s beer country too, with 35-plus breweries, taprooms, and mountain-top beerhalls making it one of the most exciting craft beer destinations in the U.S.

Drive 30 miles west of Washington, D.C. into Virginia’s Loudoun County and just past Dulles International Airport, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge, you’re suddenly in a lush world of vineyards, grain pasture, and farm fields dotted with red barns and horses. While most breweries incorporate some local farm ingredients, several are inspired by the ancient European tradition of “Land Beer” requiring beer be made solely with ingredients from the region. At Wheatland Spring Farm + Brewery near historic Waterford, purists drive 50 miles to sit on rustic farm benches and sample Bonnie Branding’s crisp, German-style “Loudoun Grown Farmhouse Ale” in which every ingredient comes from the farm or the county. At nearby Dirt Farm Brewery on the panoramic slopes of the Blue Ridge, Janell Zurschmeide makes fruit-forward seasonal IPAs using peaches, strawberries, and cherries from the farm’s orchards.

As with all creative subcultures, Loudoun brewmasters constantly innovate. You’ll find everything from crisp pilsners and hoppy ales to malty barrel-aged stouts fused with herbs, honey, wine, or whiskey. Belly Love Brewing Co. makes a Belgian-style Tripel with orange peel and starflower petals that change color from purple to red when you drink it.

Loudoun even has its own yeast scientist: Dutch-born Jasper Akerboom, who has a Ph.D. in microbiology and food technology and isolates unique yeast strains in Loudoun for local brewers. Founder-owner of Jasper Yeast, a lab in eastern Loudoun, Akerboom became famous for creating a strain of yeast from a whalebone fossil that was then used in Loudoun’s Lost Rhino Brewing Company’s Bone Duster’s Paleo Ale.