D.C. has DC Brau and several noteworthy beer PLACES, but aside from the Hardywood contingency is solidly RVA.  Bluejacket emerged and seemed like a hot contender but nothing has really set the region’s nuva rings ablaze. Now we have RIGHT PROPER, a place to get Howard University students swerved.  But is it the regional hegemony that can affect the beer world at large? ARE THEY THAT FYCKING POWERFUL?  Let’s reach across the aisle in today’s review

Right Proper Brewing, Washington DC

3.2% Berliner, dry hopped with citra and cascade

A:  This beer looks beyond yellow into a type of neon radiant yellow 5/mountain dew territory.  It is so faint that is becomes radioactive like wheaty isotopes banging around the glass, emitting substantial carb.  It honestly looks like someone took Gatorade and force carbed it, and I have no fucking problem with that at all.  Put this in a waterbottle for your big mountain bike ride, or whatever michelob ultra drinkers do.  This is like 80 calories a glass, drink it while you deliver UPS boxes on your route, who cares.

S:  This is a touch salty, wheat grist, ironically for all the hoppy promises, the most prominent element is a sort of clean alkaline chalkiness/salinity and a tangerine finish.  Again, this just hits like a radiant sports drink that seems to want to cure the hangover that you haven’t even earned yet.  THIS IS A FORWARD LOOKING BEER, trying to keep you from watching entire Netflix seasons on Sundays.  I can applaud that.

T:  This is bready for a fleeting moment and then kicks in the acidity in a real way, lemon and yuzu, key lime and a creamy finish that crackles out of existence like a genie entering a lamp.  It is over so fast you take another huge sip just to grasp at fragments that speed down your throat, each gulp becoming successively more tart and dry.  You get caught in this feedback loop where you keep taking bigger gulps chasing the lemon dragon to get a “real” taste but its so thin you are constantly eluded.  I am ok with that, this does the opposite of overstaying its welcome.

M:  This is dry, acidic, and works with successive swallows to take a run on your molars but never quite brings hard hits.  The whole thing feels like an absence of being, the consumption of beer and fleeting sensations with nothing to grip definitively into beyond light acidity and a juicy finish that crackles like Fundip and disappears.  It doesn’t pull that Golden Road shit where its intensely acidic, it is only a touch too tart for the style and the De Garde acidity seems unreasonable by contrast.  You can drill this without reprisal and it would almost be a full on challenge to get meaningfully drunk on this because you are perpetually hydrating while seeking inebriation.  The sisyphean chase that is ever fulfilling.

D:  If you couldn’t figure this out, it is endlessly drinkable in the way that Candy Crush is endlessly playable, but both ultimately make you feel a touch empty and ashamed of yourself.  You kill an whole 2 liter of this and then look around your life in calm sobriety, none of that laundry got done and you are still moderately sober. Actually, this is a perfect beer to get your life back together because no responsibility or self control is needed.  Go HAM, try to get yourself drunk, if you come from a pedigree of Kuhnhenn and Bruery tier ABV, this wont put a dent in your blast shields around your liver.  Maybe you dont need to eat Totino’s pizza rolls at 3am on a weeknight.  LIFE IS A GAMBLE.