New District to serve its last beers at next month’s Arlington County Fair

New District Brewing will be serving the last of its beer at next month’s Arlington County Fair.

When the Green Valley-based brewery officially closed its taproom in May, owner Mike Katrivanos told ARLnow then that the plan was to serve the last of its beer at June’s Columbia Pike Blues Festival and then at the fair. That remains the plan, we’re told.

“We stored away some New District Beer for the Arlington County Fair and will be serving our Last County Fair Beer Garden August 16-20,” Katrivanos wrote in an email to supporters.

This will be the fourth time New District Brewery will run the beer garden at the county fair. They will be serving three different types of beers and a hard seltzer, plus a rosé wine in collaboration with Bluemont Vineyard in Loudoun County.

The brewery is also selling commemorative pint glasses. Only 160 were made and, as of this writing, more than half have already been pre-sold.  Katrivanos said in a follow-up conversation that he expects everything to sell out by the end of the fair.

“This will be it… The last [New District] beer for public consumption,” he said.

But that doesn’t mean New District beer will be gone forever. Beyond a few bottles for personal consumption, Katrivanos also saved and donated three wax-sealed kegs to the Arlington Historical Society.

When New District opened in 2016, it became the first production brewery in Arlington in nearly a century. The beer donation is intended to preserve its legacy in the county, Katrivanos said.

One of the kegs will be used for fundraising, the other for preservation, and the last one will be given to the next production brewery that opens in Arlington as a welcoming gift, Katrivanos told ARLnow.

“I mean, that could be me,” he laughed.

There remains a chance that New District will come back. Katrivanos said he’s constantly surveying the county for commercial properties for sale where he could reopen the brewery. Considering the county’s changes to zoning regulations along Columbia Pike in late 2021 explicitly allowing breweries, that’s the current focus.

Katrivanos, however, does not expect a purchase to happen in the near future.

“There are very, very few of those opportunities left. If it were lucky enough to come across the opportunity, I would jump at it again,” he said.

Several local mixed-use developments have approached New District Brewing about opening in their space, but Katrivanos reiterates there’s no interest in leasing again, considering previous negative experiences. Still, the door is not completely closing, even as he prepares to sell the last of New District’s beer in a few weeks.

“A huge thank you to the community for supporting us all of these years,” he said. “I still hope there’s an opportunity that brings the brewery back.”

The former home of New District Brewery is turning into an indoor dog park called Stouts & Snouts. It was initially scheduled to open in August, but construction remains ongoing, and it’s unclear if it will hit that deadline.