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If you picked up this week’s WCP Beer Issue, you may know that a wave of local breweries will soon be making and selling beer inside the District. Tammy’s article on D.C.’s brewery startups has details about four of them: 3 Stars, DC Brau, Chocolate City Beer, and The Black Squirrel.

This upsurge will end a drought that began when the Christian Heurich Brewing Company, D.C.’s last production brewery, folded in the mid-1950’s, sending the Senate and Old Georgetown beer lines to their permanent breweriana resting place. (Never heard of Heurich? Then you must have missed Tim Carman’s recent post about it, but you have probably passed by Heurich’s house, the Brewmaster’s Castle, in Dupont Circle.)

After a half-century wait, D.C. residents will once again be able to call tap handles and six-packs their own at bars and stores across, and eventually beyond, the city. Sure, Washington has brewpubs like District Chophouse, Capitol City Brewing Company, and Gordon Biersch, as well as near-local breweries like Flying Dog, Heavy Seas, Olivers, Stillwater, and Hook and Ladder. But a true D.C. beer made and distributed within the District is a profound step in our city’s rapidly advancing craft beer culture. It looks like instead of just one local brew, we will have several by the end of 2011.

And the four highlighted in this week’s article are just the beginning. It is our prediction that we will hear about more and more breweries and brewpubs opening in the area. So you can start keeping track (because it’s becoming so hard to), below is a list of known ones. We will be bringing you more details on each soon. But have you heard of others?

INSIDE THE DISTRICT:

OUTSIDE THE DISTRICT:

Senate Beer label image from BeerCansRUs.com

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