On a recent afternoon at Coast Brewing Company near the old Navy Yard, the bar patrons weren’t just drinking beer. Behind the counter, Aiden Merritt was stirring up cocktails—s’more old-fashioneds and clarified milk punches—in between pouring pints of the lagers and ales his father has brewed for nearly two decades.
For Jaime Tenny, Coast’s cofounder, the moment carried a certain symmetry. When she and her husband, David Merritt, opened the brewery in 2007, their son was six years old. Today, he runs the well-received cocktail program in the taproom, which they expanded in 2022. “It’s been awesome to see him take to it just like his dad did with beer 20 years ago,” Tenny says. “That’s a proud mom moment.”
The cocktails also say a lot about how much the craft beer world has changed since then. “If you’re just a brewery today—no wine, no liquor, no food—I think it’s almost impossible to make it,” Tenny says…