Urban Garden Brewhouse opens as D.C.’s first Black woman-owned brewery
Urban Garden Brewhouse opened in Shaw as D.C.’s first Black woman-owned brewery, pairing a Juneteenth debut with floral beers and a longtime neighborhood footprint.
Urban Garden Brewhouse opened in Shaw with more than a fresh tap list: it gave Washington, D.C., what is being described as the city’s first Black woman-owned brick-and-mortar brewery. The new space at 624 T Street NW sits steps from the Howard Theatre, and its debut carried extra weight because Eamoni Collier had spent years trying to get her own brewery open after earlier plans fell through.
The location makes the story feel rooted in place as much as in beer. Collier, a D.C. native, spent eight years working at Right Proper Brewing in the same building before turning the space into Urban Garden Brewhouse, and the brewery had already built a following through pop-ups and collaborations before settling into its permanent home. The formal public celebration was tied to Juneteenth, with a ribbon cutting and live go-go music planned for June 19, 2026, giving the opening a community-first feel in one of the city’s most historic corridors.
Inside, Collier is leaning hard into a botanical beer program that pushes beyond the usual hop-forward playbook. Urban Garden’s lineup includes Chamolite Garden Ale, brewed with chamomile and honey, Roses Aren’t Dead, made with rose tips and petals, and Lotus Flower Bomb, an IPA with lavender and rose petals aimed at drinkers who might not normally reach for an IPA. The approach draws on older brewing traditions that used flowers, herbs and spices, and it gives the brewery a clear identity in a crowded D.C. market.
The food menu is built to match that neighborhood hangout vision, with smash burgers, wings by the pound, house potato wedges and funnel cake with strawberry compote. Collier has said she wants the brewery to feel like a second home, not just another stop for a pint, and that framing fits a business that had to overcome the hard realities of startup capital and the uneven access to grants that still shape minority-owned ventures.
That symbolism lands especially hard next to the Howard Theatre, the Black performance landmark that first opened in 1910 and reopened in 2012 after a major renovation. With Juneteenth now a federal holiday, and with Brewers Association benchmarking still showing how small the share of Black and women owners remains in craft brewing, Urban Garden Brewhouse arrived as both a neighborhood taproom and a visible marker of who gets to build in D.C. craft beer.
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