Photo courtesy Bardo.

In late 2012, Bill and Andrew Stewart announced that Bardo — the pioneering Arlington brewpub located in an old car dealership on Wilson Boulevard — would live again, this time in D.C.’s Trinidad neighborhood.

Opened in March 1993, Bardo Rodeo was known for its quirky interior (a sandbox, graffiti, the Buick crashing through the front) and in-house draft selection. That’s what brought my Alexandria, Va. dwelling parents there in the mid-90s: Really great beer and enough entertaining elements to keep me occupied while they drank it. Eventually rebranded as Dr. Dremo’s, the spot shut down in 2008 and attempts to resurrect it were, until now, unsuccessful.

Now a year after opening sans brewing element on Bladensburg Road NE, Bardo has finally secured the permits and the Department of Health approval needed to start making beer.

“The past year has been painful,” founder Bill Stewart said on a recent hot July afternoon, as work on the Bunbaberg Ginger Beer was underway. Since it opened, Bardo has mainly operated as a beer garden, with a large movie screen, shipping containers, cornhole and tons of outdoor seats. An indoor space — previously occupied by a barbershop and illegal basement strip club operation, among other businesses — recently opened.

So far, Stewart says Bardo’s been frequented by locals from Capitol Hill, H Street and Trinidad.

“People from Northwest really haven’t come yet,” he said. “But I think once the beer starts flowing, they’ll actually make the trek over here.”

Indeed, Bardo is located in a section of Northeast D.C. already populated by booze makers that don’t have pilgrimage issues. It’s less than a mile from New Columbia Distillers, about a mile from Atlas Brew Works and about two from DC Brau. Like those places, Bardo isn’t located near a Metro station, which, despite bus lines, can be a non-starter for some.

While Bardo is located about a half-mile from the end of the H Street corridor, Stewart doesn’t have an opinion about the streetcar and its potential to bring more business up Bladensburg.

It’s been a long road to this point, as permitting and inspection issues held up the outdoor brewing, which isn’t being done anywhere else in D.C. “They were a little freaked out by that,” Stewart said of the outdoor tanks. A visit from Robert Sudler, program manager for the D.C. Department of Health’s Food Safety and Hygiene Inspection Services division, finally sealed the deal.

During the wait, Stewart says his partner and brother Andrew looked at Virginia locations again, where permitting is simpler and cheaper, “but I was like, ‘Whatever.'”

Stewart says they wanted to buy land in D.C., which is the main reason why they picked Trinidad. They haven’t had any issues so far with the crowd; the police haven’t been called out. “Everyone’s pretty well behaved,” Stewart said. “No frat boys getting drunk and breaking stuff.”

Courtesy Bardo.

The decision to have the brewing operation outside was also pretty simple: It costs money to put up a building. While outdoors, Stewart says the new brewing operation is not that different from Arlington, where there was no air conditioning, little heat and a leaky roof.

Bardo will be serving beer made with the 20-plus old days recipes to begin with. “They kept winning medals all the time, so why not?” Stewart said when asked about this decision. This includes the Graceland Imperial Stout (“Very black and highly hopped ale with alcohol content exceeding 11 percent”) and the Dremo Tibetan Sasquatch (Bardo’s favorite beer). All that’s changed are different variety of hops. “That’s pretty much all that’s changed over the past 20 years,” Stewart said.

Indeed, there’s something deeply comforting about how Bardo has retained its don’t-give-a-shit attitude.

“I don’t think it’s so much nostalgia,” Stewart explained of the lack of changes. “You go to all these stinkin’ D.C. bars, and they’re all like in a new building and they’re all really shiny and boring. I mean, a lot of them have good food but it’s very sterile.”

What a lot of D.C. bars have these days, however, is good, locally-made beer. While Bardo waited for permission to begin brewing, Bluejacket opened in Navy Yard and Right Proper opened in Shaw.

“When we were doing Bardo in the old days, we had like 22 recipes. But it was like, Black Shadow, Dremo and Pale Ale were the three biggest sellers. We’d sell like half of our supply with just those three,” he said. But other options, like the Marion Berry Lambic and Imperial Stout, just didn’t sell. Now tastes in D.C. have changed for the better for a place like Bardo.

“We did all that shit 20 years ago, and no one was really biting on it. But now everybody’s doing it, so we can do it again.”

While Stewart says they have no plans to bottle and can the beer, they hope to eventually open other bars in the city to serve what Bardo makes. “But that’s down the line,” he said. “It took long enough just to do this. I may have to retire before that goes through.”

Bardo will serve its Bunbaberg Ginger Beer by next week and the IPA, stout and pale ale will follow in two to three weeks. To mark the 20th anniversary of brewing, pints will cost $3.45 and pitchers $9.91 — 1994 prices.