cask festival

[LeafMan66_67]

Personally, I think this kind of event should be serving the standard beers from the respective breweries, served cask style for comparison.

That woukd be a good test - side by side of the same brew, one cask conditioned and the other done through their standard procedure.

[chalmers]

Personally, I think this kind of event should be serving the standard beers from the respective breweries, served cask style for comparison.

I can honestly say that doesn't interest me at all. I'd rather try these (mostly) one-off, interesting beers at an event, and drink their standard beer (or not) at my leisure. Especially if all other factors of the event were the same.

[CorneliusAlphonse]

Personally, I think this kind of event should be serving the standard beers from the respective breweries, served cask style for comparison.

I can honestly say that doesn't interest me at all. I'd rather try these (mostly) one-off, interesting beers at an event, and drink their standard beer (or not) at my leisure. Especially if all other factors of the event were the same.

+1. While it would be fun if breweries had regular issue (good quality) casks, its not something I would pay for an event to try

[mr x]

Personally, I think this kind of event should be serving the standard beers from the respective breweries, served cask style for comparison.

I can honestly say that doesn't interest me at all. I'd rather try these (mostly) one-off, interesting beers at an event, and drink their standard beer (or not) at my leisure. Especially if all other factors of the event were the same.

And that's the problem AFAIAC, some of these breweries shouldn't be attempting one-offs until they learn to brew their standard beers with consistency.

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk 4

[GuingesRock]

Take a tried and true recipe, cask condition it properly, and then you are getting pretty close to perfection in a beverage, and would be more than worth the money. You don’t need to make something exotic, just because it’s going to be served from a cask…that’s not the idea. It’s a way of conditioning beer to bring out its best.

[jherbin]

We keg condition all of our beer at Bridge, as we don't have brite tanks (just yet), so for us this is a chance to experiment and have fun. If I just conditioned a firkin of whatever we already had on the go, then yea, it'd be exactly what you get at the brewery, only served sideways. Who knows, maybe horizontal kegs taste better? I wrapped a strap clamp around the bung today to be extra sure it wasn't going to pop on me before it got into the cold room!

[chalmers]

Looking forward to yours, Josh!

[jherbin]

Me too, your guess is as good as mine, haha! Hope the charts I used for % of fermentable sugars/weight of fruit is accurate - hence my concern about creating a bomb in the brewery. For the firkin I boiled down 2 lbs of dried apricots (6% sugar apparently), then strained and reboiled the strained juices. Plenty sweet and apricot-y. Used that as my primer. Thanks to Mr. Nash for lending us the cask, we really need to invest in a couple!

[brufrog]

Personally, I think this kind of event should be serving the standard beers from the respective breweries, served cask style for comparison.

That woukd be a good test - side by side of the same brew, one cask conditioned and the other done through their standard procedure.

That would be very interesting from a beer geek angle. That is my kind of event. I would prefer that to crazy one offs. Crazy one offs shoudl hav eits own event, - without bothering to cask condition them. Just call the event - I don't know - Crazy One Offs? As I said before, they don't necessarily benefit from cask conditioning, whereas, for example, maybe Garrison Red would, as would something like Propeller Honey Wheat.

[GuingesRock]

Personally, I think this kind of event should be serving the standard beers from the respective breweries, served cask style for comparison.

That woukd be a good test - side by side of the same brew, one cask conditioned and the other done through their standard procedure.

That would be very interesting from a beer geek angle. That is my kind of event. I would prefer that to crazy one offs. Crazy one offs shoudl hav eits own event, - without bothering to cask condition them. Just call the event - I don't know - Crazy One Offs? As I said before, they don't necessarily benefit from cask conditioning, whereas, for example, maybe Garrison Red would, as would something like Propeller Honey Wheat.

^ Yes to all three comments.

An issue with these kind of events, is that casks get stirred up during transport and will need to be left undisturbed at the venue, for a day or two prior to serving, and often they will need to be fined or re-fined at that point.

An alternative, if the real ale has already been properly cask or keg conditioned, is to rack off the clear beer to a clean cask just before the event. This is quite acceptable and meets CAMRA. A brewery that already has real ale, can do this, and it's quite different from filling a cask from a brite tank.

A good real ale needs "fancying up", just about as much as a bottle if fine champagne does.

[LeafMan66_67]

At the end of the day, this still sounds like a good event to get people out and talking about craft beer, which can never be a bad thing.

[brufrog]

At the end of the day, this still sounds like a good event to get people out and talking about craft beer, which can never be a bad thing.

absolutely. If i was in Halifax, or could get there cheaply and easily, I'd definitely be there.

[GuingesRock]

At the end of the day, this still sounds like a good event to get people out and talking about craft beer, which can never be a bad thing.

absolutely. If i was in Halifax, or could get there cheaply and easily, I'd definitely be there.

As Brewnoser says. It could the beginnings of a real ale comeback.

[mr x]

Real ale is dead.

[jherbin]

Real ale is dead.

It truly is the disco of beer.

[GuingesRock]

The worst thing is, the bloody mega-swill is alive and its hey day in North America.

[jherbin]

The worst thing is, the bloody mega-swill is alive and its hey day in North America.

Not according to retail trends in regards to micro/macro sales.

[CorneliusAlphonse]

Yup overall beer sales have been on the decline while micro sales have been increasing at like 10%. So macro must be declining at a decent rate.

[brufrog]

Real ale is dead.

It truly is the disco of beer.

I'm pretty sure real ale is alive. Grunge is dead. Disco is on the comeback (did you not listen to the radio this year? Hello! Daft Punk copied KC & The Sunshine Band and Chic and made millions on a crap song)

[BobbyOK]

So did anyone actually go? Curious for reviews of event and beer.

[sheanhiggins]

Seemed to be a pretty good turnout at the evening event.
Small review here: http://mashedinhfx.wordpress.com/2013/1 ... er-league/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[chalmers]

We had a good time, enjoyed the beer and ambiance. The keyboard player in the afternoon needed a bit more practice, lots of mistakes.

[BobbyOK]

Curious how it was from a logistics perspective. Line-ups/waits to get in or for beer, trouble in getting the samples you wanted, mood toward the end of the session - big rush to get last samples in or everybody just nicely mellow and satisfied with their 8 beer kind of stuff. Really haven't heard any complaints, so sounds like it was pretty well run. Just haven't seen a lot of glowing praise either. More "ya, it was good - did you hear about Stillwell?"

[pet lion]

Had a great time and it was well organized. I never had to wait for more than one other person to be served before me and that was usually a friend as we decided to grab the same beer at the same time. Also, as we were at the evening sessions we got to help empty the casks after it was 'over'. There was a bit of a line to get upstairs when I arrived at 5:00 but it wasn't too bad and moved quickly.

[chalmers]

EZ and I enjoyed ourselves. Very laid back compared to other beer fests I've been to (though this would be on the v. small side of that list). No complaints from the afternoon session, logistics-wise. There was plenty of room for sitting or standing and drinking, whatever your preference. Like PL, I never had to wait for more than one person to get a beer. No rushes to get the beer in at the end, 8 beers over 3 hours was totally reasonable. We actually showed up an hour late, and still managed to drink our allotment.
While the organizers did control which breweries were invited, they can't control which beers they all brought. I quite enjoyed half of them, and the other half, I was happy to try.
Goat servers came to our table several times to clear water glasses and take/bring orders, so again, very attentive from the host bar side of things.