Night of the Living Ales

A week back, I got the chance to take in a beer festival up at Goose Island Wrigleyville. The festival was the Night of the Living Ales, an event with 41 cask conditioned beers from 21 different breweries mostly from the area with a few from California and Oregon. Cask Ales, often referred to as Real Ales, are beers that go through a secondary fermentation in the vessel they are served in (cask). These beers are naturally carbonated in the cask, generally with the addition of some priming sugar. The beers are not filtered or pasteurized, so there is still yeast in the beer, which consumes the priming sugar and created CO2, which carbonates the beer. It is sort a throw back to a time when that was the only method to carbonate beers. Cask conditioning results in a beer that is less carbonated and usually served at cellar temperature, that is why many people who visit England say the drink their beer warm. That is partially true but they also drink plenty of beers that aren't cask conditioned. Americans also have been conditioned by certain big breweries to think that beer is suppose to be served really fricking cold. The English are in my mind arrogantly proud of their "real ales," but I found all of the foreign instructors at Siebel to be condescending about beers that weren't made their way. I think it comes down to making good beer, cask conditioning may or may not make the beer great.

As for the festival, Matt and I tried all 41 beers, so I think I am an authority on which beers were good and which weren't (regardless that my ability to taste beer 30-41 was greatly diminished). Brewers generally go for "big beers" in festivals to try to stand out from the crowd and it worked for at least one brewer, they made a ShamRock Stout. It tasted like an Andes Mint. I didn't totally agree with the awards, but I feel I have no room to talk because I didn't vote. I would have, but I was busy drinking. Another thing I noticed is that the "cult following" thing I talked about in my Three Floyd's post can make you a shitload of money. The Three Floyd's and Dogfish Head collaboration beer, Popskull, was there and had a lot of people going there right off the bat. All I have to say is that those two breweries are talked about as the holy grail of breweries and that was a very mediocre beer.

As usual, the wheels were turning throughout the festival. I obviously hope that I can someday be a brewer at a cask festival and I think that I have a name that will win awards without people even drinking the beer. I will preface this by saying that cask beers are filled through the "bung hole" and closed with a "bung." You may have an idea where I am going with this, I want to have a beer called "T.P. for my Bung Hole" and just to complete the joke, my other beer will be "The Great Cornholio." The best thing about beer festivals, everyone is 21, so there are no kids to offend.