New England IPA – Beer? Or soup?

Posted on May 14, 2017 by Ed Sabato

IPA has become the 2017 equivalent of the East Coast vs. West Coast rap wars, minus the gunplay and MTV coverage. The West Coast IPA fans stick to their theory that you can have a clear IPA that exhibits good aroma, flavor, and bitterness, all while being able to read Facebook on your phone through your glass. The New England IPA fans stick to their “juicy” love affair with beers that look more like orange juice than beer. I find myself to be more Oklahoma than either coast in this ongoing debate.

Why are these New England IPAs so damned cloudy? Multiple opinions exist on what contributes to the haze, but everyone agrees that yeast plays a major part. The choice of most brewers producing this new style tends to be the Vermont Ale, Vermont IPA, Northeast Ale, or Konan yeast (the same strain under different marketing) which stays in solution rather than flocculate to the bottom. The yeast, while in suspension, adds mouth feel and “body” to a beer much in the same way corn starch tends to thicken soups or sauces. The yeast doesn’t necessarily make the beer thicker, but it adds to the appearance of viscosity. Other theories on the haze involve the use of higher starch grains like oats, spelt, wheat, flour, etc., and “hop haze,” which is created by heavily dry-hopping a beer.

Last year I made a DIPA called Lyle Crocodile in honor of a friend. The beer relied heavily on toasted oats, toasted rice and more hops than I had ever used previously. As you can see from the picture, it came out opaque. I used White Labs’ WLP001 California Ale yeast, which flocs out easily, so the yeast didn’t make it to the secondary fermentation carboy, or the keg, but the haze is still there. I also used White Labs’ Clarity Ferm product, which eliminates the proteins that form the dreaded “chill haze.” Lyle Crocodile’s haziness simply came from the high percentage of oats and the near-pound of hops in the five-gallon batch, the majority of hops were in the dry-hopping, which adds phenols, which are hazy. The beer tasted super-clean, had none of the New England IPA’s characteristic “juicy” mouthfeel, and although hazy, was clearer than just about every New England IPA I have tried. Lyle Crocodile was so well received at a party I threw, that it was the first keg to kick. Everyone raved about it, which probably had something to do with the 8.5% ABV a IPA haze from oats and hops nd everyone being completely smashed.

But for commercial brewers I have a theory that time and money are the key elements in the rise of New England IPA popularity. If you don’t have to filter, or add finings to help clear up the beer, you save money. If you don’t have to wait for the yeast to “floc out” to the bottom of the fermenter, you save time, which means you can turn beers around quicker. If time = money, and you can both get your beers to market faster and produce more beer, you net a much larger profit margin.

I think it’s possible to brew an amazing Double IPA (DIPA) that doesn’t look like you dumped a bag of flour in it. Take Russian River Brewing’s Pliny the Elder (the first DIPA), for example. You can read this post through it. I guess super cloudy IPAs and DIPAs could just be a trend, one that I have obviously taken part in. But will it last? Will the Brewers Association add New England IPA as an official style?

Ultimately this is a consumer choice. It is possible to brew a clearer IPA/DIPA, but does it matter? If you have created a huge buzz about your beer and people are standing in line in the rain for two hours to buy it, you are too busy counting your money to discuss the haziness in your product. The market is obviously being driven by sales, as there are some very good brewers on the west coast that are now producing their own versions. It looks like this new trend is going to be around for a while, but I remember when the market was being overrun with “Cascadian Dark Ales,” as well as white and Belgian IPAs. Now you have to actively search for one of those styles and this new “hop soup” style has seemed to take their place.

So where do you fall in the IPA rap wars? Fans of both? Fans of neither? Or just fans of beer exploration?

Fruit in Your Beer Isn’t a Crime

Posted on April 10, 2017 by Ed Sabato

Once upon a time, I would wince at the request for fruit in a beer, throw a sideways glance at the guy ordering a wit with a slice of orange, or the girl holding a clear bottle with a lime floating in it.

Not so anymore. I am now fully on board with fruited beer, but I’m talking built into the recipe, rather than dropped on top. Hefeweizens with orange peel, Gose with citrus, stouts with cherries, sours with kumquats, raspberries or currants. Fruit beers have taken a place on the podiums of local, national and international beer competitions.

Thanks to some incredible talent and some extraordinary recipe design, fruit beers are everywhere these days. I have had the pleasure of working with some talented brewers who are pushing the boundaries and using locally grown fruit to produce some of the best beers I have ever tasted. Living in Hawaii, I was fortunate enough to be introduced to ingredients that can’t be found on the mainland. Lilikoi, or passionfruit, is king here. My friend Matt brews ridiculous saisons using lilikoi in secondary. A local cider producer makes an amazing lilikoi cider that clocks in at 10% ABV and is impossible to find due to demand. But why has fruit become so popular?

Offering something “different” for most drinkers, fruit has become the next big thing. Companies and orchards that grow the fruit or produce purees are flush with cash thanks to this new trend. Everyone makes an IPA, but who would have thought five years ago that a national craft brewery would produce a papaya IPA year-round? These beers are chewing up market share and not just from the umbrella-drink consumer.

Case in point: I have to fly to San Francisco in February or March of next year to pick up 10 bottles of fruited sour beer. My trip will cost me thousands of dollars for $200 of beer. Clearly this makes no economic sense, so why would anyone do it? Honestly, it’s because the beer is simply that good. I was on a road trip to South Carolina a year ago and took a five-hour detour to visit Wicked Weed Brewing in Asheville, North Carolina just to buy fruited sour beers. I walked out 11 bottles heavier and almost $200 lighter because the beers were insane.

I have yet to embrace fruit in my own brewing, save some blood orange in a cider here or there, but I now realize I have missed out on something in my 20+ years of beer consumption. Although fruit beers feel new, they are not at all. European brewers have made them for years. The classic Berliner Weiss has used raspberry syrup forever. American brewers are adding blood orange, kumquat and citrus. Dogfish Head started putting their 60-Minute IPA on grape must. And other brewers are making grape infused beers as well. It truly is a revolutionary moment in American brewing culture.

The next time you are at your local liquor emporium, or that homebrew shop you love, think about adding something a little extra to your repertoire. I am eyeing a plum puree for a chocolate stout and the blood orange puree for my Weapons Load Wheat as I write this.

Declaring War on IBUs and ABV

Posted on March 2, 2017 by Ed Sabato

I love IPAs, Double IPAs, Imperial Stouts, and Bourbon Barrel-aged Whatever beers as much as the next beer nerd. That said, no one can drink a half-dozen of them with their friends on a Friday night without falling down a flight of stairs. What’s the deal with the IBU and ABV tendency to go to the extreme?

Thankfully, in recent years the IBU wars have effectively ended. It seems the voice of the consumer is being heard, and both ABV and IBU are on the decline. In the last year or so, I have seen menus with expanded lower ABV beer offerings. “Session” has become the new buzz word, and I am in love with it. The brewery where I volunteer has a 3.6% ABV mild on the menu that’s become my choice for consumption with friends. Don’t get me wrong, I do love my IPAs, but being able to put down three or four brews over a few hours of sports and conversation about nothing with friends and walk away still upright and coherent sure is nice.

So why the switch? Well, it makes economic sense to start with. I recently heard an interview with the brewers at Founders, about the success of their All Day IPA. This new session beer is 4.7% ABV and they cannot make enough of it. It has become their top-selling beer because consumers want to buy it buy the bundle. It’s a very good beer, and you can drink several without getting that “slow-pan, freeze-frame” sensation that lets you know it’s time to slip a big glass of water in the mix. It is also less expensive to produce. Golden Road is on the same trajectory with their Wolf Pup session IPA at 4.5% ABV. It is a good “beach beer,” being flavorful, crisp, and refreshing.

Berliner Weiss has also made a huge comeback as well for the same reasons. Considering this style of beer isn’t uniquely American, the “Motherland” of Germany needs to pick up its industry jaw. It would appear that beers in the 4% range are good business, and thankfully, the craft beer industry is listening to the market.

Homebrewers are doing the same. My “Weapons Load Wheat,” clocking in at 4.7% ABV, is ideal for those hot summer days for the very same reasons. It was less expensive to produce, came out dry (1.008 SG/2° Plato) and had great citrus character from the Cascade and Mandarina Bavaria hops. This beer performed extremely well in my focus group, and people raved about it.

The next time you are at your local brewery or in your preferred spot to purchase beer, take a look around at what consumers are buying. I’ll bet you’ll see a lot of lower ABV and IBU beers, because they both “taste great” and are characteristically “less filling.”

So get out there, and try something that isn’t barrel aged, 11% ABV, or has an advertised 120 IBUs. You might be surprised how great these “session” beers really are.

The Darker Side of New England

Posted on January 30, 2017 by Ed Sabato

Treehouse Brewing Company makes some of the most sought after IPAs in New England, but the mastermind behind the recipes is a dark-beer lover at heart. Treehouse produces a near-perfect milk stout called That’s What She Said. I stood in line several hours on a sub-freezing night to get a couple of growlers filled, and this beer was amazing! And don’t even get me started on Single Shot or Double Shot, both of which are stellar stouts as well.

The hits don’t stop with Treehouse. Trillium, Grey Sail of Rhode Island, Maine Beer Company and a slew of others make some equally impressive stouts and porters. When Grey Sail of Rhode Island started up, Stargazer (Imperial Stout) was a stand-out in a full lineup of offerings. It won’t sell like an IPA, but what an excellent beer! Trillium’s Pot and Kettle is an excellent porter with rich dark malt and coffee notes. Maine Beer Company produces Mean Old Tom and King Titus. Both of which I would rank in the top stouts and porters in the U.S. That’s no joke, these beers are that good. Hill Farmstead brews Everett, without a doubt the best porter I have ever tasted. Period. End of story.

So why are these beers not leading the charge? Why the so-called snub on Beer Oscar night? Well, dark beers just aren’t hip, plain and simple. No one seems to want to stand in line for two hours to get an imperial stout, porter, doppelbock, or Baltic porter. No one except my wife and my crazy friend Brian.

Fact is, some dark beers out there are worth waiting in line for. IPAs have a very short shelf-life after they are packaged, so standing in line for two hours to get a few huge IPAs may seem like a great way to spend a weekend, but I would much rather be able to cellar an ample supply of beer after investing a few hours in line and a few more in the car. I would encourage everyone to look beyond the hype, past the insane dry hopping and fanfare. Beer fans need to look for the dark side on New England. We already know what orange juice looks and tastes like.

Jumping the Shark or Brewing Riker’s Beer?

Posted on November 23, 2016 by Ed Sabato

I’d like to think I’m pretty hip with American cultural references. The fact is, sometimes I have to go look up something in the Urban Dictionary to understand what someone actually meant. Most of these cultural and social terms do not bear repeating. But some of them are hilarious. And let’s face it, if someone at work sees you looking at the Urban Dictionary, you may end up discussing your research with the folks down in HR.

My most recent discovery is the term “Riker’s beard,” with the following excerpt taken from the top definition from Urban Dictionary:

The opposite of jump the shark, i.e. when a TV show goes from unspectacular/boring/outlandish to completely awesome. It references Star Trek: The Next Generation, which was unspectacular until season 2, when Commander Riker grew a beard. The show kicked ass from then on.

Having been around long enough to see the original episode of Happy Days when The Fonz actually jumped the shark pen on waterskies, I can relate. That episode sucked something awful. In fact, that episode was so completely terrible it created the term “jumping the shark.”

I was sitting on my lanai, enjoying the moment and the sunset with a good cigar, while sipping a delicious Burley Oak “Rude Boy” and a stout a friend made, when it hit me how shark jumping and Riker’s beard relate to beer.

Several small breweries have opened up in the last few years within a 30-minute drive from my home. One of first to open became an instant favorite for me. Not because the beer was great, but because I liked them personally. It’s always nice to know your money is going to people who live near you and have mortgages in your town, vice seeing your money go to a conglomerate in some megacity nowhere near you. This brewery’s beers were, at the time, just so basic and not very interesting in their first year. Nothing terrible mind you, but nothing I would ship to beer-friends on the opposite coast. The tiny brewery grew slowly and steadily for a year or two, just churning out its core beers and getting better with every batch. And then it happened. The owner turned the Brewmaster loose and let him create beers outside of the core lineup.

In those initial two years, the brewery quietly learned and stealthily grew its Riker’s beard. Then I heard a rumbling about a new IPA that had been sampled by friends and their response was pretty enthusiastic. Now, the IPA frenzy has made me a little leery of “over-hype,” so I went to the bar closest to the brewery to try it out for myself. The IPA was an amazing and very refreshing, and thankfully clear (http://www.midwatchbrewingco.com/filter-a-dirty-four-letter-word/) concoction. It was by far the best thing the young brewery had produced. This new-found momentum turned into Brewmaster-series one-off beers and continued success; they have clearly found their mojo.

Beer is exactly like everything else we know. To this small brewery’s yin, there has to be a yang. We all know these breweries – the ones that rest on their early success, cut corners, relax process and quality control or just go crazy. I can think of quite a few good craft breweries purchased by large conglomerates that just destroyed what had been built. Over-production, flooded markets, chasing trends, and most terribly – adding fruit to every damn beer they make. It would seem these breweries were looking for the ramp and the shark pen. I am not saying they cannot grow or progress, but you cannot dazzle discerning beer drinkers with bullshit and gimmicks. It grows old after the first pint. After all, how many watermelon <insert style here> beers can you drink, anyway?

So take a lesson The Fonz never learned: go back to solid writing, awesome character development, and quality production, and the viewers, er, drinkers, will reward you.

Competition: Making better beers and ultimately, better brewers.

Posted on October 16, 2016 by Ed Sabato

Competing is hard for me. I strive to do everything perfectly. No flaws, no errors, no excuses. This is typical Type-A personality stuff, and everyone knows someone like me. I hate to lose, and I damn sure hate to admit that I lost because of my own efforts (or mistakes). But I also crave feedback. If something I built, wrote, said, designed, grilled, baked, painted, or brewed isn’t quite right, I want to know how to fix it next time around. This is the basic reason why brewing competitions are so awesome.

Who doesn’t want to win? I am a great winner! I am only an okay loser; sometimes I am crushed by not doing great at whatever I attempted. So when I entered my first homebrew competition in 2015 I was pretty excited to get some quality feedback about my beers. I entered three beers and two different wild fermented ciders in hopes of doing well and learning about the process. I was not disappointed, I did both well and utterly terrible at the same time.

The beers I had submitted were:

1) A smoked version of my “BSP” porter (nitro) which I thought would do terrible because it was a nitro version and wouldn’t bottle well. (why no name here, since you offered names for the others?)

2) My “Seastate Schwarzbier,” which I thought would do okay because it was almost indistinguishable from the best commercial example I had ever tried.

3) My “Kings Bay Kolsch,” of which I was the so proud and sure that I fully expected to medal for this beer and put it in the “done column” on our brewery listing of experimental beers.

Before I tell you how I did, I need to explain how a beer is judged. Each beer is submitted under a style profile category—a no-brainer since an Irish Stout and an American IPA are completely different and cannot be compared. Judges are certified by the Beer Judge Certification Program (BCJP) and can be of varying levels of experience, and you have no way of knowing who will judge your beer. Each beer has a theoretical maximum point value of 50. The breakdown of points goes like this:

Aroma (0-12pts), Appearance (0-3pts), Flavor (0-20pts), Mouthfeel (0-5pts) and Overall Impression (0-10pts).

Total score then falls into these categories: A problematic beer (0-13), Fair (14-20), Good (21-29), Very Good (30-37), Excellent (38-44), Outstanding (45-50). (Are the word descriptions here official? Because the scale, to me, seems skewed to favorable descriptions. Seems like the Good should be Fair, the Very Good should be Good, the Excellent should be Very Good, and there should be only one Outstanding/Excellent category)

So how did I do? I logged into the event website to see my scores (the score sheets would arrive several weeks later).Well my porter did about as well as I imagined. I had bottling issues because it was on nitro and I really didn’t know what I was doing, and it was an odd beer with both smoked malt and black strap molasses. I basically got killed in the category,scoring only 24 points. This was bad news, but not unexpected. Had I been able to pour this beer from the tap and hand it to a judge, I think it would have scored a few points higher.

My Kolsch, my pride and joy, scored only slightly higher at 28.6 points (left photo). I was heartbroken when I read the final scores on the event website. Then mad. I worked so hard, perfected my process after two or three batches, and all my friends and family loved it. How could it be so “off” according to the judges? (This is the part where I will remind you that I am only an “okay loser.”)

Kolsch score sheet schwarzbier score sheet my wooden medal

Several weeks passed before I got my scoresheets in the mail, and when I did, initial anger phase behind me, I took them to heart. This is the best part of competing for me. If you tell me what was out of style or incorrect, I can work on these items, making it better the next time. When you read the comments while looking at the scores, everything can become clearer. That said, beer judging is like watching television or choosing a font for your blog. Everybody has a favorite show or font, and it’s probably not the same as someone else’s favorite. These things are very subjective. Because of the subjectivity of beer tastes, entering the same beer into multiple competitions to be judged by multiple different judges – and palates – can show you a trend in judging and help you make better adjustments. Some of my comments were: “tastes like an okay kolsch, but the color and body are a bit off-style,” “slightly heavy for a kolsch, a bit creamy,” and “generally a good effort but the high astringency detracts from the overall drinkability, watch sparge temperatures/over sparging perhaps, keep at it!”

The comments, and encouragement were just what I needed. I learned a few huge lessons.

1) My individual palate is awful at best. I cannot taste (or smell) at the level necessary to be a judge.

2) My friends are drinking my beer for free, and that alone makes it “better” than it probably is.

3) Kolsch is one of the hardest beers to get right. You are not covering it up with hops, dark malt or adjuncts, so any mistake in recipe, process or fermentation comes right through.

And that leaves the schwarzbier on the beer list (middle photo), so you’ve probably guessed this beer did really well. It finished first in its category (right photo), first for all lagers (1 of 4) and then 10^th overall in the Best of Show round. I was completely shocked and very humbled. Once again, the feedback was great and I took it to heart and made a few more tweaks to my recipe in an attempt to make it even better.

So how did my Kolsch do in 2016? Once again, it was crushed. The differences from the kegged version to what was in the bottle were night and day. My feedback from the judges this year was good, and I have a lot of room to improve. So back to the drawing board with hopes of claiming a gold medal next time.

Seasonal – Kick In The Nuts

Posted on August 27, 2016 by Ed Sabato

What is it about the “creeping seasons” in America? You start seeing Halloween candy in August, Christmas stuff by Halloween, commercials for the Olympic Games during the Super Bowl, and rampant consumerism drives everything. This phenomenon isn’t just limited to selling decorations, clothing, costumes and fragrances. This crazy business world works the same way for brewers.

Release dates for seasonal beers are moving much the same way consumer holidays are. Just the other August night, I was in a bar after work letting the emails and stupidity slip away by manner of direct hop consumption. One of my friends orders “whatever Sam Adams you have on tap,” and the server comes back with a beautiful glass of Oktoberfest. A solid beer for sure, but on August 19? And I was in Honolulu, which means the beer was shipped to go on tap several weeks earlier. Oktoberfest doesn’t start in Munich until September 17, when the first kegs of the sanctioned (and only in Munich) Oktoberfest beers will be tapped by the limited breweries that can legally make them. So why the rush here in the U.S.?

Well, no one wants their winter ale to hit shelves two weeks after competitors. Creeping seasons is all about marketing, shelf space and the fist-to-skull world of big corporate brewers. And the way to avoid it is to seek “seasonals” that are actually seasonal.

Any idiot can brew an Oktoberfest in October or a Spring Bock in the Fall (I am an idiot, so I would know). What you can’t do very well is brew a seasonal beer with fresh ingredients when they are not fresh. What does that mean?

Everyone knows a fresh-picked tomato in late July/August makes the best BLT in the world. An apple pulled off the tree in September/October tastes like nothing else. So why don’t we seek beers like that? We do. The beer world loses its collective mind over some seasonal releases. Take Dogfish Head’s pumpkin beer. Dogfish Head will not brew it without freshly processed pumpkins. Then look at all the “wet hop” or “fresh hop” beers. Brewers have a limited window to get these hops and only hours to brew with them. That’s what makes these beers great.

I had the opportunity to see two real seasonal beers in the last few weeks. The first was a fresh hop beer using Gargoyle and Cascade hops. In a 7,000-mile round trip, the Brew Master flew to California, procured the hops, and flew back the same day. Straight from the airport and into the brew kettle. You cannot fake it; you cannot freeze the hops and call it “fresh hopped” beer. You cannot move the date forward for fiscal expediency. You just can’t.

The second beer was even more “seasonal,” a toasted macadamia nut and local honey nut brown ale. To start with, very, very few “nut browns” actually use tree nuts. In this case, freshly harvested macadamia nuts, right from the tree, were toasted, filling the entire brewery with the most amazing aroma. It smelled like heaven for almost an hour. Then, raw, unfiltered honey was added for body and to dry out the beer little. Truly, the brewing of this genuinely seasonal beer was amazing, and it will be the first real “honey nut brown” I have had in quite a while. A higher mash temp, a great malt bill and some care will create a truly original, and more importantly, truly SEASONAL beer.

My point is that, if we are to really enjoy beer at its finest, we all need to seek out that summer-fresh BLT in beer form. Can you enjoy the Oktoberfest offerings in August? Absolutely. But what’s the delight for our taste buds in that? Something so gratifying (and delicious) comes from seeking out the real seasonal beers, standing in lines, trading for them, begging friends who live close to the brewery, and savoring beers brewed at the absolute perfect time.

Cask conditioned ales: a “modern” thing?

Posted on April 21, 2016 by Ed Sabato

This post starts like any bad joke you’ve ever heard. “I was sitting in a bar and this guy says, what the hell is that?”

Yep, that’s right, I was sitting in a bar, and I am sure everyone is stunned to hear it. I had just finished a nice American brown ale (Long Trail’s Sick Day) and was looking at the beer this establishment had on cask. It was Left Hand’s Black Jack Porter, and what is better than a good porter on cask or nitro? Not much, so I ordered one. The bartender got to work on the lone beer engine, and the guy two stools down starts in with the whole “modern beer” and “modern beer drinkers” stuff. I mean, it’s not like I am some hipster tool, with a knit hat, neck beard and insufferably smug attitude. I tried to assure the near-octogenarian that this “new-fangled” thing was anything but new.

To be fair to my bar-acquaintance, the beer engine was cool in the US a little while ago, then went out of favor, and is now enjoying a comeback, sort of. I had my first cask ale while in Gibraltar over Christmas in 1993. Although my beer experience was legendary among my own shipmates even then, cask ales were something I had never seen. The couple of ales I tried were truly British, and the names and styles of the ones I tried have faded from memory. What is still perfectly clear, though, are the flavors and mouthfeel of a cask conditioned ale. They felt creamier, a little softer, and really drinkable. I thought it was some “new” technology that us “ugly Americans” had yet to embrace. I could not have been more wrong.

The original beer engine was invented by John Lofting in 1691, some 300+ years before I ever laid eyes on it. The beer engine was created to solve the problem of moving beer from the cellars to the serving rooms. It was invented by that old mother Necessity, and has been around in various forms ever since.

The real beauty of the beer engine is that it requires no power, other than your arm, and it doesn’t require refrigeration. Simply brilliant, and unique to American culture. In the last few years I have really taken note of the unused beer engines in the Irish and British establishments I frequent here in New England. Kind of sad really, but cask ales have a shelf life. If you don’t move them quickly, they degrade. This is a product of the beer engine’s simplicity. It pumps the atmosphere of the bar right into the keg/cask, oxidizing the beer and making it taste “old” very quickly.

I had another interesting experience with cask conditioned beer on my second trip to Brisbane, Australia. A friend of mine had been there many times, and knew of a place called The Breakfast Creek Hotel (the locals call it the “Brekky Creek”). This place had the best steak house going (the kind where you choose your steak in the case) and the Paddy Fitzgerald Bar, a really cool bar that still serves cask ale. The beer was XXXX Bitter (spoken “four-ex”),made by Castlemain Perkins in Brisbane, Australia. On its own merit, XXXX Bitter is a good beer, a kind of English bitter hybridized with a Czechoslovakian lager yeast. It is great, 4.6% ABV, and crushable. The XXXX Bitter on cask at the Brekky Creek is from another world. There is something amazing that happens in the cask. I don’t know if it is the brewers pitch, the wood, the tradition, or the specter of seeing it tapped with a hammer…but it is amazingly different. I have consumed many, many pints of XXXX Bitter, “off the wood” as the barman says, while at the Brekky Creek and they were all amazing. The cask mellows all the flavors a bit. The bittering from the hops is toned down, and the wood adds a different mouthfeel than you would get from a bottle of standard CO2 draught. The differences to most people would be significant enough to suggest the cask and non-cask versions of the same beer were actually two different beers. As a really cool side note to the Paddy Fitzgerald Bar fame, I would add that they have a very interesting tradition regarding a tapped cask. They finish it that day. Don’t get me wrong, they are small casks (10 gallons/38 liters I believe), but those of you sitting in the bar within an hour of closing could get a special treat. The last time I was there, in 2006, I happened to be there with only four other patrons – two locals and three of us Sailors. The locals kindly accepted the free pitcher that the barman poured for them and took a while to consume it. My friends and I went through pitcher after pitcher of wonderful beer while discussing such lofty topics as US football vs. Rugby, Rugby Union, and Australian Rules. We also debated who had consumed more, and which of us had the largest bladder (Big Head Todd drank way more, and I had the largest bladder).

These two great experiences with cask conditioned ale whetted my appetite to try more, and to seek out establishments bold enough to serve it as well. It also made me an ambassador, which is why I am offering the links to the British Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) as well as the New England Real Ale Exhibition (NERAX) both of which are a wealth of information.

In this lightning-paced world we now occupy, you can check the ratings of a beer you never heard of in less than 10 seconds on your phone. What you cannot do with your phone, is experience something that takes time, and adds subtlety and complexity over a few weeks, months or years. So wherever you are, take the extra few seconds as you peruse the beer menu to ask you server what is on cask. It will add something to your tasting repertoire, and it just might change the way you look at beer, like it did for me.

The Midwatch Brewing Co.

Adventure by the Pint.

Category Archives: Musings on beer