May Day Cask Festival

information about a small homebrew real ale festival

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Cellaring NERAX

Randy Baril

The New England Real Ale eXhibition (NERAX) is a real ale festival held bi-annually in the Boston metropolitan area. I have been privileged to have been associated with these fine folks for a number of years, having started as a general volunteer, getting recruited onto the cellar team, serving briefly on the Board of Directors, before settling into the position of Head Cellarman. These festivals are the primary fundraisers for the Cask-conditioned Ale Support Campaign (CASC), a federally-recognized 501(c)3 non-profit tasked with educating the consumers, brewers, and publicans on the possibilities of cask ale done right. It has been at these festivals that I have had the opportunity to get the direct experience working with cask ale that has made this text possible.

There is a lot of work that goes into organizing a festival of this magnitude that serves 2,000+ people 100+ firkins (60+ for NERAX North) over a four (or three) day festival. While this would be a great topic for another book, at this time we are only going to focus on what needs to happen for the beer to be ready and in peak condition at the opening bell for every day of the festival. This is left in outline format for this edition.

NERAX – Overview of Cellaring Responsibilities

  1. The Cellar Plan – your guide to surviving the festival
    1. Need US & UK Beer Data
    2. The Stillage Worksheet
  2. Setup Day
    1. Siting & Building Stillage
    2. Sorting Beer
    3. Loading Stillage
    4. Cooling Build
    5. Bar Build
    6. Staging Verticals
  3. Two Days to a Festival
    1. Venting
    2. Dispense Build
  4. One Day to a Festival
    1. Tapping
    2. Verticals
  5. Opening Day
    1. Preliminary Tasting
    2. Final Dispense clean
    3. Signage
    4. Cellar Ready
    5. Maintaining during service
    6. Dipping
    7. Beer Triage
  6. Subsequent Days
    1. Tasting
    2. Signage
    3. Cellar Ready
    4. Maintaining during service
    5. Dipping
    6. Beer Triage
  7. Breakdown Day
    1. Draining beer
    2. Cooling breakdown & storage
    3. cleaning equipment
    4. Assignment of certain tasks
    5. Storage philosophy