Cask at the Ipswich Cask & Clam Festival
The Ipswich Ale Brewery organized a great event to raise awareness of and consume some of the green crabs that are invading the waters off of the north shore of Massachusetts. I was asked to participate in two of the events during the week. Click on the name to jump to that event, or just scroll down.
Flights & Bites: Thursday, 11 May 2017
Cask & Clam Festival: Saturday, 13 May 2017
Flights & Bites: Thursday, 11 May 2017
I was invited to speak at the Ipswich Ale Brewery Flights & Bites Cask Night event on Thursday, 11 May 2017. It was a delightful event featuring their Route 101 West Coast-style IPA on cask, via a beer engine (and dry-hopped with Galaxy hops), and on draught. Being able to taste the same beer served in these different methods is very instructive when giving a talk to people who may not be familiar with cask ale.
The cask in the room was served horizontally using a gravity tap. It was taken from the cold box a bit late and had not yet had the opportunity to come up to cellar temperature. As such, its flavor profile was very similar to the beer served on draught. The cask beer presented much hazier, which muted the hop profile a little and caused the reduced perception of bitterness. Most interestingly was the quality of the bubbles in the head. The cask ale, while it did have reduced carbonation levels compared to the draught version, had larger, soapy-looking bubbles that stayed on a bit longer than its draught counterpart.
The dry-hopped cask served via beer engine also had an extra bit attached: a sparkler. The sparkler really stripped the CO2 out of solution and gave the beer more voluminous head of tiny bubbles. Soon after delivery, the beer was also significantly creamier due to the CO2 in solution in its gaseous form working its way out. This complimented the tropical fruit flavors of the Galaxy dry-hop. As this beer was served at proper cellar temperature, it stood out rather prominently against its two chillier counterparts.
Cask & Clam Festival: Saturday, 13 May 2017
The Ipswich Ale Brewery also asked me to lend them my expertise in preparing the cask ale for serving at their main event. In preparation for a hot May weekend, I prepared by May Day Cask Festival cooling kit for the six firkins. This involved repairing some spare manifolds from the NERAX kit as firkins have significantly different spacing than the pins I usually work with.
As it turned out, this particular Saturday dawned cool and clammy. The high for the day was 58’F. I put away my fancy cooling kit and prepared for a less-intensive wet towel cooling strategy. As it turned out, for the first time in memory I was able to serve cask ale at a festival NAKED! The beer, not myself, of course. The ambient temperature was perfect cellar temperature and there was simply no need to cool the beer further.
As usual with a cask event setup and served on the same day, it was a struggle to get the beer down to proper condition and settled. Fortunately the brewers at Ipswich have experience regularly working with cask ale so the carbonation levels on most of the casks was just about right. I put in a soft spile as I was venting just to keep any curious critters from flying into the cask. This allowed them to continue to off-gas while I worked with the other casks.
To help mitigate the cloudy beer conundrum, I showed up well in advance of the festival. The firkins were stillaged and vented about three hours before the festival began, allowing some time for the yeast to settle. I was also particularly aggressive at clearing the thickest part of the beer before opening the taps to the public. It is always disappointing pouring beer down the drain but it’s better to serve beer with a minimum of haze than to put people off returning to try another cask ale! Being such a seasonable wet and cold day, I couldn’t see needing every drop for the festival anyway so sometimes it’s better to pour out a little extra beer in advance than to unceremoniously dump it at the end.
The styles of beer chosen for this event also favored cloudier service anyway. Besides the IPA, there was a hefeweisen, two summer (golden) ales, and two saisons. The hefe has the highest tolerance for haze but the other two styles are appropriate to serve as they may not clear anyway. As delightful as bitters and pales can be, they can be particularly challenging to serve at a one-day event such as this.