DC Beer Week Celebrates Cask Ales

UPDATE: SOLD OUT

Cask Night tickets now on sale for $40 in celebration of #dcbw11. Doesn't get more local than this. 10 Local HandCrafted Casks, Glass + Food!Tue Aug 02 21:07:21 2011

Barrett LChopHouseBrew

There's a DC Beer Week event so new, that it's only just been Tweeted. It's Cask Night, Thursday evening, 18 August, 6pm onward, at the District Chophouse Brewery & Restaurant.

To get the skinny, I talked with Barrett Lauer, longtime brewmaster at the Chophouse, and the host and organizer of the event.

Ten Twelve local breweries are participating —the 12th being District Chophouse itself— each bringing a cask for the night:

• Capital City Brewing Company, of Washington, D.C., and Arlington, Virginia.
  Peat Me Up Scotty, 5.7% abv Scottish Export Ale, primed with fermenting Kolsch wort.
  
• Du Claw Brewing, of Bel Air, Maryland, etc.
  Bad Moon Porter: 6.5% abv, aged in a Heaven Hill Bourbon Barrel.
  
• Franklin's Restaurant & Brewery, of Hyattsville, Maryland.
  Ludicrous: 6.3% abv, sour-mashed rye saison
  
• Gordon-Biersch Brewery & Restaurant, of Rockville, Maryland.
  Gose" 4.4% abv, wheat beer brewed with slightly salted water, and fermented with lactic bacteria.
  
• Gordon-Biersch Brewery & Restaurant, of Washington, D.C.
  
• Heavy Seas Brewing, of Baltimore, Maryland.
  Loose Cannon Hop3 IPA: 7.3% abv, dry-hopped with varities of hops: Ahtanum, Cascade, Centennial, Palisade, Simcoe, and Falconers Flight (a proprietary blend from Hop Union).
  
• Lost Rhino Brewing, of Ashburn, Virginia.
  New River Pale Ale: 5.4% abv, "extremely aromatic American-Style Pale Ale."
  
• Mad Fox Brewing Company, of Falls Church, Virginia.
  Wee Heavy: 8.6% abv, strong Scotch Ale, primed with Virginia honey.
  
• Oliver Ales, at the Pratt Street Alehouse, in Baltimore, Maryland.
  Strongman Pale Ale: 9% abv, dry-hopped with Sorachi Ace.
  
• Rock Bottom Brewery & Restaurant, in Bethesda, Maryland.
  Atom Smasher: 9.4% abv, 'English-Style' BarleyWine
  
• Sweetwater Tavern, of Centreville, Virginia, etc.
  Pale Face Summer Wheat (A L'Orange), 6.1% abv, HefeWeizen primed with orange liqueur

Host District Chophouse is pouring a cask-conditioned IPA, ALTogether Now, 5.5% abv Altbier brewed and dry hopped for 2010 DC Beer Week. Primed with Oktoberfest, and matured since then.

The cost is $40 [UPDATE: SOLD OUT] which entitles each of the 80 or so lucky participants to unlimited tastes from the casks (at least until the casks are emptied), a complimentary glass (a specially designed stemmed glass, which means that beers won't warm up in drinkers' hands), and hors d'oevres, including pizza, sandwich wraps, and vegetable crudites. Reservations are required: call the brewery at 202.347.1922 to reserve a place.

District Chophouse will publish more details at its website, and at Barrett Lauer's Twitter feed: @ChopHouseBrew. I'll update here, as more information is released.

The brewpub is at 509 7th Street NW, Washington, D.C., close to both the Gallery Place and Archives Metro stops.

One final point. The breweries invited to participate in this event are all local: found in and near to Washington, D.C. That is, and ought to be, the point of an event during DC Beer Week. I thanked Barrett for that, and I hope to thank him in person with a pour of his cask IPA.