6th Annual Chesapeake Real Ale Festival

What the firkin* is the SPBW?

Here, from the SPBW's website:

It all began on the evening of Friday, 6th December, 1963 when seven disgruntled beer drinkers gathered in the Rising Sun in Epsom [in Surrey, in southeast England]. Their concern was the growing decline in both quality and palatability of beer. This they felt was due to the increasing use of gas pressure dispense and the introduction of keg beers. They deplored the policies of the big brewers who, by forcing the sale of beer from 'sealed dustbins' were threatening the availability of traditional draught beer. The seven drinkers decided to form a society with the purpose of drawing attention to their plight - and so the SPBW [Society for the Preservation of Beer from the Wood] was born.

THAT NAME

In 1963 wooden casks were still regarded as being synonymous with traditional draught beer in contrast to the sealed dustbins which contained the processed and artificially carbonated product. For this reason the name seemed ideal.

After a few years, realising that metal casks were rapidly replacing wooden ones, the Society decided to relax its principles accordingly. Nowadays only about a dozen breweries use wooden casks at all, and the SPBW is more concerned with the contents than the container, which we accept makes little or no difference to the taste of the beer. However, the original name has been retained for the sake of tradition.

The SPBW has been eclipsed, in membership and public advocacy, by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), which, among other activities, sponsors an annual showcase of cask ales called the Great British Beer Festival.

The only SPBW branch in the US —based in Baltimore, Maryland— is very active. Every autumn for the past 5 years, the SPBW/Maryland has produced the Chesapeake Real Ale Festival, a celebration of cask ale from breweries in the mid-Atlantic region. This year the festival has been timed to be part of the inaugural Baltimore Beer Week, falling on Saturday, 17 October. From an email announcement:

The 6th Annual Chesapeake Real Ale Festival

The TIME: Saturday, October 17th, 2009, 1 PM - 6 PM

The VENUE: Pratt Street Alehouse (formerly Wharf Rat Camden Yards), 206 W. Pratt St, Baltimore, Maryland.

THE PRICE: $35 which will include a souvenir SPBW/PSA mug to go along with unlimited samples of over 35 cask conditioned beers, some rare, some not so rare, all delicious though! Plus tons of giveaways and food available a la carte.

THE BEERS: We expect to have 35 firkins from 30ish brewers. See the web page for a full list. Right now we have:

• Appalachian
• Barley & Hops
• Brewers Alley
• Brewers Art
• Clipper City
• District Chophouse
• Dog Pub
• Dogfish
• DuClaw
• Evolution,
• Flying Dog
• Franklins
• Lancaster
• Magic Hat
• Pratt St Alehouse
• Red Brick Station
• Rock Bottom Bethesda
• Troegs

Growler fill-ups will be available but ONLY at the end at 6 PM for a nominal price.

Tickets for the Sixth Annual Chesapeake Real Ale Festival are available online . You can also purchase these tickets in person at the Pratt Street Alehouse.

PS - VOLUNTEERS NEEDED - Email alan@spbw.org. We need Friday Setup, Saturday Breakdown, 3 shifts of pourers and someone at the Front and Merchandise booths.

If past history is a guide, there will be more casks than publicized, and cider as well.


What is Cask-Conditioned Ale? It's FRESH Beer.

A cask ale (and sometimes lager) is not aged beer, such as wine or whisky might be. It really is the opposite: as fresh as beer can be. Many craft beer lovers in the US are so anxious to have the newest beer from somewhere else, something new, that they forget that beer is a delicate beverage, much more so thaqn wine. The very act of brewing —all that heat and mixing and pumping— entraps oxygen into the mash and fermenting beer. As the beer ages, all that bound-up oxygen reacts with compounds to form staling aldehydes, especially the classic trans-2-nonenal that gives old beer a cardboard flavor.

Given all that, the fresher a beer is, the better the beer will taste. Define 'better' as as the brewer intended. Define 'better' as as the beer tastes at the brewery before it's packaged into bottles and kegs, a process which further introduces oxygen into the beer.

The freshest a beer will be is at the brewery just out of the fermenter or conditioning tank or ... out of a cask, in which the beer is still fermenting, as if that 10.8 gallon cask were itself a small fermenter.

Thus it's a mystery to me that such a basic fact of beer —that beer has a short lifespan— is not better appreciated by 'craft' beer lovers. Just because a beer is fresh does not make that beer a 'good' beer, but a good beer when fresh is ineffably better than the same beer kegged or bottled, and sent miles away. Heck, many 'craft' beer fans go ga-ga over nitrogenated beer, an artificial process originally developed by Guinness to imitate cask beer.

The hallmark of cask-conditioned beer is its ur-freshness. You'll have the opportunity to taste that 'freshness' at the Chesapeake Real Ale Festival.

• Prior to 2003, SPBW/Maryland partnered for 8 years with Racer's Cafe in Parkville, Maryland (just north of Baltimore) for a smaller festival called the Real Ale Challenge.
• * A firkin is a cask, sized at 10.8 US gallons. More here.
• A story (and photos) on the 2008 Real Ale Festival here.
• Ron Kodlick: A departed partisan of cask ale in Baltimore.

Munich in Virginia

Oktoberfest concludes today in the city of Munich, in Bavaria, Germany.

The Munich Oktoberfest, traditionally, takes place during the sixteen days up to and including the first Sunday in October. In 1994, the schedule was modified in response to German reunification so that if the first Sunday in October falls on the 1st or 2nd, then the festival will go on until October 3 (German Unity Day). The festival is now 17 days when the 1st Sunday is October 2 and 18 days when it is October 1.

Got that?

In Arlington, Virginia, yesterday under glorious autumn sunshine, Capitol City Brewing Company held its 10th annual Oktoberfest, outside on the plaza of Shirlington Village. More than 30 breweries participated.

Of the eight local breweries that just the week prior had garnered medals at the Great American Beer Festival (GABF), five sent representatives. Northern Virginia area good beer fans were able to offer congratulations in person ... as did I.


I expressed my admiration to Jason Oliver for his achievement: winning 4 medals in the difficult-to-brew lager categories, and even more so, in a brewpub open for only a few months, Devils Backbone near Wintergreen, Virginia. Jason was particularly ebullient about his gold for Danzig— a 'Baltic porter'(a lager brewed with ingredients similar to a porter ale). He had previously brewed that same rare style in his earlier position as longtime executive brewer for the Gordon-Biersch brewpubs in the Washington, D.C. area.

One of Jason's medals was for his Kellerbier, the lager equivalent of cask-conditioned ale, but he wasn't able to bring a cask to the Fest. I told him I would have to visit the brewpub to taste some; Jason agreed. (In fact, none of the participating breweries were pouring cask ale.)


I gave Heather Donahue a congratulatory hug. She's the local representative for Flying Dog Brewery of Frederick, Maryland. In addition to winning 4 medals at the GABF, the brewery had been honored as the Mid-Size Brewery of the Year. She was pouring its gold-medal winning Dogtoberfest (Oktoberfest Lager).


Chris Rafferty —head brewer for the Arlington, Virginia location of Rock Bottom Brewery— poured me a sample of his gold-medal winning coffee stout called Dude! Where's My Vespa? It had a strong coffee essence, but minus any expected coffee bitterness. Chris had accomplished this, he explained, by cold-brewing freshly roasted coffee beans from local (Annandale, Virginia) micro-roastery, Beanetics. The abv on the brew was 6.8% —a reason why you might forget where your scooter was, dude.


It's the second time around, medaling, for Jackass Rye Ale from Sweetwater Tavern. Nick Funnel (emphasis on the second syllable) —Executive Brewmaster for the company's three northern Virginia brewpubs— explained that the beer is a difficult brew. Rye is high in gluten and literally sticky. Straining the liquid wort from the mash —which normally takes an hour and a half— can take twice that with the beer's grist of 50% rye. To expedite the runoff, Funnell added rice hulls —the outer casings of rice kernels— into the mash. He'll be re-releasing Jackass Rye as part of a pre-winter celebration in November.

Although the German Oktoberfest has concluded, here in the US, Octoberfest (with a 'c') celebrations will continue through the end of the month. There's an annoying penchant for appending "toberfest" to all sorts of first syllables: Rocktoberfest, Hoptoberfest, Sale-toberfest, etc. I posted online, perhaps futilely, requesting a moratorium be placed on the coining of these silly words. Here's one response I received on Twitter: "It's making a mockery of the fest. A Mocktoberfest, if you will."


The festival offered plenty of schnitzel and other 'Oktoberfesty' food. But other than pretzels, what was a vegetarian to do? Well, how about Indian fare? I enjoyed a wonderfully spiced Channa Masala, and washed it down with an un-Oktoberfestish IPA from Clipper City Brewing: Loose Cannon.


Just before I left the festival, I chatted with a young gentlemen who had stepped out of a wine shop. Inside, he had tasted samples of several Austrian wines (fine and appropriate for the occasion). I asked him if he would be sampling any of the many beers. "No," he replied. "They're only beers."

Well, yes, there were 'only' beers being served outside. Maybe that was why the plaza was completely thronged with festive Oktoberfesters. Enjoy your autumn!

• More photos here.
• This year, Munich Oktoberfest began on 19 September.
  
• The 2008 Shirlington Festival experienced a bit of regulatory difficulty. This year, all was smooth festing.
• Caveat lector: As a representative for northern Virginia wholesaler Select Wines, I sell beers from Clipper City and Flying Dog.

VeggieDag Thursday: Why The Name?

When asked if I'm a vegetarian or vegan, I'll reply with "No, but I don't eat animals," rather than getting laden with labels and agendas. Never meat, fish, fowl, or eggs, but always vegetables, legumes, grains, nuts, and fruits, and, occasionally, artisinal cheeses, although no other dairy.

On the occasional Thursday, I blog 'meatless', on matters of an animal-free diet and issues of the ecology. I'll often inveigle beer (or wine or spirits) into the posts. Beer is, after all, at its core, a fine vegetarian foodstuff. It's liquid grain, made from barley, hops, yeast, and water.

I call this column VeggieDag Thursday, in solidarity with the city of Ghent, in Belgium, which first declared a weekly, city-wide "Donderdag VeggieDag" on Thursday, 14 May 2009.

Here's how author Kim O'Donnel, then a reporter for the Washington Post, reported this:

[Mayor] Tom Balthazar has officially declared Thursday meatless in his city of nearly a quarter million people. In an effort to make the connection between meat consumption and greenhouse gases (18 percent of which come from livestock production), Balthazar has asked his fellow civil servants to abstain from meat every Thursday.

***************
Kim O'Donnel ended her Mighty Appetite column on 10 July 2009, going on to other ventures. She wrote a beautiful and powerful final essay. I've excerpted it here.

I have a very special friend named Ethan, and in just a few days, the grownups in his life will be celebrating his first birthday. <...>

In the few months that my friend’s diet has expanded beyond the bottled facsimile of breast milk, I’ve had the privilege of observing his experiences with this thing called food, a front-row seat at the high-chair theater, complete with bowl tossing, high-pitched screams and other primal expressions of gustatory joy.

One night, I cooked a small pot of red lentils, suggesting to his mother that it’s baby food as Mother Nature had intended, self-pureeing in about 25 minutes. She agrees to the experiment, eager for variety beyond sweet potatoes and applesauce, but me, I’ve got bigger aspirations. I’m secretly hoping that on some level the kid will intuitively understand that his auntie is trying to expose him to the world, that lentils just aren’t lentils; they’re culture and history and nutrition and agriculture. <...>

I wait for his reaction. At first, he grimaces, a sign of cranky uncertainty, but he forges ahead, masticating like a champ. He sings that “num, num, num” song and the chubby legs begin to swing in excitement beneath the counter. He grins wide, with all four teeth, and readily receives a second helping. Folks, I think we’ve got a winner.

As I prepared for today’s final entry, I thought a lot about Ethan and the purity of his experience with food. It’s free of judgment and pre-conceived notions and instead filled with wonder, joy and openness, a sensory interaction of the highest order. And now his tongue knows lentils, something my tongue didn’t experience until I was in my 20s.

Ethan may grow up to hate lentils -- and kamut bulgur and all the other things I’ve got planned for him to taste. But taste is all you can do in this life. My father was insistent that we try everything at least once before deciding we didn’t like something on our plates, and I think that’s a good rule of thumb for many aspects of life.

Try everything once. Be open to the flavors, textures and aromas that life presents you, both smooth and velvety as well as sharp and bitter. Open your mouth and taste something new everyday -- or something familiar in a different way.

When was the last time you bit into a radish? Really tasted mustard from a spoon? Listened to the crunch of a potato chip? Smelled the perfume of sauteed onions?

Life is delicious, every minute of every day. Life is also precious. So let’s get busy.

-----more-----

Bloggers blog 'bout beer (Washington DC area)

The phrase, 'boutique brewery', fortunately never caught on with the beer drinking public. It was one of the few misfires of beer writer Michael Jackson.

Unfortunately, 'blog' —a truly ugly neologism— has become standard parlance for a 'web log', that is, a journal published on-line. Such as this one.

If you were to blog, about beer, in October, what might you call that? Here, from Orr Shtuhl of the Washington City Paper on-line:

The Blogtoberfest happy hour (which admittedly sounds way more fun than “planning meeting”). Throughout the month of October we’re getting local bloggers, foodie and non-, to share their beer stories on their own blogs. Cross-linking and conversation will ensue. Meet at 6:30 p.m. [Wednesday, 30 September 2009] at Axis Bar and Grill [in Washington, D.C.].

Across the Potomac River, at the same time tonight,, northern Virginia Twitter-ers will be Tweeting-up (aargh, these Twitpuns) at the Dogfish Head Alehouse in Chantilly, Virginia.

NoVA Tweetup at Dogfish in Farifax, VA Sept 30 6PM, because DC's a pain in the rear.

Well, I don't know if DC has a monopoly on that affliction. Traffic along the Rt. 50/I-66/Rt. 28 corridor can be quite the slow-moving ache in the arse.

Here's a (very) short list of other blogger associations in the Washington D.C. area.

• C.R.A.B.B. is a loose confederation of beer bloggers in Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia. I'm a member. We've never had an actual meeting, but we share a common agenda. We blog about beer issues in general and those of particular interest to readers in the tri-state area. The acronym stands for Chesapeake Region Alliance of Beer Bloggers. Read more here.


• The Washington, DC Area Meetup

  The Washington DC Blogger Meetup is a eclectic group of group of bloggers and micro-bloggers. We meet on the third Wednesday of every month in Adams Morgan for a casual social gathering.
  
  Join us as we write about current trends in the DC blogosphere and explore venues inside the beltway. Our “communal blogging events” or CBEs are first-person experiences of events, such as street festivals or museum exhibits, that happen in and around our city.



• DC Blogs is an aggregator of blogs in the Washington, D.C. area.
  

  The main dcblogs.com page is a news site. It reports on topics raised by bloggers, changes in the DC blogging community, as well as bring new blogs to the attention of readers. We're always on the hunt for interesting content and suggestions are encouraged

There's a BB/C in WDC

Well, well, well.

Things look as if they are finally coming together for Birch & Barley/Churchkey. Originally slated to open in April of 2008, but delayed by various building and legal snafus, this Washington D.C. beer bar and restaurant may soon be more than a promise.


Three web presences popped up today: a site for the restaurant Birch & Barley, a site for the accompanying same-building beer bar Churchkey, and a blog written by Greg Engert, beer director for Rustico in Alexandria, Virginia and soon for BB/C.

Those join BB/C's already up and running Twitter feed.

Here's a little bit of what Engert wrote in his first blog entry:

555 unique labels culled from over 30 countries, including 50 draught beers and 5 authentic cask conditioned ales in fluid rotation. We’ll also provide a multitude of exceptionally rare, often exclusive, beers on draught, cask, and among our 500 hand-selected bottles. A Cellar Stash list of obscure and vintage bottled beer
<...>
Three distinct temperatures zones will insure that the various styles of draft, cask and bottled brews attain their highest flavor expressions

Let's repeat that: 500 different bottled beers, 5(!) cask ale lines, a reserve bottle list, and 3 different serving temperatures for lighter vs. heavier vs cask beers.

Engert doesn't mention much about a menu but here's Chef Kyle Bailey talking about beer and food:

Throughout school and up until this point in my career, the focus has solely been on pairing food with wine, and while I love wine, I’ll let you in on a little industry secret – chefs drink beer.

Look for an October opening at 1337 14th Street, NW, in Washington, D.C.

• When open, BB/C will be the 9th location of the Neighborhood Restaurant Group (NRG).
  
• There's more at Washington City Paper and Beer in DC.
• Earlier stories from YFGF here and here.
• Caveat lector: I might refer to BB/C's marketing as web-savvy, but because Rustico is a client of mine, I'll leave that determination up to my readers. I sell beer and wine as a representative for Select Wines, a wholesaler in northern Virginia.