cask days 2014 standouts

Welcome to Quebec!

I’d be remiss to go to a beer festival & not even chronicle the most delicious, interesting, and uh…questionable?? beers I sampled, so here goes! 

Cask Days was broken up by region – so each province had its own section, plus a section for some UK imports and this years featured US region:  California.  It was so funny to us to see all the Canadians going crazy over the California beers – they cost double the tokens and everything!!  Then again, if I didn’t live where I had constant access to Stone, Green Flash, Lagunitas, Ballast Point, etc., I probably would have done the same.  The cool thing was that a lot of the California breweries had modified their beers for the cask process – so it wasn’t just Stone IPA, it was “Stone IPA with raspberries and jasmine and etc., etc.”.  Kinda cool that us Americans did get a little surprises taste as well.  So, for posterity (and so I can remember when they finally start internationally distributing!!), a brief list of some of the notable tastes:

Ballast Point Brewing - Victory at Sea with Cacao Nibs & Ghost Pepper;
I actually tried this pre-Cask Days at BarVolo, but had it again on Saturday as well.  The cask notes on the tap list at BarVolo didn’t list, of all things, the ghost pepper part!?!  My dad ordered it accidentally (his intention had been to pick up Dieu du Ciel’s Peche Mortel, but he misread the numbers), but this baby was delicious.  The ghost peppers gave it some serious heat at the end, but the thick chocolate stout part of it was the perfect balance for the spice.  I’m a big fan of the chocolate/chipotle beer (Odd Side Ales’ Mayan Mocha Stout is one of my all-time favorites), but usually the spice is a little more muted.  I really liked just how dominant it was in the this one.

Monkish Brewing Company - Brown Habit W/ Thai Basil & Sriracha;

This was my, “I couldn’t drink a whole pint of that, but…” beer of the festival.  I’ve never had the original Brown Habit (although now I’d really like to), but this casked variation of it was amazing.  It literally tasted like drinking a glass of Pad Cashew – but despite how that sounds, it was NOT disgusting.  The basil and the sriracha worked perfectly with the malts to give it that Thai food feel (sans-spice), and in a way that created this weird delicious savory beer.  Sometimes I feel like the additions to cask beers are just too much (seventeen kinds of fruits/flowers/spices are SO not necessary – now it just tastes like I’m eating somebody’s fruit salad floral arrangement & I can’t pick out ANY individual flavors), but this was cask experimentation done 100% right.

Stone - Sublimely Self-Righteous with Spruce & Cherry;

All of Stone’s offerings were variations of their mainstays (Go-To IPA, Ruination, etc.) with about a thousand different mix-ins added when they were casked.  Like I said above, I think a lot of them were just too much (my first beer was the Stone IPA with Raspberry, Jasmine, Lime, Chili and Mango, and I honestly couldn’t pick out a single one of those flavors except raspberry on the nose and a tiny bit of soapy jasmine at the end – it was just a cloying sweet muddle interrupting my IPA), but this one was spot on perfect.  The especially cool thing was that I’m not honestly a huge fan of Sublimely Self-Righteous in and of itself – it’s not a BAD beer, I’m just not crazy about the black IPA style in general.  The piney, resin-y spruce flavor and the tart cherries worked just PERFECTLY together, though.  They really brought out the roasty, malty flavors in the beer in a way that just worked.  I feel like hops often get buried in the roasted flavors of black/dark/whatever IPAs, but the spruce helped to really make that flavor pop and the cherry just added this lovely finish.  I tried a friend’s glass of this one, and I definitely wanted seconds.

Brasserie Dieu du Ciel! - Isseki Nicho Special Amarillo;

A collaboration between Dieu du Ciel & Shiga Kougen in Japan.  I’ve been interested in black/dark/brown/etc. saisons lately, and I tend to like them a hair better than their IPA breathren, but this one is billed as a hybrid of a Belgian saison and an Imperial stout, and it accomplished this brilliantly.  Strong, but tart, but roasty, and Amarillo are one of my absolute favorite hop flavors, so it had that bit of spicy, piney finish to it that set it apart from its Mosaic brother.  Also I thought it was really cool to see single-hop varieties of something that WASN’T an IPA – interesting to see how hops affect the flavor in a beer that isn’t necessarily hop-central.

Les Trois Mousquetaires – Reserve de Noel 2013;

When my buddy Pav handed me his jar of this, he did so with the information that this was “Christmas in a glass.”  Billed as an “extra strong” red lager brewed with Christmas spices & balsam fir and French oak, I’ve also see it called a “Grand Cuvee” (and we know how I feel about cuvees….), and weighing in at 10.5%, this was most definitely Christmas in a glass.  It was warm and welcoming and spicy and made me want to curl up on my couch and watch the snow with slippers on and Christmas carols playing.  The spice blend was just beautiful – not too strong that it overpowered the malty background (which was interesting in and of itself – I read later that the beer was made with 100% Quebec malt, and the bill included pils, rye, wheat, oat, cara 160, and roasted buckwheat, the last of which I think REALLY made this beer go a step beyond what I expected) like some “holiday” ales.  Somebody find me a bottle of this for Christmas, please.

Townsite Brewing – Timewarp;

When I got the initial list of beers available at Cask Days, this one was my “I HAVE to try this weird sounding thing!” selection.  I have gathered from the Townsite wesbite that this beer is normally a standard wet hop, but what really grabbed me about it is that it was listed on the bill as a wet hop with SMOKED HOPS.  Not smoked malt, but smoked actual fresh hop cones (Applewood smoked, at that!).  I generally like smoked beers, but moreso things like smoked saisons than smoked darker beers (although I have had ones I’ve enjoyed before, as well…), and this sounded so bizarre I had to try it.  It basically tasted like liquid smoke, earthy and ashy and….not awful, but not something I wanted to keep drinking.  Completely different than a smoked malt taste – and not quite the same savory beer experience I had earlier with the Monkish beer.  I’m glad I tried it but I’m not sure it’s an experiment I’d want to repeat.

Weirdly enough, a large chunk of my favorites were in the first couple hours of tasting – maybe, just MAYBE, my senses became a little dulled, as the festival went on???? ;) What I can’t believe is that there are pretty much NO IPAs on my list!  Then again, that was another kind of cool thing about the festival – IPAs are notoriously not the first choice of beers to cask, so many of the most interesting choices were a lot different styles than I would normally go for.  I tried to get in a good sampling of a bunch of different styles from a bunch of different regions, and while I did have some good IPAs (Fat Tug by Driftwood stood out, as did Four Winds Brewing’s Protect Your Nect, and Cameron’s Brewing’s To Catch a Brettator [although that one had Brett in it as well, so not just a standard IPA], but in general, they weren’t the stars of the show.  I think the best IPA I had all weekend was actually from Thumb Coast in Port Huron (although I did buy a bottle of Witchshark at Bellwoods, so it can’t be said that Toronto isn’t IPA-friendly).

Overall I sampled  HUGE number of mostly delicious beers – I don’t think there was anything I found completely awful, and definitely nothing I didn’t finish.  The only (and most!) devastating thing about the festival was that outside of the California beers, it’s going to be awfully hard to get any of these back here in the states.  Guess I’m going to have to head back…

toronto cask days 2014!

Daddy-daughter day at the Cask Festival!

Having been home from the Motherland for two days now, I can say with confidence that I vastly prefer trolling for craft beer and shenanigans in my favorite city in the world to working in the automotive industry.

Last weekend was a blur (literally, given how much beer was consumed on Saturday) of friends, family, cask beer & the Great White North.  I was invited by my dearest Ottawa-based friends to come up for Toronto Cask Days – to which I took the opportunity to invite my pops, who is not only my best beer drinking buddy, but also a native Torontonian who hasn’t been to the city he grew up in for over a decade – and immediately RSVP’d a resounding YES.

We took off for the city Friday after work, but didn’t hit the Blue Water bridge without a quick stop at Michigan Brewery #93 on my list – formerly Quay Street, now known as Thumb Coast (much catchier, IMO).  I had optimistically mediocre expectations, but was actually really surprised by how GOOD their beer was!  We tried both the Hitch Hiker IPA (solid, malty) and the Wet Hopped on Quay (bitter but not grassy with a sweet kick at the end), and then because they were so good, had to sample the Expedition Coffee Stout as well (very roasty, lots of coffee, but drier than a lot of coffee stouts, which was a nice change).

Back on the road with raisin tea biscuits in hand, we made AWESOME time to Toronto, where we checked in to our hotel, tossed our stuff down and bee-lined for Bar Volo for some cask beer pre-gaming and charcuterie.  I ended up sampling Great Lakes & Amsterdamn’s collaboration, “Maverick & Gose” (chardonnay barrel-aged Gose), and Bellwoods’ “Skeleton Key” (13% ABV spiced stout – wow).  My favorite thing about Bar Volo is the atmosphere – I’m not even sure how to explain it, it’s dark and homey and has a really great sort of comfortable after-hours coffee shop feel to it.  My last time there was early 2013, so I was pleased to see it stood the stand of time well (although I missed the couch!).  Having finished our beers, we somewhat fuzzily headed back to the hotel (but not without stopping for some late night hole in the wall shawarma sandwiches)…

Maverick & Gose!

The BarVolo tap list - 90% perfect except where are all the hops??

Saturday morning we rolled out of bed early, packed in some hotel breakfast buffet, and then hit the hotel fitness center where I got in a quick workout (ran 1.5 miles, did a little bit of weight and core work, and then practiced some headstands), and then it was time to meet all our Ottawa Beer Blogger co. friends!  We shuttled out to Evergreen Brickworks (which was just an incredibly cool venue for an event like this – half outdoor & half indoor, bustling with music & people & beers, and this really awesome urban outdoorsy steel-wood-greenery kind of vibe) and handed over our tickets in exchange for some really cute Cask Days mason jars and 4 (HA) tokens to begin our adventure.

The cool thing about having such a big group was that we basically set up a meeting spot and then we’d all break, get a sample, come back and pass it along until everyone had tried everything – rinse & repeat.  Of course when you figure in how much beer that resulted in all of us drinking….

Love & lagers with my ones of my dearest Ottawa friends, Pav.

Inside the Evergreen Brickworks - don't ask me how I managed to get a picture with not one cask in it!

I plan to do a separate post on some of my favorites, some standouts, and some uh, “interesting” samples – this would get waaaaay too long otherwise.  I’m not sure how many beers we tried, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I thought it was probably up around 100.  So many, in fact, that my distinct memories of the evening AFTER the festival are trying to do pull-ups on the subway car, and passing out in my hotel bed and missing our evening English Pub reservations (oops…).

Surprisingly (or not – as except for a hourish reprieve to wake up, go get Thai food carryout and stuff our faces, we slept about 12 hours), I felt AWESOME the next morning & was all geared up to meet the group for breakfast, exchange beer presents (them from Ottawa and me from Michigan, obviously!), and part ways as they sadly had to leave to get back to Ottawa for the evening.

My dad and I took the opportunity of a bit extra time in Toronto to walk down to the Eaton Centre so I could have a mini shopping spree at Zara (I fell in love with the store when I was in the Czech Republic – and there still are none in the US except Chicago!) and wander through the Hockey Hall of Fame store.  From there, we decided to be really adventurous/optimistic and walk the 5ish kilometers to Glory Hole Donuts (cheesecake donut, I will dream about you), and then back to Bellwoods Brewery (I had a Farmageddon, which was good, but did not live up to my expectations – I was definitely spoiled by my first Bellwoods experience being Omerta & Witchshark).  At that point we waved the white flag and took the street car back to the hotel to begin our journey to Collingwood to see some family and, excitingly, discover a new brewery had opened only moments from my grandma’s condominium!

My Eaton Centre dream come true~

Roman Candle & Farmaggeddon at Bellwoods!

Canadians know how to do frites right - with herbs, vinegar, and mayo.

Wise words from downtown Toronto.

We’ve been going to Collingwood for about 15 years now, and it’s been crazy to see how it’s grown from a tiny one-Tim little ski/resort town into a still small but definitely growing little area.  They have a really spectacular farmer’s market now, one of the most delicious Thai restaurants I’ve ever been to, and now, North Winds Brewing.  Again, I was really surprised by how quality their beers were, especially since we were told they only opened in August!  We tried a flight, and in the spirit of the weekend thus far, decided to make some choices that deviated from the norm – along with the standard IPA & saison, we tried their lager (DELICIOUS) and their Oktoberfest (which had beets in it!) along with our burger & macaroni, and it was 5 stars all around.  We ended up stopping back the next day for some bottles, as well as to grab some jars of Pickl’d fare (mmmmmmmmmmm pickled beets & wax beans…).

Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, and Monday we spent the day in the car, heading back to the good old USA.  We made good time, ate more tea biscuits, and toasted our smashing weekend back at Thumb Coast with one more IPA and the fish and chips we missed out on having Saturday night.  I miss my dear Ottawa friends already, the city of Toronto, which I think will always be my favorite place on earth, and even sitting in a car watching wind turbines for miles and miles and miles with classic rock in the background talking beer shop with my papa.  Can’t wait for Cask Days 2015!