Magazines » May/June 2009 Issue » Cask-Conditioned NYC
It’s a particularly cold Friday night, even for New York in mid-February; the type of winter night that drives most people to cancel plans and go into a self-imposed hibernation. I brave the elements and set out for the Brazen Head, a neighborhood joint that straddles the Brooklyn Heights and Carroll Gardens areas in Brooklyn. It’s the start of the 17th “Cask Head” Cask Festival, and the cold certainly doesn’t deter anyone from attending this thrice-a-year cask ale extravaganza. Alex Hall, festival organizer and general cask enthusiast, will later tell me that over the three-day event, 25 cask ales were tapped and close to 1,700 pints consumed. I work through the crowd and settle in with a Brooklyn Blunderbuss Old Ale, a strong winter warmer, and smile because cask ale is finally getting the appreciation it deserves.
What is cask ale and why are New Yorkers lining up to drink it? Cask ale is unfiltered and unpasteurized beer that is allowed to naturally carbonate in the cask that it will be served out of, traditionally called a firkin. Pumped by hand or pulled by gravity out of the firkin, the resulting beer has a creamy head and a mild carbonation -- the way pretty much all beer was served 150 years ago. Called “real ale” in England, cask beer has enjoyed a revival there over the past few decades and is becoming more common in the States. Beer aficionados prize the nuanced flavors that aren’t obscured by acidic, harsh carbonation, and cold temperatures characteristic of most draft beers.
“Cold temperature robs beer of its flavor,” claims Shane Welch, brewmaster at Sixpoint Craft Ales in Brooklyn, NY.
The Brazen Head festival is certainly a wonderful place to try cask ale, but it’s not the only place in New York. As New Yorkers have embraced the ethos of local and sustainable food, favoring artisans’ wares over those of mass-producing giants, cask ale has found a home at many of the city’s watering holes. Robert Hodson of Union Beer Distributors estimates that their cask accounts have grown from about 20 a few years ago to more than 50 now in the New York area.
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Following Welch’s tip that cask conditioning really favors rye malt, I try his Sixpoint Righteous Rye Ale on cask at my neighborhood bar, 4th Ave. Pub. I’ve had this beer many times, but on cask, it’s totally different, with the peppery rye and earthy hop flavors becoming more pronounced.
At Rattle ‘N’ Hum, a new bar in midtown Manhattan, there’s a separate cask bar in the back that has four cask lines ready to go. When I visited, Rattle had the Harviestoun Ola Dubh aged in 12-, 18-, 30- and 40-year Highland Park scotch barrels. From the treacle sweet 40 to the more assertive 12, there were certainly subtle differences in the beers, but I’m not sure they’d be noticeable coming from a normal draft line.
Back in Brooklyn, at Park Slope’s Beer Table, I sample a Stoudt’s Scarlet Lady ESB on cask. Owner Justin Philips puts a twist on it, though, and serves it through a sparkler, a spout attachment that agitates the beer and is most commonly known in the Northern U.K. The resulting pour produces a thick, creamy head that plays up the aromatics of the hops, but leaves the body with little carbonation.
Preserving tradition and providing beer lovers what they want is important in the beer community, and no one understands this more than Alex Hall. When Alex moved here about a decade ago from England, he was disappointed with the cask ale selection in NYC. Since then, he has been on a mission to promote the virtues of cask ale in person and through his Gotham Imbiber Web site and newsletter. When Hodson opens a new cask account, it is Hall who is dispatched to the bar to train the staff on serving cask ale and help source most of the specialty equipment.
Making cask ale this widespread and available took a lot of effort from Hodson and Hall. One of the limiting factors to producing cask ale is finding the actual vessels to hold cask-conditioned beer, pins and firkins. They’re expensive, and usually need to be shipped over from England. Knowing that the brewers couldn’t afford to front the money for cooperage, Big Apple beer distributor Union Beer invested in casks and lent them to brewers who wanted to produce cask beer.
For a brewer, it’s not always a profitable endeavor. Production has to be slowed down or stopped to manually fill the firkins, and that’s not to mention all of the time spent cleaning them out by hand. Creating cask ale is really a labor of love. When I asked Welch at Sixpoint why he makes cask beer, his response was simple: “If we don’t, who will?”
Hall leads me through some delicious cask ales at the conclusion of his Brazen Head festival on Sunday afternoon. Less crowded than Friday night, my friends and I are able to grab seats and drink the afternoon away. One particular standout was the Chelsea Black Hole XXX Stout from Manhattan’s Chelsea Brewery. Chelsea has long provided cask ales for the New York marketplace, but now the brewery also plays host to Alex’s larger NYC cask festival. The next one will offer 47 cask-conditioned beers in a three-day period. I can’t wait.
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This article originally appeared in the May/June 2009 Issue of DRAFT Magazine
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