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Last week I returned from the National Winter Ales Festival in Manchester, England (I’ll comment on that trip in coming posts) and found to my pleasure that it was time for another Cask Night at Sebago Brewing Company.

Kai Adams has developed a pretty reliable and effective formula for this series, and it seems to be working. The house has been packed every time I attended. Sebago simply chocks up five Pins (about 5 gallons) behind the bar and serves with a gravity tap in each. They put one of their own beers on the hand pump. With about 30 gallons of beer in play the beer generally sells out in the one night, so spoilage is not a problem.

The concept is to run a Cask Night every month, on the night of the full moon. That’s easy enough to remember!

January’s event featured New Hampshire brewers. The lineup included an IPA from Smuttynose (6.9%) and another from Portsmouth Brewing (6.5%), a stout from Red Hook 5.6%), a German Rauchfest from Moat Mountain (6.2%), and from Sebago the Full Throttle Double IPA (8.2%)and the Runabout Red Ale (5.0%).

All the beers were in great shape and showed well, with just a bit of cloudiness here and there. My favorite was the Bottle Rocket IPA from Portsmouth, a real treat in the cask version.

Watch for Cask at Sebago!

It’s been a while, but let’s get right into what’s happening in beer around here.

Yesterday, Saturday night, October 17 was the time to be in Belfast, Maine. On offer was the second annual Marshall Wharf Beer and Pemaquid Mussel Festival. They served Mussels prepared four different ways, Morse’s of Maine’s sausage and sauerkraut, and 22 Marshall Wharf beers on tap. It might get different, but it can’t get better.

Of special interest were the three bourbon barrel aged beers…  MacFindlay Scotch, Old #55, and Cant Dog IPA. In my opinion these beers saw too much whisky barrel, and the beer characteristics faded from the picture. This was a first try, and I have no doubt the next will be well worth considering.

The regular range of Marshall Wharf beers was superb as always. It’s very special, but also very dangerous, to be able to enjoy all of them in the same night. It was fun to taste 40 Cream Ale again, but the old favorites were spectacular as always.

In April, Boston experienced a delightful one-night echo of NERAX 2009.

The Master Brewers Association of the Americas (MBAA) held their national Craft Brewers Conference in Boston during the last week in April. On Thursday evening, April 23, Harpoon Brewery hosted a cask ale night open only to conference attendees and guests. This was organized by the District New England chapter of MBAA and was staffed by folks from NERAX.

The Craft Brewers Conference is a meeting of brewers from across America. The objectives of Cask Night were to promote cask ale, and to give New England brewers a chance to strut their stuff. Using the NERAX festival equipment, the District New England offered 62 cask ales from brewers in every state of New England.

The beers were superb, in great shape, and the event was an enormous success. Many attending brewers had never seen so many cask ales in one place, and there was a lot of photographing of the bar and stillage. We ended up serving about 1200 brewers and guests from across the country. It was a triumph for New England brewers!

The NERAX guys were pleased with how easily this event went together, and then how easily it broke down. The event was in the (big) tent Harpoon uses for events, in their parking lot.  Set-up of the beers took about four hours. We’re getting better at set-up, but our equipment is also getting better after years of investment and volunteer work to construct lines and related gear. The cooling system now goes together quickly and requires a lot less de-bugging. Breakdown the morning after took about two hours, a new record. Put that down to having a lot of volunteer labor on hand.

Tending bar at this event was easy.  Everything was free, so there was no money to handle.  At that price no-one was too fussed about exact measures,  so pouring was easy.  We moved a lot of beer very fast!

Maine was very well represented by Sebago Brewing, Gritty’s Portland and Freeport, Allagash, Shipyard and Kennebunk Brewing.  Maine beers remain something we can be proud of in any gathering or context.

My favorite of the night was an IPA from Cambridge House Brewpub in Torrington, Ct.  Who are these guys, anyway?