Firkin Fest – The Good, The Bad and the Ugly
The Happy Gnome is St. Paul is one of the Twin Cities’ better beer bars. Every spring for the past couple of years they have sponsored Firkin Fest, a celebration of cask ale. Taking place in a large heated tent in the parking lot, this year’s Firkin Fest featured over sixty-five firkins of cask conditioned beer from local, national and international breweries. A $15 cover (ten if you bought early) got you in the door where drink tickets good for a four-ounce pour were available at a dollar each. The event was extraordinarily well attended, perhaps unexpectedly so, with an estimated two-thousand people coming to sample and socialize under the big top. The local brewers were all on-sight, making it a great opportunity to discuss your favorite brews with their creators and to sample some one-of-a-kind variations on your favorite brewery’s regular line-up. Despite some unfortunate logistical issues and some horrific treatment of casks near the end, the event was overall a success.
The Good
My favorite beer at the event, and the one that took the Golden Firkin award, was Chestnut Hill “a la Nutsack” from Lift Bridge Brewery in Stillwater, Minnesota. Chestnut Hill, the nutty, seasonal, brown ale from this two-year-old brewery, is already a great beer, but when served on cask and infused with a pound and a half of crushed hazelnuts it takes brown ale to a whole other level. Two different casks of Harviestoun Ola Dubh, a Scottish Wee Heavy aged in Highland Park whiskey barrels, were among the day’s standouts. The 18-Year was rich and woody with strong chocolate notes and light background hints of whiskey. The 40-Year, a rare treat indeed, was lusciously full-bodied, sweet, and lightly roasty with pronounced but balanced scotch flavors. Crispin Cider brought some very nice limited edition products. My favorite, called Clyde, was made from a blend of heirloom cider apples and aged in chardonnay barrels. It had brilliant fresh apple aromas and flavors with loads of background fruitiness and a nice vinous quality that is a hallmark of Crispin Ciders. I would have preferred it a bit dryer, but it was still a cider that I would gladly drink by the pint.
The Bad
In England, the spiritual and physical home of real-ale, creating and maintaining cask beer is an art form. Here in the US that art has not reached the same level of sophistication. Thus, some great beers may not be well represented in the cask treatments they receive. There were several examples of this at Firkin Fest. One of my favorite beers is Cane and Ebel from Two Brothers Brewing Company in Illinois. From the bottle or on draft it has a crisp, bright citrus/pine hop character with a solid and slightly sweet malty backbone with subtle rye spice. On cask it was transformed into an amorphous, indistinct and rather uninteresting beer. Truly unfortunate. The same was true of Flashback India Brown Ale from Boulder Beer. Perhaps the most disappointing beer of the day though had nothing to do with the cask. Shadow of the Foerder from New Belgium Brewing was a blend of 1/3 La Folie and 2/3 1554. A blend of my two favorite New Belgium beers, how could it be bad? Sadly, the result was a fairly thin tasting beer that wasn’t quite sour, wasn’t quite roasty, and wasn’t quite working.
The Ugly
The worst parts of Firkin Fest had less to do with beer and more to do with logistics. The event was far better attended this year than in past years, something that is being seen in beer events all over the country. I’m told that the Happy Gnome pre-sold fifteen-hundred tickets and was expecting as many as two-thousand to attend. By mid-afternoon the tent was so packed that moving from one table to the next presented a real challenge. The noise level was such that it was nearly impossible to carry on a conversation or discuss beers with other attendees. I don’t particularly like crowds, so this made the whole experience somewhat less than pleasant. The event was promoted as going until 9:00 PM, however by 6:30 PM all the beer was gone. I give kudos to the Happy Gnome for offering refunds on unusable drink tickets. Other festivals limit the number of tickets sold. I think this option should be considered for future Firkin Fests. And five porta-potties for two-thousand people at a beer festival? Really? The wait to relieve oneself became quite long and given the amounts of alcohol consumed sometimes verged on surly.
The Horrific
As stated earlier, this country has not yet developed a real sophistication in dealing with cask ale. The thing that makes real-ale special is the yeast in the keg that creates natural carbonation and continues gently developing the flavor, aroma, and mouthfeel of the beer. Casks have to be put into place early and allowed to rest before serving in order to avoid pouring goopy, yeasty beer. Toward the end of this celebration of cask beer, as the beer was running out, inexperienced pourers were attempting to wring every last drop from the casks…by tipping them on end, thus pouring goopy, yeasty beers. And to make matters worse, uneducated and by this time wildly drunken patrons were anxiously lining up for this murky swill.
Overall Firkin Fest was a good time and a great opportunity to taste some fine cask beers. The Happy Gnome has already indicated that plans are underway for next year. I think with some better planning to manage the large crowds and better education of some of the non-brewery pourers it could become a great event.
[...] on the Hoppress at Ratebeer.com. I thought I would kill two birds with one stone by posting my Firkin Fest Recap over there instead of here. Go check it [...]
[...] The good, the bad, and the ugly of Firkin Fest (including “murky swill”!), Grain Belt is introducing a Nordeast-themed brew [via @TheHoltSteady], a tasty looking Crispin “Cider and Sliders” dinner April 8 at Firelake (menu as PDF), a new chef at Kings, a writeup of the relatively new Cocina Latina (ours is here), DIY fish fry, and a mixed write-up for Il Gatto by Teddy. Also: The editor apologizes for the gout of stuff that will pour forth from the Churn today. Sometimes there’s just a lot going on. var addthis_pub = "heavytable"; var addthis_options = 'favorites, digg, delicious, stumbleupon, twitter, facebook, reddit, more'; var addthis_brand = "The Heavy Table"; [...]
Ouch… sounds like the planners dropped the ball big time. I’ve been to events here in NYC (where cask ale has become a pretty big deal actually) where the casks are usually set up a day or two before the event. If you don’t do this you’re asking for trouble. As for the crowds… I don’t see how after pre-selling 1500 tickets they couldn’t have foreseen how crowded it would get. I really enjoy cask fests, but these beers are usually better enjoyed in the pub… people here just don’t have the experience with cask ale that folks in the UK do (with some notable exceptions). Hopefully they’ll use it as a learning experience to make next years a whole lot better.
Agreed! Both with the best beer of the fest (nutsack) as well as the logistical problems. I would like to see this festival continue and hope the organizers learn some lessons from this year, most likely either limiting the number of tickets (as most fests do) or finding a larger venue that can accomodate this size crowd more appropriately.
True, beer was definitely treated poorly towards the end of the event. We lifted the cast slightly but were able to avoid any yeast from coming through the tap. In hindsight we should not have done it. I would not want to have tasted some of the beer that others were pouring less carefully. Yikes!
Sounds like there are some lessons to be learned, and in Chicago we know the feeling. Chicago Beer Society became much more careful with gate limits starting w/ the 2009 Night/Day of the living ales. Two years in a row now (ours is in early March) with a lot more elbow room. Servers always need to be up to speed. Personally, I lament the recent disconnect from traditional British beer style at US cask events, but that may be the geezer in me.
I really appreciated this article, Michael. When Brian (Cendrowski) and I attended Sweetwater’s Brew Your Cask Off for the first time last week, it was a lot of fun, but logistics were rough. It was extremely crowded around the casks and there wasn’t enough space to facilitate a complete figure 8 movement around the cask area. (Not sure if that’s even best…)
And, when planning a festival, you can never, ever have too many port-a-potties.
The cask scene in the Twin Cities is fairly weak overall when it comes to handling. All too often casks are hauled up from the beer cooler, tapped and served without any particular care for the cellarmanship aspect.
The FF was no different. Unlike the former RAF in Chicago which was fantastic in this regard, casks at the FF were handled by their individual pourers and were allowed to be tilted, moved, swirled, etc….
For the table we were pouring from, Damien from Summit quickly noticed, cringed and then suggested the proper chocking for the casks which hadn’t yet been disturbed.
That said, the event was still quite good and it was nice to see such interest in cask beer. Hopefully the corrections can be made and the event can become as solid as the RAF once was.
I will be suggesting the preferred handling the the Gnome organizers before next year’s event. E.g. http://www.cask-ale.co.uk/glastonwick115.jpg
For those interested in more info, check out Alex Hall’s page on cask ale handling here:
http://www.cask-ale.co.uk/realale3.html
or read the book CELLARMANSHIP by Patrick O’Neill http://shop.camra.org.uk/DisplayDetail.aspx?prodid=70
Truth from TruthBrew.