English Ale appreciation

Great foresight there, mate.

 

Well, at least I got to drink this beauty:

 

I really hope it happens this spring...

That being said, as much as I ADORE Germany styles, I may love English ales (especially on cask) even more.

While I don't think there will be a resurgence, I do think you'll see "more" of them. Only because there's so many breweries now, and I see all kinds of styles at tap rooms these days. Even English ales.

 

Greed got the best of me. I wanted to be an expert in both English and US beer styles, so I decided to be born in NEW England.

All I got was IPAs...and they're not even English IPAs.

 

I'm really hoping haze fatigue sets in at some point (taking long enough) and we start to see more local breweries brew English styles. I have definitely seen more ESBs over the last year or so, so that's a good sign.

 

I had a conversation with the owner/manager of a local beer store a couple of years ago where I asked/advocated that the Juicy/Hazy trend was leveling off. He just smiled and shook his head and replied that his customers just asked for and wanted more of these sorts of beer. His store today is mostly comprised of Juicy/Hazy beers.

Like you I really wish that "fatigue sets in" but I have been wishing for this the past couple of years. Yes, someday this will happen but it has had more 'staying power' than I would ever have guessed.

I suppose I am 'off' here since for me beer should have some flavor aspects beyond a Juicy Juice box but it sure seems that the newer/younger craft beer drinkers think differently than me.

Cheers to Bitter Ales!

 

Could potentially get more steam with the luxury & novelty of the mini/micro casks to go, which seemed to have been one of the few COVID benefits in the UK (keg) with some traction in the US (box). Of course, and as Dave Liechty put it: “cask beer to go is usually garbage.” So, theoretically and unfortunately not

Fyne, as an example, utilizes mini-casks/kegs across styles with a bag cooler

 

Blue Point (Patchogue, NY) recently had its Cask Beer Festival. At my age, I'm not up for $50 worth of beer while navigating a large crowd. Maybe somebody who attended could make some comments on the beers in this thread? Any traditional British Styles there? We attended one several years ago when the fest took place on a chilly day in February, in a tent on the back lot of the River Avenue brewery. Kegs were set up on tables and served by gravity feed. They had homebrew, lagers, as well as ales, but most were too cold (ambient 40F) to appreciate. We did get glassware at the event but the year of the fest isn't inscribed.

 

I went in 2016. There were a sprinkling of beers with an English pub theme, but a clear majority of beers were what you'd get at a non-cask themed event (as far as beer style goes). Honestly, there wasn't even much about the beer (regarding the feel etc) that made me feel like I was at a cask fest regardless of style. If the beers were a different experience from keg, you couldn't really tell in the context of a large variety of small pours at a beer festival... except when it was evident that a brewer was too inexperienced with cask to get the carbonation at a servable level. I also went to a different cask fest at a brewery on the west coast once. That one was far smaller than Blue Point's and drew more of a niche crowd. The cask element of that fest was a bit more palpable, but not tremendously so.

 

The only thing worse than no cask, is cask done poorly.

 

Well, that is indeed the case in my area (Philly area). There are waaay more German style beers brewed by local craft breweries (e.g., German Pilsners, Helles, etc.) than English style beers.

Ironically (is that the right word?) one of the earliest craft breweries in Philadelphia is Yards Brewing (opened in a small shed in the Manayunk neighborhood in 1994) and their flagship beer was ESA which was available on cask at local beer bars. For a decade+ I enjoyed drinking that beer on cask but over the past 10ish years they have seriously cut-back the brewing of ESA since that beer just simply did not sell well. It is still available on a small scale on 'regular' draft (no longer bottled) but it is nothing like it was in the recent (decade+ ago) past.

To my personal dismay English style beers like ESA just are not readily available since the majority of craft beer drinkers just do not give a damn about these sorts of beers. It is all about more Juicy/Hazy IPAs, Fruited Sours, Pastry Stouts, etc.

I hope that someday Yards will decide to provide ESA on cask again with broad distribution. But given what gets the current craft beer consumer 'excited' I have little hope in this regard.

Cheers!

 

It was fun and enlightening to have the same cask beer of different ages in pubs across the street from each other. Really highlighted just how the beer ages -- some for the better, some for the worst, some just intriguing.

 

I always get both excited and nervous when I see cask available in the US.

It could be outstanding or terrible.

If I see a beer on cask at a bar and it’s been on their list for a week or more, I stay the hell away.

 

I would recommend you go now because even in England cask ale is not as popular as it was in the recent past.

A few videos I recommend you watch:







Cheers!

 

Perhaps at a bar but at a brewery, say like Coopersmiths in Fort Collins, having a cask Punjabi Pale Ale is a pretty safe bet.