The Session #36: Cask Ale

This post is a day late.  It's the first time that life has gotten in the way of my posting.  Cask Ales don't fall out of trees, especially in January.  Admittedly, there is a bar across town that serves cask ales on Fridays, but it's across town.

Fortunately, today is Alefest Columbus.  I just spent the day getting crunked on many great craft beers.  Bell's brought two cask beers to the festival, so we'll talk about those.

The first one that I tried was their Cherry Stout.  At first, I didn't like it, it was too smokey.  As I finished my drink, it grew on me.  The sour cherry flavor mellowed out the smokiness and it was a nice drink.

They also had their Best Brown Ale, which was a favorite of my drinking crew (more to come when I actually put up my ale fest post)  It's slightly sweet, mild, and very drinkable.  A very good beer.

So what's up with cask ales?  They are alive!  Oooooh.  The yeast is fermenting the sugar in the cask/keg making more alcohol and CO2.  All of the cask ales that I have sampled are relatively flat.  Which I find odd, because it's never an issue that I have had with the bottle conditioned brews that I make at home.  Maybe our host can explain it in his round up.