Brewed awakening

JUST LIKE GIANT PANDAS AND SIBERIAN TIGERS, some species of beer are in danger of going extinct. But instead of habitat destruction or sport, these beer styles’ endangered status is due to drinkers’ fickle tastes. Brewing history is peppered with thousands of different beer recipes that, much like clothes or music, are constantly sliding in and out of fashion. In the nineteenth century, gold-rushing California miners drank lightly fruity, copper-colored steam beer. By the 1960s, that beer was nearly snuffed out—until Fritz Maytag took over a San Francisco brewery and began crafting what came be known as Anchor Steam. It takes only a single intrepid brewer to bring a style back to delicious life.

From full-bodied, corn-driven lagers popular in pre-Prohibition America to sour German beers spiced with coriander and salt and 9,000-year-old Chinese elixirs concocted with chrysanthemum flowers and hawthorn fruit, what’s old is new again. Don’t call it a comeback. These beers have been here for years.

Pre-Prohibition Lagers

If you were an American at the turn of the twentieth century, you likely drank a very different kind of lager. Unlike modern-day American lagers, which are synonymous with watery, innocuous brews such as Coors and Budweiser, pre-Prohibition beers were bracing and nuanced. They were crafted by European immigrants who arrived bearing yeast cultures and brewing know-how.

They began devising lagers such as a strong, all-malt bock, which was favored in the spring, sometimes marketed as a medicinal tonic, and popular in New York City. As an alternative to fruity ales, which once dominated the country, lagers were spiced with juniper berries and orange peel. Lightly sweet, gently hopped, amber-tinted Vienna lagers, which rose to fame in that city in the mid-1800s, also flourished in Texas and Mexico. (Negra Modelo is an enduring example of Vienna lager.) On the West Coast, mild, less hoppy Western lagers made with rice were popular, most notably from Portland, Oregon’s Henry Weinhard’s.

In the Midwest and on the East Coast, the dominant version was a pale lager. Its secret? Corn. While corn is today derided as a cheap adjunct, the indigenous ingredient was important to brewers. Since they found American barley harsh, a measure of corn added a calming sweetness that, when blended with imported German hops, created the quintessential robust, flavorful American lager.

Lager’s decline was hastened by Prohibition, the Depression, the Dust Bowl, and, finally, World War II: ingredients were scarce. Breweries closed or consolidated, creating national brands. Increasingly, greater portions of rice were used, resulting in crisper, lighter beers sold from coast to coast.

Timeless Flavor

These unique German American lagers languished until a few intrepid breweries decided to restore the luster of the maligned style. For instance, Brooklyn Brewery staked its fate on an old-world lager. “When we came out with Brooklyn Lager, few people had even heard the word lager” says current brewmaster Garrett Oliver of the lightly hoppy, amber-colored Vienna lager, which was based on an old family recipe of Brooklyn brewer William Moeller. “It took a lot of convincing to get anyone to sell a beer that had an amber color,” says Oliver.

To break Big Beer’s distribution stranglehold, Brooklyn’s founders bought a van and beverage truck and trekked cases of their lager—with labels stamped PRE-PROHIBITION—to retail stores and saloons. Bottle by bottle, the lager won over taste buds and became the company’s flagship beer.

In Hood River, Oregon, Full Sail Brewing Co.’s Jamie Emmerson fell in love with old-school lagers thanks to a peculiar bottle. “It’s a grenade. I wondered, what could I fill a grenade with?” the executive brewmaster recalls.

The grenade in question is the classic stubby beer bottle. In the post-atomic era, stubbies from now-bygone Pacific Northwest breweries such as Lucky, Pearl, and Rainier were synonymous with lager beer. But America’s stubby era ended with Rainier Brewing Company’s 1999 closing.

When the brewery was shuttering, Emmerson noticed that “people were buying pallets upon pallets of the stubbies. Drinkers loved the bottle—and the beer that was in it.”

Full Sail brewmaster Jamie Emmerson is unafraid to show his affections for beer.

The problem was, Full Sail brewed few lagers. Its name was staked on premium, favorful ales. For three or four years, Emmerson and his colleagues kicked around concepts for a stubby beer. A strapping porter? Brazen barley wine? Highly hopped ale?

“Let’s look at something that’s been done before,” Emmerson remembers thinking, “but something that no one’s doing.” Like pre-Prohibition lagers. Emmerson spent nearly a year tweaking formulas. The just-right recipe resulted in a light, rich lager called Session and, later, Session Black, its roasty flavored sibling. “I took a sip and said, ‘This is going to do just fine,’” Emmerson recalls of Session, which launched in 2006.

An Old-Fashioned Phenomenon

The trend toward pre-Prohibition lager is catching on countrywide. Nebraska’s Lucky Bucket Brewing Co. cooks up the biscuity Pre-Prohibition Lager, while Craftsman Brewing Company in Pasadena, California, cranks out the corn-influenced 1903 Lager. Each spring, Pennsylvania’s Victory Brewing Company makes the limited-release, draft-only Throwback Lager using corn and yeast from Philadelphia’s bygone Christian Schmidt Brewing Co. Even brewing colossus MillerCoors has entered the throwback game, releasing the hoppier, more full-bodied Batch 19 Pre-Prohibition Style Lager.

Despite evoking a nostalgic age of beer consumption, Emmerson admits that it’s tough “to get today’s drinkers over the hump of expectations that American lagers are bland. We’re going to fight that for a while,” he says. He has some unlikely allies in the battle: “My dad and his buddies are all old-school, light-beer drinkers, and they love Session. You don’t get much more macro-drinking approval than that.”

Four to Try

Session

Full Sail Brewing Co. ABV: 5.1%

In this age of American lagers made from corn, rice, and everything not nice, it’s refreshing to see Full Sail fashion its throwback lager with 100 percent malt. Sold in eleven-ounce “stubbies,” Session won’t stun you with a full-throttle hop assault. Instead, this classic American lager drinks crisp and creamy, a perfect thirst quencher. Also superb is the lightly roasty, subtly chocolaty Session Black (5.4 percent), which is as drinkable as it is dark.

Pre-Prohibition Style Lager

Lucky Bucket Brewing Company ABV: 4.5%

Lucky Bucket’s roster of beers should be cause for some serious Nebraskan state pride. There’s the Original American India Pale Ale, which is an aromatic love letter to Centennial, Cascade, and Amarillo hops. Certified Evil is a blended, partly Cabernet barrel-aged dark Belgian strong ale. And then there’s the Pre-Prohibition Lager, which pours the color of gold doubloons. The light maltiness works well with the slightly bitter and floral hops.

Point Special Lager

Stevens Point Brewery ABV: 4.66%

Since 1857, the lager has served as the Wisconsin brewery’s flagship. A measure of brewers grits (that’s corn to you) gives Special some sweetness that’s agreeable with the grassy flavor. Smooth, light, and crisp, it’s an ideal lawnmower beer.

Yuengling Traditional Lager

D.G. Yuengling & Son ABV: 4.4%

As you’d expect from America’s oldest brewery (circa 1829), Yuengling turns out a fine pre-Prohibition lager. Counting ingredients such as corn and Cascade hops, the medium-bodied amber brew has a biscuity, caramel flavor and an easygoing drinkability.

California Common

Thank California’s gold rush for inspiring one of America’s singular styles of beer. To capitalize on miners’ prodigious thirst, brewers in the mid-1800s decamped to California, armed with lager yeast. Upon arriving, they discovered there was neither a ready supply of ice nor mechanical refrigeration. Without ice, it was impossible to chill bottom-fermenting lagers, which require cool-temperature fermentation.

Improvising, brewers used a special lager yeast that functions at a warmer temperature. And to chill the hot wort (the unfermented broth created by boiling grains with water), the scalding liquid was pumped up to large, shallow rooftop bins cooled by Pacific Ocean breezes. The result was an effervescent, malty, prominently hopped amber beer that miners gulped down by the gallon. Because of the highly carbonated beer’s tendency to spray when a keg was tapped, or maybe due to the steam rising from the cooling wort, it came to be known as steam beer. That name has been trademarked by San Francisco’s Anchor Brewing Company (one of the original brewers of steam beer), forcing other brewers to market their offerings of the beer as California Common.

“We used to call our beer Steam Engine Steam, but Fritz Maytag [of Anchor Brewery] made it his mission to make sure we didn’t call it that,” laughs Ken Martin, brewmaster at Durango, Colorado’s Steamworks Brewing Co., whose California Common is called Steam Engine Lager. Since it won gold in 1997 at the Great American Beer Festival, the balanced, hop-spiced Steam Engine Lager has become their flagship beer, accounting for around half of brewery production.

Predictably Delicious

“It’s such a great summer beer because you can sit down with three or four of these without breaking a sweat,” says Martin, who also loves the style’s brewing predictability. “You can set your watch to it,” Martin says. “It ferments right on time. It filters great. I don’t know if it found us or if we found it, but we’re lucky to have it in our lineup.”

Other breweries, too, have dusted off the California Common: In St. Paul, Minnesota, Flat Earth Brewing Co. has made waves with its generously hopped Element 115 Lager, while Maryland’s Flying Dog Brewery churns out the full-bodied Old Scratch Amber Lager. Up in Wisconsin, Furthermore Beer kicks up its caramel-hinted Oscura with plenty of Fair Trade coffee beans.

“The brewing techniques may have originated in Europe, but we added our own American twist. This is a unique style, one of the few that are indigenous to America,” Martin says. “I love that miners were making a go of it in the hardest conditions, yet they still wanted the luxury of beer.”

Four to Try

Steam Engine Lager

Steamworks Brewing Company ABV: 5.65%

In Steam Engine, the Durango, Colorado, brewery has created one of America’s most balanced and lauded lagers. It pours the color of a copper mine, with an aroma of candied malt and subtle citrus. The strong caramel body is faintly reminiscent of Werther’s Original candy, though woody hops and a pincushion-prickly finish assuage the sweetness.

Element 115 Lager

Flat Earth Brewing Co. ABV: 5.5%

I’ve heard the complaint countless times: “I hate lagers because they don’t taste like anything.” “Well, have you had Element 115?” I’ll ask, steering them toward my favorite Flat Earth release. With Element, the St. Paul, Minnesota, brewery has devised a devilishly hopped California Common oozing grapefruit. But malt lassos the astringency, resulting in a lip-smacker with a sweet-bitter conclusion.

Bootlegger

Bad Attitude Craft Beer ABV: 6.94%

Produced in the Italian-speaking canton of Ticino in Switzerland, not far from its border with Italy, Bad Attitude beers take their inspiration from U.S. craft brewing. Hobo is an aromatic IPA made with Amarillo, Cascade, and Nelson Sauvin hops, while Bootlegger is a dry, lightly filtered California Common with a fragrant hop perfume. Even more American: it’s sold in cans.

Old Scratch Amber Lager

Flying Dog Brewery ABV: 5.5%

The Maryland brewery does right with its Common. The lightly citric, sweet-grain scent sets the stage for a rich, bready brew cut through with caramel and a short, dry finish.

Berliner Weisse

While ransacking Europe, Napoleon’s soldiers discovered Berliner weisse, a tart German beer so effervescent that the combatants dubbed it the “Champagne of the north.” Like sipping unsweetened lemonade, Berliner weisse—born in Berlin, naturally—is as immensely sour as it is refreshing. The bottle-conditioned, pale-golden wheat beer is concocted with warm fermenting yeasts and Lactobacillus bacteria, which imparts the refreshingly acidic flavor that makes it a great mate with raw oysters and light summer salads and citrus fruit.

Because tartness does not hold universal appeal, the Berliner weisse is often served mit Schuss: with a shot of flavored, colored syrup such as herbaceous woodruff (Waldmeistersirup), sweet raspberry Himbeersirup, or lemony Zitronensirup. Germans traditionally take their Berliner served in a large, bowl-shaped glass with a straw, sucking it up like soda pop.

“It’s great on a hot day,” enthuses Patrick Rue, the owner of Placentia, California’s the Bruery “The Berliner weisse is such a low-alcohol beer”—around 3 percent on average—“that it can appeal to the most hard-core beer geek and to those who don’t like beer.” Rue brews Hottenroth Berliner Weisse (named after his grandparents), a mouth puckerer packed with both Lactobacillus and Brettanomyces yeast. “We have to really scrub down the equipment afterward,” Rue says. “The Berliner is just as funky as a lambic.”

That could be a clue to Berliner weisse’s history. Beer writer Roger Protz has hypothesized that the style began when Huguenots, Protestants from France and Belgium’s Flanders region, fled reli|pip;„p rhannp persecution and migrated to Germany; Berliner weisse might/rTaj'iynr)»» +n "070" developed from their favored sour red and brown ales. Alternately, Berliner weisse may be the evolution of the darker-hued, barley-and-wheat ale Halberstädter Broihan, which was originally brewjed in the city of Halberstadt, about 130 miles southwest of Berlin.

While the beer’s beginnings may be cloudy, its populity was not: in the nineteenth century, there were an estimated 270 brewers producing Berliner weisse. However, a growing taste for lagers meant that, by the tail end of the twentieth century, only a handful of breweries producing Berliner weisse remained.

German Inspiration, American Made

While this sour style is not ready to be taken off life support, its pulse is stronger today than it has been in years. Berliner weisse is steadily produced at German breweries such as Weihenstephan and Berliner Kindl, and American outfits are increasingly turning to this Teutonic treat. The version offered at Philadelphia’s Nodding Head Brewery & Restaurant is crisp and tangy, while Bell’s Brewery in Kalamazoo, Michigan, brews its Oarsman Ale in the style of the Berliner weisse—wheaty, refreshing, and low in alcohol. New Hampshire’s White Birch Brewing has an invigorating Berliner weisse that drinks far lighter than its style-stretching 6.4 percent ABV. And Dogfish Head has made its tart and peachy Festina Pêche a seasonal mainstay.

“Berliner weisse has a wide range of appeal,” says Rue, “as long as people get used to the idea of it being sour.”

Four to Try

Hottenroth Berliner Weisse

The Bruery ABV: 3.1%

Though the hazy yellow Hottenroth—named after brewmaster Patrick Rue’s grandparents—lacks boozy bombast, it boasts boatloads of offbeat flavor. It’s chockablock with sourness (hello, Lactobacillus bacteria) plus a citric tartness that simultaneously shocks and pleases the taste buds. It’s like the happy offspring of lemonade and champagne.

1809

Dr. Fritz Briem ABV: 5%

Somewhat stronger than other Berliner weisses, this beer, brewed by Weihenstephan and Doemens Institute, is nonetheless first-rate: Its pleasingly sour, wheaty smell melds with a bright and elegant Champagne-like tang that’s buoyed by traces of raspberries, pears, and lemons.

Berliner Kindl Weisse

Berliner Kindl Brauerei ABV: 2.5%

Despite the scant alcohol content, this German-brewed Berliner weisse still has a sharp apple essence mixed with earthy mustiness. It tastes of gently spiced wheat and is as lip-smacking and tart as fall’s finest cider.

Berliner-Style Weisse

Bayerischer Bahnhof Brau & Gaststättenbetrieb ABV: 3%

Located in Leipzig, Germany, this brewery’s Berliner weisse offers the fragrance of fresh-cut melon, new leather, and white wine. Taste-wise, the lightly acidic lemon character is grounded by pronounced wheat. It’s an easygoing example of the style.

Gose

Putting salt in beer may seem sacrilegious, but for centuries the seasoning has been key to this strange, singular German beverage. Like the Berliner weisse, gose is one of northern Germany’s traditional top-fermenting wheat beers. While both are sour, gose diverges by incorporating salt and coriander, a spice typically found in the Belgian witbier. Though some historians speculate that gose is related to Belgium’s gueuze—a blend of aged lambics—gose originated in Goslar, a mining town in northwestern Germany and takes its name from the river Gose, which courses through the city.

Sharp, twangy gose proved popular and by the 1700s had caught on in Leipzig, located about 100 miles east, where it became a local favorite. Leipzig brewers also began manufacturing gose, and as recently as 1900 there were reportedly more than 80 licensed gosenschenke—that is, gose tavern—where one could get a glass of the salty stuff, which was sometimes served with a cumin-flavored liqueur. “You see that with many of the old north-Germany beer styles,” explains beer historian Ron Pattinson, the author of Porter! and Brown Beer. “They drank them with spirits because the beers weren’t very alcoholic.”

Despite currying local favor, “gose was never the majority of beer drank in Leipzig,” Pattinson continues. “The amount of gose produced was quite limited,” likely because few people had mastered its tricky production. From its late-nineteenth-century peak gose gradually declined, as a lager craze swept Germany, wiping out small-scale breweries specializing in top-fermenting beer. Gose survived till World War II dealt it a deadly blow. Across Germany during that era, beer production temporarily ceased. When smoke and rubble were cleared, Leipzig found itself in Communist German Democratic Republic. In 1945, the last remaining gose brewery was confiscated and closed. Leipzig’s Friedrich Wurzler Brauerei revived gose in 1949, but when the owner died in 1966, so did gose.

A One-Man Revival

The style lay dormant till the 1980s, when bar owner Lothar Goldhahn decided to restore Leipzig’s Ohne Bedenken, once one of the city’s most famous gosenschenke. To fill taps, he contracted breweries to craft gose. “It had been 20 years since people had gose, so he had people who drank gose try it,” Pattinson says. It passed muster. After a rocky period where production ceased again, “there are more breweries making gose in Germany than any time since World War II,” Pattinson says. “It’s a remarkable comeback.” He counts at least four gose-producing German breweries, including Brauhaus Hartmannsdorf, makers of the laser-tart Goedecke Döllnitzer Ritterguts Gose, and Gasthaus & Gosebrauerei Bayerischer Bahnhof, located in Leipzig’s historic train station. Lately, it’s been brewed in America, too.

“The salt changes the finish and makes it more appetizing,” says Alex Ganum, the owner and head brewer of Upright Brewing Company in Portland, Oregon. “It makes you want to drink more of it.” Ganum first fell in love with the style when attending a homebrew competition. “My friend was like, ‘Oh, man you got to try this. It’s so cool,’” Ganum recalls of the gose, which was soured with lemon juice.

Four to Try

Gose

Upright Brewing ABV: 5.2%

Released in late winter, this cold-weather seasonal has a bright, lemony scent crossed with a trace of clove, leading to a wheaty tang that’s sharpened by the salt. The sourness is muted, the dry finish refreshing.

Leipziger Gose

Gasthaus & Gosebrauerei Bayerischer Bahnhof ABV: 4.6%

This unpasteurized, bottleconditioned gose pours a cloudy yellow hue, smelling of herbs and apples. It’s lemony tart on the tongue, tasting somewhat sweet, bready, and piquant, then closing crisp and zingy. Count yourself lucky if you find it sold in the traditional flat, circular bottle topped by a narrow, elongated neck.

Spring Gose

Cascade Brewing ABV: 4.5%

Served on draft at the Portland, Oregon, pub, this gose has armloads of aromatics (chamomile, lemon peel, lavender flowers) bound together by salt and wheat. It’s a little like drinking a meadow. (Cascade also brews a special gose for each of the other three seasons.)

Tiny Bubbles

Hollister Brewing Company ABV: 4.5%

The California brewery garnered silver at the 2010 GABF with its tart, tingly, draft-only gose built with wheat, pilsner malts, coriander, lactobacillus bacteria, and salt—not too much, since Santa Barbara’s water is hard and salinic. If the flavor’s too sour, add a shot of raspberry or cherry syrup.

Smitten with the style’s flavor and low ABV—gose is traditionally less than 5 percent ABV—Ganum decided to brew his own version at Upright in fall 2009. He used a French saison yeast, then fermented it at cooler temperatures to give it a hefeweizen-like character. Cautious about overdoing it with the lactic acid and salt, he used too little of each at first. So he added more salt and lactic acid, then more still. The result was bright and acidic, offering notes of lemon and earth paired with a drying, quenching finish.

“That’s probably the seasonal beer that’s had the most requests. I always get, Oh, man, when are you going to brew the gose again?” Ganum says of the beer, which has become a winter-spring specialty.

Elsewhere, fellow Portland brewery Cascade Brewing creates a Lactobacillus-soured, draft-only gose for each season, while the Draught House Pub & Brewery in Austin, Texas, serves Sunshade Gose as a summer seasonal (sunshade —Sonnenschirm— is the German nickname for this hot-weather beverage). Indianapolis’s Brugge Brasserie occasionally offers Bad Kitty Leipziger Gose. Ganum can understand the appeal. “It’s different, exciting, and can still be aggressive,” Ganum says. “Gose has an edge to it that appeals to people.”

Ancient Ales

While pilsners and India pale ales have besotted drinkers for centuries, these styles are spring chickens in the annals of brewing. In one form or another, beer has existed for millennia. That much is understood. But did these ancient styles taste good?

To answer that, Sam Calagione, the president of Delaware’s daring Dogfish Head, set out to re-create bygone beverages. “We’re on this quixotic journey that no one tells us what beers should be,” Calagione says. His Ancient Ales series includes Midas Touch, a delicate, floral beverage based on saffron, honey, white Muscat grapes, and barley found in 2,700-year-old drinking vessels in King Midas’s tomb. The chocolaty, light-hued Theobrama (“food of the gods”), made with Aztec cocoa powder, cocoa nibs, honey, chiles, and annatto seeds, was concocted after scientists analyzed shards of Honduran pottery and discovered a chocolate-based alcoholic elixir used for ceremonies as far back as 1200 BC.

Not content to stop there, Dogfish ventured backward an additional eight millennia to a tipple inspired by traces of a fermented beverage found on 9,000-year-old preserved pottery excavated in northern China’s Jiahu village. Called Chateau Jiahu, it is mildly carbonated with a sweet, fruity base. “We’re showing the breadth of what can be made in a brewery,” Calagione says.

The Old-Time Club

Though 9,000-year-old inebriants inspire Dogfish, other brewers are going back even further in time—like 45 million years. In California, microbiologist Raul Cano harvested a strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (brewer’s yeast) from a chunk of amber that was up to 45 million years old. Like a scene from Jurassic Park, he brought the yeast back to life. Instead of creating a T. Rex, Cano used his yeast to brew. The result is Fossil Fuels Brewing Company, which makes wheat beer served around northern California.

Scotland’s Williams Bros. Brewing Co. began in 1988, but the origins of many of its brews stretch back centuries. The brewery’s catalog of historic Scottish ales include Ebulum, a fruity delight crafted with elderberries whose recipe dates back to the sixteenth century, and Fraoch, based on heather ale, which has been brewed in Scotland since 2000 BC. Then there’s Kelpie, which is fashioned from fresh seaweed. It’s a nod to nineteenth-century coastal Scottish breweries that made beer with malted barley that was fertilized with seaweed.

Is Kelpie fit for a backyard BBQ or buying by the six-pack? Not really. But that’s not the point. It’s about dusting off the history books and demonstrating that, while today’s brewers are mighty inventive, so were brewers a hundred—or a thousand—years ago.

“People like to think they’re coming up with all these new ideas,” says Amsterdam-based beer historian Ron Pattinson, who researches forgotten recipes and posts them on his blog Shut Up About Barclay Perkins. “I like coming up with all these examples that show it’s already been done.”

Five to Try

Grozet

Williams Bros. Brewing Co. ABV: 5%

Based on a tradition of drinks made from cereals, herbs, and fruit that stretches back to sixteenth-century Scottish monks, Grozet is brewed with malt, wheat, hops, bog myrtle, and meadowsweet, then gets a second fermentation with gooseberries. Don’t be afraid. Grozet is an easygoing brew, colored like Barbie’s hair and packed with bright fruit flavors. It’s as brisk as a December dip in the Atlantic.

Chateau Jiahu

Dogfish Head Craft Brewery ABV: 10%

The brew is based on a 9,000-year-old Neolithic China tipple that was composed of rice, honey, and fruit. In its re-creation, Dogfish used wildflower honey, barley malt, rice flakes, Muscat grapes, hawthorn fruit, chrysanthemum flower, and sake yeast—no barley here. The result is a wine-like elixir with notes of sweet honey. Thankfully, the Dogfish team wasn’t entirely historically accurate. The original likely contained lumps of floating yeast.

Poor Richard’s Tavern Spruce Ale

Yards Brewing Company ABV: 5%

For its Ales of the Revolution series, the Philadelphia brewery makes historic ales inspired or created by founding fathers George Washington (porter), Thomas Jefferson (golden ale), and Ben Franklin. Poor Richard’s is based on the latter’s original recipe, relying on molasses and spruce essence. The effect is not unlike a distilled evergreen tree sprinkled with sugar. Very curious.

Original Hochzeitsbier von 1810

Brauerei Hofstetten ABV: 6.3%

Based on the more potent märzens served at Munich’s original Oktoberfest celebration, the Austrian brewer’s Hochzeitsbier von 1810 is a full-bodied stunner. The unfiltered dark-amber lager has a firm, malty charm and an herbal, somewhat fruity hoppiness. It’s a lager for hop lovers.

SSS

Brouwerij de Molen ABV: 10.3%

Historian Ron Pattinson collaborated with this splendid Dutch brewery to turn out a triple stout hailing from London, circa 1914. The time-traveling dark beer begins with a rocky tan head, perfumed with cocoa, milky coffee, and roasted malt. Zippy carbonation propels SSS, as flavors dart from semisweet chocolate to earth, smoke, and dark fruit.

Barrel-Aged Brews

Matt Brynildson never dreamed of brewing beer. Post-college, Brynildson was a hops-flavor extractor for a spice firm. After his company “made the mistake of sending me to brewing school,” he started a stint at Goose Island Beer Co. in Chicago, before finding a home at SLO Brewing in Paso Robles, California. When Firestone Walker Brewing Company bought the firm, Brynildson retained his brewmaster title—and found himself befuddled.

“I never learned to operate that in brewing school,” says Brynildson of Firestone’s revamped Burton Union: Every drop of rich, pleasantly hoppy DBA (Double Barrel Ale), floral Pale 31, and Walker’s Reserve, a robust porter, spend six days in an oak-barrel fermenting system favored in nineteenth-century Britain. “Now I can’t imagine making beer any other way.”

The Firestone union barrel-fermenting system in action with brewmaster Matt Brynildson sampling the fruits of his labor.

When railroads ruled the land, every beer in both America and Europe was seasoned and transported in wooden casks, which imparted flavors of lush vanilla and oak. It was—and remains—a time- and labor-intensive endeavor. When brewers began modernizing, using stainless steel vats, it ushered in an era of mass-produced beer.

Now brewers are coming full circle. In their quest for novel flavors, they’ve begun to use wooden barrels like chefs do spices: to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary. Barrels mellow and modify beer, providing woodsy notes and the essence of the cask’s previous contents, which range from port to chardonnay to bourbon. But why stop there? With beer, it seems, things get better with age.

Liquor’s Quicker

Of the many barrels available, whiskey and bourbon casks are most popular—and prevalent. By law, distillers can use charred barrels once, leaving the market flooded with casks that once contained Maker’s Mark or Jim Beam. In a month or two, a freshly drained bourbon barrel can pass on 90-proof characteristics, without ratcheting up the alcohol content.

It took only a couple of days to make Rob Tod a barrel-aging convert. Back in 2004, the owner of Allagash Brewing Company in Portland, Maine, was bottling his Tripel ale when he faced a dilemma: A shipment of bottles was delayed, and he lacked enough glass for the full run. Since Tod needed space in his storage tanks, he pondered dumping the beer down a drain. Instead, he poured his strong, sweet-tasting Belgian ale into several empty Jim Beam casks, which he’d bought for future experiments. When he tasted the beer a couple of days later, “it was totally transformed,” Tod says. “We originally wanted to call it an oak-aged tripel, but it was a different beer after oak aging. We made it a new beer,” called Curieux.

While bourbon barrels worked their magic for Allagash’s tripel, lighter pilsners and lagers would be overwhelmed by the boozy flavors. One of the best candidates for bourbon-barrel aging is a muscular barley wine or, better yet, a rich, inky, decadent stout.

Saint Louis Brewery consigns its Schlafly Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout to just-emptied Jim Beam barrels, while Maryland’s Flying Dog Brewery ages its Wild Dog Barrel-Aged Gonzo Imperial Porter in Stranahan’s Colorado Whiskey barrels. In Scotland, Harviestoun Brewery’s rich, stout-like Ola Dubh Special Reserve offerings (aka black oil) are aged in retired Highland Park single-malt Scotch whisky oak casks 12, 16, or 30 years old.

The genesis of these bourbon- and whisky-barrel experiments can be traced to Chicago’s Goose Island. In 1992, in order to commemorate the brewery’s thousandth batch, former brewmaster Greg Hall decided to brew an imperial stout to knock everyone’s socks off. The stout was poured into Jim Beam barrels and, 100 days later, Bourbon County Stout was born.

Goose Island’s former brewmaster Greg Hall and his barrel-aged innovation.

“No one knew what to make of it,” says Hall. He took his creation to the 1992 Great American Beer Festival, where it was disqualified for defying every category. But at the brewers-only tasting the night before the GABF opened, Hall’s creation was validated. “We ran out before the festival even started,” he says.

Since then, wood-and barrel-aged brews have become their own GABF categories (three, including beer, strong beer, and sour beer; see more on that weirdo Pucker Up, Buttercup), and Bourbon County Stout has grown into a phenomenon. Goose Island first bottled the brew in 2005, and began aging BCS in a blend of 12- to 16-year-old Heaven Hill and 21-year-old Pappy Van Winkle barrels. Now Goose Island has infused BCS with espresso, aged it with vanilla beans, and even given BCS a two-year nap in rare, 23-year-old Pappy Van Winkle bourbon barrels.

“There’s no limit to what we can do with barrel aging,” Hall says.

Beyond Bourbon

Though bourbon and whiskey may cast an aromatic spell, they’re not brewers’ sole wooden option. There’s also a limited life span for barrels used to age pinot noir, chardonnay, brandy, and port (or even tequila; see International Spotlight). Each time a barrel is filled, less of the oaky, woodsy flavors leach out. An old barrel may no longer be useful to a winery, but a wine-soaked oak cask can add just the jolt that brewers are seeking.

The barrel-aging program of Chicago’s Goose Island.

Nebraska Brewing Co. uses a six-month sojourn in French oak chardonnay barrels to fashion two of its most winning reserve brews: the Belgian-inspired Mélange à Trois strong blonde and a special release of its Hop God IPA. The chardonnay maturation imparts a delicate fruitiness as well as luscious oak notes, softening the ales and providing wine-like characteristics. “I don’t want the flavors to be separate,” says head brewer Paul Kavulak. “We’re looking for flavors that intertwine and create a marriage.”

Those flavors need not come from alcohol-soaked barrels. While Odell Brewing often ages stouts in old Buffalo Trace or Maker’s Mark barrels (brewers travel to distilleries to hand-pick casks), the brewery took a different tack with the Woodcut Series. In 2007, the Fort Collins, Colorado, outfit purchased freshly constructed, lightly charred oak casks from Canton Cooperage in Kentucky.

The goal was to create delectable vanilla and subtle tannin characteristics without overwhelming the beer’s natural flavors, explains brewer Joe Mohrfeld. So far, Odell has released only four Woodcuts (including a golden ale, a crimson ale, and a super-strong märzen lager), an average of about two a year—sometimes less. “We can never predict when the beer will be ready,” Mohrfeld says. “Our marketing department doesn’t like us, because they’re like, ‘We need to know when it’ll be done!’ But even we don’t know. It’s up to the wood and our brewers to determine when it is ready.”

International Spotlight: Mexico’s Cucapá Brewing Company

Tequila may have moved beyond its lick-suckswallow past, with woodsy, long-aged añejos and bright, lively blancos assuming top-shelf perches at better bars, but Mexican beer remains a lime-juiced joke: an icy thirst quencher to slurp while browning on a beach.

“In Mexico, 99.9 percent of the beer offerings are pale lagers,” explains Mario García, CEO of Cucapá Brewing, which is located in Mexicali, Mexico, near the U.S. border. “Clear-bottle beer is not craft beer. That’s why they make you shove a lime in it.”

Meet Mario Garciã, the CEO of Mexico’s Cucapã Brewing.

This was not always the case. More than a century earlier, Mexico was dotted with small breweries pouring robust, fullflavored beer. However, a hundred years of consolidation led to two conglomerates—Grupo Modelo and FEMSA—controlling most of the country’s beer market. Compounding matters, the companies own most of Mexico’s alcohol licenses. To obtain one, bar owners must agree to only sell Modelo or FEMSA beer. Hence, Tecate, Sol, and Corona reign supreme.

David vs. Goliath

Despite clear-bottle beer’s dominance, García decided to battle the big boys. In 2002, Cucapá (named after a nearby mountain range and an indigenous Indian tribe) opened as a humble brewpub, the first of its kind in a quarter century. By 2007, the company ditched food and morphed into a full-throttle production brewery, turning out the kind of flavorful, full-bodied brews currying favor across the border.

Cucapá’s liquid roster counts among its offerings Obscura, a dark, nutty ale with chocolaty undertones; refreshing Cucapá Honey, an American blonde ale; and even a beefy barley wine. In other words, these are not beers to chug during spring break in Cancún. But in Mexico, swimming against the mainstream beer can pose some unique problems. For example, the Chupacabras pale ale packs a pleasing scent of citrus, cut with flavors of caramel, freshly toasted bread, and a bitter jolt—around 45 IBUs, or half as bitter as Dogfish Head’s 90-Minute IPA. However, for many Mexican beer drinkers, even a teensy bit of mouth-puckering bitterness is as welcome as a cupful of curdled milk.

“We had a couple festivals that we brought this beer to, and people said, ‘This beer is rotten. It’s bitter.’ They associated bitterness with the beer being bad,” García says. “Try explaining that to a couple thousand consumers and you won’t be able to speak the next day. The consumer for that clear-bottle beer is not exactly a craft-beer consumer. We have to work hard to get people to try our beers.”

Since its brews have limited appeal to Mexican drinkers (Cucapá is sold in only a dozen or so Mexicali bars, due to both licensing issues and drinkers’ palates), Cucapá tried cracking the U.S. craft-beer market. Here, García and Co. ran into the sort of skepticism they were fighting to overcome. “I’ve had some weird looks when we come to a distributor and offer them a craft beer,” García says. “It’s not until they try they beer that they realize that there’s good beer being made in Mexico. We have to educate people that we’re a truly interesting, inventive Mexican craft brewery.”

Crossing Borders

To hammer that point home, García has slowly given Cucapá a quirky, border-straddling identity: one foot in Mexico, the other in America. The strong, spicy Lowrider is Mexico’s first bottled rye beer. Imperial stout La Migra, named after the immigration police, features a stern-faced border agent on its label. Grassy Runaway IPA’s label depicts a silhouetted family making a border break. And that barley wine? It’s called Green Card. While this cultural kidding may pique curiosity, it’s the beer’s unique Mexican qualities that will convert the craft-beer consumer. To that end, García is currently looking to source local ingredients (up to this point he has had to import almost everything save for the Colorado River water), such as Mexican wheat. But when he tried to buy old tequila barrels in which to age his barley wine, he found distillers were as reluctant to part with them as a toddler with its favorite blanket.

Unlike bourbon barrels, which are used only once, García discovered that distillers keep tequila barrels until they disintegrate. “It took a whole year to get ten barrels,” García says, laughing. But the endeavor bore fruit, resulting in a barley wine redolent of citrus, molasses, and the sweet, lush aroma of tequila. It’s an English beer by way of Mexico, a centuries-old style given a novel twist in a new land.

“We love beer, and we love making beer,” García says. “We just happen to be in Mexico.”

Into the Blend(er)

The thing about aging beer in barrels is that each barrel’s contents are snowflake-unique. Some will age faster, others slower. Thus, brewers often blend batches to create a uniform flavor. Other times, brewers blend beer aging in different types of barrels—a few bourbon, perhaps, plus a half dozen brandy. The sum, they hypothesize, can be tastier than its parts. The trick is finding a delicious balance.

In 2005, Firestone’s Brynildson embarked on an ambitious project in which he acted like an amateur winemaker. In honor of the brewery’s tenth anniversary, he filled 80 bourbon, brandy, and fresh-oak barrels with barley wines, hyper-hoppy IPAs, and Russian imperial stouts. They aged for ten months in hopes of creating an ale that would be complex, beguiling, and as balanced as a ballerina. With local winemakers’ input, ten components were “put together like a puzzle,” Brynildson says, creating, well, 10.

“We broke the taboo that says you can’t blend beers,” the brewer says of his vanilla ice creamy libation, his first release in a continuing adventure. Building on the success of 10, which is part of the Quercus Alba series (the botanical name for white oak), Brynildson blends a new rendition each year (11, 12, 13, etc.), drawing from a rotating store of barrels in the brewery’s cellar. Each release is unlike the last, producing a never-before-tasted beer. “It’s amazing that the brewing industry has turned away from oak. It’s their history,” Brynildson says. “Now it’s our future.”

Five to Try

J Series Long Haul Session Ale

Two Brothers Brewing Company ABV: 4.2%

Illinois’s Two Brothers outfitted its brewery with an array of room-dwarfing French oak foudres—basically, large-scale barrels. The foudres impart a complex, woodsy character without overwhelming the beer and serve as the basis of the brewers’ new J Series. The first two releases are Resistance IPA and Long Haul. It’s a light, easydrinking ale with such a low ABV that you could guzzle a six-pack without getting blitzkrieged, but it has enough oaky notes to stay interesting.

Humidor Series Jai Alai IPA

Cigar City Brewing ABV: 7.5%

Tampa, Florida, is home to this super brewery, which takes inspiration from the town’s cigar-rolling history for its Humidor Series. The brewery special-orders dowels of cedar (the wood used for humidors), which are then soaked in its brews—most winningly, the tropical, resinous Jai Alai IPA—to bestow subtle, spicy flavors and a dry mouthfeel. Cigar City also runs an A-plus barrel-aging program. If you see a special release, snag it.

Kentucky Breakfast Stout

Founders Brewing Company ABV: 11.2%

This Michigan outfit deserves back pats for KBS, an outrageous imperial stout constructed with enough chocolate and coffee to keep you awake for weeks. As if that’s not enough, a heavy hop bill (hello, 70 IBUs) adds a bitter streak that’s evened out by a yearlong siesta in oak bourbon barrels stored in a cool cave. It’s excess personified. You’ll ask for a refill.

Woodcut and Single Serve Series

Odell Brewing Company ABV: Varies

Instead of using booze-seasoned oak barrels for its Woodcut Series, Colorado’s Odell opts for virgin oak casks with a light char lick. They provide moderate notes of vanilla and oak, augmenting, not overpowering, beers such as golden and crimson ales, which are sold in wine-size bottles. By contrast, the Single Serve Series is a wilder affair, including among its offerings oak-aged golden and brown ales run through with wild yeasts, and a bourbon-barrel stout. They’re all winners.

Raspberry Tart/Wisconsin Belgian Red

New Glarus Brewing ABV: 4%

I envy the Wisconsinites who drink Dan Carey’s divine nectars, such as Spotted Cow farmhouse ale and the hefeweizen–pale ale mash-up Crack’d Wheat, but his oaked fab fruit duo take the cake. Raspberry Tart (which is spontaneously fermented in oak) is fresh, clean, and fruit forward, but Wisconsin Belgian Red may be a masterpiece. Wisconsin wheat and Montmorency cherries are partnered with aged Hallertauer hops (to lessen bitterness), then lagered in oak. The result is an intensely bubbly, Champagne-like elixir with a superb sweet-tart equilibrium.

Cask Ales

It’s a breezy, blue-sky January afternoon in New Haven, Connecticut, and the mercury has sunk to eyeball-chilling low double digits. Despite the frigid weather, hundreds of revelers clad in wool caps and thick coats are swarming around the entrance to Brü Rm., the brewpub at BAR. These dedicated drinkers are waiting to sample dozens of beers that are anything but extreme: tepid, lightly fizzy, low-alcohol, cask-conditioned ales.

At 1 p.m., the doors to 2010’s tenth annual Connecticut Real Ale Festival swing open and attendees stream into the expansive, high-ceilinged bar. Like kids at a candy shop, they grab sample glasses and flit from table to table, exchanging gray tickets for a pour of Victory Brewing Company’s fresh, fragrant Hop Wallop or City Steam Brewery Café’s strong, apple-scented Careless Love. Instead of throwing back beers, attendees swirl and sniff before taking dainty sips of the aromatic brews. If this seems more genteel than most rowdy, modern beer festivals, that’s because cask ales are not modern, super-charged brews. “It’s beer brewed as if it were the 1800s, not 2010,” enthuses Jeff Browning, Brü Rm.’s brewmaster and festival founder.

Creating cask-conditioned (or real) ales is not complex. Add live yeasts and store any unpasteurized and unfiltered beer in a cask or firkin—a wood, plastic, or, more usually, stainless steel keg that holds 10.8 gallons—and it will develop a gentle, natural carbonation. (The same process applied to bottled beers is called bottle conditioning.) The beer is alive, developing and changing flavor every day, even after it has been tapped. Because firkins aren’t pressurized, “beer engines” (usually hand pumps) or gravity must be employed to dispense the nectar, best savored at 55 degrees Fahrenheit, a temperature that accentuates its subtle aroma and nuanced flavor. Sample a draft of Green Flash Brewery’s West Coast IPA served chilly and highly effervescent alongside the same beer from a cask, and you’ll find the cask ale’s flavors mellower, with the astringent bitterness made smoother. “This is what real beer tastes like,” Browning says.

While the tepid temperature is tough for some American drinkers to appreciate, cask ales have been making headway in the United States, slowly transforming over the past two decades from a cultish British import to an American craft mainstay. These days, microbreweries such as California’s Lagunitas Brewing Co., Baltimore’s Clipper City, Bell’s Brewery in Kalamazoo, and Portland, Maine’s Peak Organic have bought their own firkins in order to regularly offer cask varieties of their draft line. More taprooms are adding beer engines, buying their own firkins, and sourcing cask ale directly from breweries. And cask festivals have sprouted up from Patchogue, Long Island, to Westland, Michigan, to San Francisco, celebrating the pleasures of warm, lightly effervescent ales.

Hello, Old Friend

While America’s embrace of real ale might seem novel, in many respects it’s a return and an appreciation of the country’s brewing past. At the turn of the twentieth century in America, “beer was cask ale by default. There was little refrigeration, and everything was served in wooden casks,” says Brooklyn, New York’s Alex Hall, an English expat, who, since relocating from Brighton to the United States in 1999, has become a leading real ale proselytizer. “But then along came Prohibition,” Hall adds, causing the death of breweries—and cask ale before it could assume that moniker.

When beer making in America legally resumed, brewers moved away from real ale. It’s a finicky product—hot or cold snaps ruin yeast, firkins are prone to leaking, and it has a short shelf life (five weeks unopened, three or four days once tapped)—so breweries changed their technique. They filtered and pasteurized the beer to halt the brewing process. This kept the flavor from changing and gave the beer a longer, more stable shelf life. But without yeast, beer won’t develop carbonation, so breweries force-carbonated it with carbon dioxide. This new process permitted mass production and ensured uniform quality. Like a Big Mac, a Coors could taste the same from Colorado to North Carolina.

Across the Atlantic, the writing was on the bar in England. Breweries also began phasing out naturally carbonated milds and bitters in favor of gassier, pasteurized beer that, by comparison, was cold and flavorless. Displeased drinkers formed the grassroots organization Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) in 1971. The group agitated brewers to keep traditional English ale alive via aggressive lobbying and vocal boycotts of force-fizzed beer. Today, cask remains integral to British pub culture, and CAMRA (whose members now number more than 100,000) continues to champion its liquid cause. “They’re the reason real ale still exists,” Hall insists.

Feeling Festive

Around the time cask ale received a stay of execution in England, American drinkers were barely rustling from their macro-beer slumber. Enlightening consumers about cask ales first required hipping them to microbrews. “In this country, it’s hard enough to build consciousness for craft beer, much less cask,” says Steve Hamburg, who helped found the Chicago Real Ale Festival—America’s first cask fest—in 1996. (Sadly, the festival is now kaput.)

“We thought, If you’ve been to a British pub and enjoyed the beers, wouldn’t it be cool to enjoy the same beers in this country?” says Hamburg, whose dedication to cask ales was forged when he apprenticed as a London brewery’s cellarman (the employee who taps and tends to casks) in the early 1990s. To prep for the fests, Hamburg imported serving equipment and cask-conditioned beer from Britain, and he had to jerry-rig standard kegs with hand pumps. “Dispensing,” Hamburg says, “was definitely an issue.” Selling the event was simple. “It was easier to come here than it was to go to Britain,” Hamburg says, laughing.

Early on, festivals were key to educating beer drinkers and creating demand for cask ales both British and, increasingly, American. In 1995, former Beer Philadelphia publisher Jim Anderson launched Philadelphia’s Real Ale Rendezvous. (That year, Philadelphia’s Dawson Street Pub purchased a beer engine and began serving local brewery Yards’ Extra Special Ale on cask.)

Two years later, the volunteer-run Cask-Conditioned Ale Support Campaign launched the New England Real Ale Exhibition (NERAX), held every spring in Somerville, Massachusetts. In 1998, California’s Pizza Port launched the San Diego Real Ale Festival, while that year also saw the first Friday the Firkinteenth at Philadelphia’s Grey Lodge Pub. Building on the success of the Real Ale Rendezvous, Mike “Scoats” Scotese, Grey Lodge’s “lodge master,” concocted the event (it occurs every Friday the thirteenth) to attract attention to cask ales. “Because there’s a learning curve to get people used to beer that’s naturally carbonated, having a big event with a kitschy name helps,” says Scotese. The Lodge served about seventeen gallons of cask during the first event. Now, Scotese says, “we do a good week’s worth of business in one night”—about 240 gallons, or nearly sixteen standard kegs. Firkin fests have now spread nationwide. St. Paul, Minnesota’s Happy Gnome hosts an annual spring bash, while Magnolia Gastropub & Brewery puts on a cask fest during San Francisco Beer Week. Ashley’s Beer and Grill held the inaugural Michigan Cask Ale Festival in Westland in November 2009.

However, cask’s most tireless cheerleader is undoubtedly Hall. As an agent for UK Brewing Supplies, which sells cask equipment, he installs and maintains beer engines at bars in New York. He also pens a cask column for Ale Street News. But most of his free time is spent curating real ale festivals both international (England’s Glastonwick, launched in 1996 and now featuring nearly 70 casks) and stateside. Three times a year, Hall runs the Cask Head Cake Ale Festival at Brooklyn’s Brazen Head, offering several dozen painstakingly sourced real ales. Hall acquires them by mailing empty firkins (from his personal stock of 54) to breweries nationwide that do not typically offer real ale. He also acquires imported British casks fresh off the boat.

Hall insists on serving fresh, rare casks because he sees each firkin as an opportunity to convert another drinker to the gently carbonated realm of real ale. “The point of a cask ale festival is to raise consciousness that cask can be wonderful,” Hall says. “I want to create demand.”

Earning a Place at the Pub

Festivals are definitely working, as cask ales are finding a place at the bar. Anchorage, Alaska’s Midnight Sun Brewing Company trots out a firkin the first Friday of the month. Atlanta-based Sweet Water Brewing hosts Brew Your Cask Off, in which more than 70 guest brewers create their own unique real ales. Events like these may be gimmicky, Chicago Real Ale Festival co-organizer Steve Hamburg says, “but they’re instrumental in expanding the horizon of beer drinkers.”

Cask ale is no novelty for an increasing number of breweries and bars. San Francisco’s Toronado augments its hopped-up California ales with a quartet of rotating cask ales, and Portland, Oregon’s venerable Horse Brass Pub pours a trio of real ales.

For Ted Sobel, a midlife crisis caused him to turn to cask ale. Nearing three decades as a software engineer, the Oakridge, Oregon, resident was burned out. He quit and traveled to England, where he visited the Lake District’s Woolpack Inn, home of the adjoined Hardknott Brewery. There he sampled Hardknott’s warm, flavorful bitters and took a brewery tour. In the fermentation tanks and firkins, Sobel, an avid homebrewer since he was 21, saw his future: to run Oregon’s first pub brewing only cask ale.

Sobel first fell in love with real ale in 1991, when he and his wife spent a month hitchhiking around the United Kingdom. “I became hopelessly addicted to pubs and real ale right from the start,” Sobel says. “In my mind, it’s not only the flavors and mouthfeel that are expressed by a well-kept pint, but the environment in which it is consumed that makes it what it is.”

To re-create the British pub experience, in August 2008 Sobel opened Brewers Union Local 180 in a renovated dive bar. The tavern’s dark karaoke and poker den became the brewery, where Sobel crafts his smooth Wotcha bitter, Black Wooly Jumper dry Irish stout, and other English-style ales poured by the proper ten-ounce glass or twenty-ounce imperial pint. Upon opening, Sobel hedged his bets. Unsure how the outdoorsy town favored by mountain bikers would cotton to cask, he stocked a half dozen traditional drafts and ciders on tap. A year and a half into his experiment, “I sell two to five times as much cask as regular draft,” he says. “People love the gentle carbonation, the full flavors, and the lack of gas.” Chalk it up to creating a market—if you serve it, they will come. Making cask an everyday indulgence was certainly Greg Engert’s goal when he devised the beer list for Washington, D.C.’s ChurchKey, settling on 500 bottled brews, 50 drafts, and five cask ales. Outside of a festival, “nobody really offered the cask beer enthusiast a chance to just drink cask,” Engert says. He now clears ten to fifteen casks a week—three or four on a busy Friday night alone—with offerings ranging from floral Two Hearted Ale from Bell’s Brewery to BrewDog’s Paradox Isle of Arran, an imperial stout aged in wooden Scotch barrels. “We’ve been flying through the casks much quicker than I anticipated,” Engert says.

But feeding demand poses several quandaries unique to cask ales: Modern mechanized draft and bottling lines aren’t set up to fill firkins, which must be manually cleaned, filled, and primed with yeast. The extra effort means a 10.8-gallon cask can be as expensive as a 15.5-gallon keg. “It’s a labor of love,” says JT Thompson, the former cellarman and current media coordinator for Smuttynose Brewing Co. in Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Greg Engert is the resident cask ale and craftbeer expert at Washington, D.C.’s ChurchKey.

Adding to the complexity, many microbreweries have not purchased their own vessels. At the New Haven festival, Thompson was pouring samples of nutty Old Brown Dog Ale from the sole firkin that Smuttynose owns. “Firkins have a habit of disappearing pretty easily,” he says. That one vanished for more than a year before resurfacing, so the brewery instead fills empty casks loaned by distributors (such as New York’s Union Beer, which purchased a stock of firkins) or by barkeeps like Engert.

To ensure a steady supply, the ChurchKey bought about forty empty firkins—which cost roughly $150 to $200 each—that Engert pays to ship to breweries for filling. (The firkins are returned via normal distribution channels.) Still, this painstaking effort can pay delicious dividends: For instance, Avery Brewing fills Engert’s firkins with its IPA, then adds to each batch a different variety of hops to alter the flavor. “Every firkin you get is a beer unto itself. It’s a one-off,” Engert says. “Serving casks is not profit driven. I’m reviving a tradition that’s gone by the wayside.”

Cleanliness Equals Quality

While it’s encouraging to see real ale join beer lists, bars must go beyond simply installing a beer engine and tapping a firkin; they have an obligation to handle the rather finicky beer with care. “I’m always hesitant to order a cask ale,” says Chicago’s Hamburg, “because it demands more on the serving side. How long has it been sitting around? How has it been handled? Does the barkeep have any cellaring knowledge?”

In order to extend a cask’s life span from three or four days to nine or ten, many bars use “cask breathers.” It’s a system for covering the beer with a blanket of carbon dioxide that, at low levels, does not impact flavor or add carbonation, but does inhibit oxidation and spoilage. While CAMRA shuns this practice, it’s essential for many bars’ bottom lines. “Bars that can’t get through a cask in three days—that is, most of them—absolutely need a cask breather,” Alex Hall says. “All it takes is one bad pint to turn off drinkers from trying cask again.”

Cask ale’s quality and flavor are also impacted by cleanliness. Because cask ales are served at a higher temperature, a beer engine’s lines are much more to prone to bacterial growth than those of its chilly kegged counterpart. When ChurchKey’s barkeeps swap out a cask, they thoroughly clean the beer lines, too—even if it means interrupting service. However, this rigorous commitment to cleanliness is hardly industry standard. Education often lags behind enthusiasm.

These are lessons that will come in time. Like craft beer in the late 1990s, cask ale will undergo growing pains. But the good pints will eventually outweigh the bad. Britain has had hundreds of years to perfect—and protect—its cask ale tradition; America has had less than two decades. Soon, what is today a novelty can become a tradition. “Cask ale is a traditional beer,” Hall says, “and tradition is never a novelty.”

On Cask: Tips for Sussing Out a Proper Pint

Ask when a cask was tapped. If it’s been longer than three days (and a bar does not use a cask breather), then it’s not worth drinking. The beer will be as dull as my seventh-grade science teacher, and it may taste of sulfur or vinegar. That’s a telltale sign of dying yeast.

Request a sample. Cask ale’s flavor is constantly evolving, and it changes lickety-split after a firkin has been tapped. The beer you loved last month may be a different beverage today.

Beware buying British cask ale come summer. The heat, combined with the weeks-long shipping time, can severely shorten a beer’s life span and wreak havoc with flavor.

Unfiltered, yes; cloudy, no. Although cask ale is unfiltered, it shouldn’t be as cloudy as a rotten fish’s eye. Ideally, a firkin should be allowed to sit undisturbed for at least 24 hours before it’s tapped, letting finings (which clarify beer) sink to the bottom.

Patronize a brewery or brewpub that preps its own firkins. The brewers have complete control over how the beer is conditioned and served. you’ll get the best flavor.

No sparkler, please. Some pubs pour cask ale through a sparkler—a nozzle with small holes—which aerates the beer and creates a thick head. Some purists complain that sparklers dull real ale’s flavors and aromas; more important, the equipment can mask the fact that the beer is force-carbonated or dispensed via carbon dioxide. Though you may seem like a fussbudget, ask the bartender to remove the sparkler before pouring.

Ask if the bar is really serving cask. It sounds persnickety, but imposter beer engines can be set up to dispense standard kegged beer via a hand pump. Also, occasionally, breweries will leave their beers unfiltered when filling kegs, thus creating “keg-conditioned” beer that’s pushed out with carbon dioxide. Though downright tasty, this is not cask ale.

Spic-and-span beer lines are crucial to cask ale’s nuanced flavor. Ideally, a bar should tidy up its beer lines at least twice a month—and every time a cask is swapped out for a new firkin. When it comes to cask ale, cleanliness is next to deliciousness.