I Eat my Words and Drink Everything Else, Part 1

I know I said I probably wouldn't go to the cask event held Sunday at Marble Brewery, but I thought about it- I could either be hanging out with my girlfriend, or hanging out with my girlfriend while drinking beer.

After securing a ride we made it to the brewery around 1:45. The event had started at noon, and seemed to be at its peak when we arrived. The majority of the crowd was converged around the kegs that were perched on the bar. My earlier prediction of being surrounded by sweaty dudes was looking to be prophetic. I didn't picture most of the sweathogs to be wearing tanktops, so that was an unpleasant twist on things. Even with the mass chaos at the bar, the bartender was quick to notice us and get us set up with the necessary materials (a glass). 15 bucks promised a taste of eleven casks plus a pint of the beer we enjoyed most served in a "commemorative" glass. Of course, the glass was from last year's IPA challenge. Now, it seemed like there were more people at the cask fest than the IPA challenge so they probably could have had glasses made for this event and come out ahead, but I don't know for sure. I'm not going to cry about a glass.

So the first taster was of Marble's Amber. Yup, tastes like Amber. The next, Marble Red, turned out to be a surprise. When I first looked at the list I was thinking, "Ooohh, an Amber followed by a Red! Same beer, different name! The Red actually turned out to have a great hop presence, noticeable immediately in the nose.

Il Vicino was there with a Zwickel, a lager that they added red chile to. It was very light-bodied, with the red chile heat coming on at the end as it went down my throat. I heard mixed reviews from people around me, but I thought they did a great job with the chile, which could easily have overpowered the beer.

Turtle Mountain brought their brown ale, a great smelling beer that was a bit lighter in taste than the smell would suggest. A good brown ale.

Now remember, we didn't get all the samples at once as you do at the challenges, so I had to go back inside with my "buddies" to get each sample. I will say that the lines moved extremely fast and the guys doing the pouring were friendly throughout the event.

I went in to find that the Three Rivers IPA cask was gone. This was about 2:30...told you there were a lot of people there. I moved on to the Marble IPA, which is my beer of choice lately. The casked version features the Centennial hops more than anything else and was a favorite.

Il Vicino was not to be outdone as they had a cask of Wet Mountain IPA with Simcoe hops. I can only imagine what that must have cost to brew as the price of Simcoe is outrageous right now.