Breaking News - 200 Beers for Real Ale Festival 2000
March 30, 2000 -- Cask Ale Succeeds Like Never Before
March 27, 2000 - Chicago - Two hundred real ales from Britain and America competed for the attention of thirsty festival goers at the fourth Real Ale Festival held at the Goose Island Wrigleyville brewpub in Chicago on March 23-25. To help them find their way, the festival’s judges identified the top three beers in ten styles of cask ale and five groups of bottle-conditioned beer. (See attached listings for winners. The results can also be seen on the web at http://www.realalefestival.com)
“This year we succeeded on every front,” said festival organizer Ray Daniels. “The brewers responded by sending beer, the staff and volunteers stepped up to make the event happen and the consumers came, drank and enjoyed. In the end, everyone was happy.”
This year’s event attracted many of the brewers who make cask ale and brewing celebrities like famed beer writer Fred Eckhardt, Rogue Ales head brewer John Maier and Midwest beer demigod Larry Bell, brewer of Bell’s beers.
“The overall quality of beer this year was quite remarkable, says Steve Hamburg, cellarmaster for the event. “It is clear that American brewers are mastering what it takes to serve beer in casks and that was very much evident.”
Casks submitted by American brewers for this year’s festival covered 10 different style categories ranging from pale ale to porter and brown ale to barley wine. The tenth category -- specialty beers -- included smoked porter, Belgian-style beers and even a cask-conditioned doppelbock.
“This year, our little festival offered a greater variety of beer styles in cask than you can find at the Great British Beer Festival,” Hamburg said, referring to the mother of all cask-ale events held each year in London. “In past years, we worried that if we ran out of British beers we didn’t have enough good quality beers to keep people happy, but this year, that wasn’t a problem.”
Hamburg noted that American brewers still had room for improvement when compared to British brewers, but that the differences were beginning to be quite subtle. “The American beers are a bit low on the condition side,” he said, “but that’s about all.”
“When we started five years ago,” notes organizer Daniels, “very few breweries even owned firkins - the special beer kegs required for real ale. Now we get so many entries that we have to turn many away each year.”
This growth and development is good for festival economics as well. Daniels said that after three years of losses and considerable investment in equipment, the festival finally made a “modest” profit this year. “There is still a lot of ground to cover to make up the early losses,” said Daniels, “but for this year at least we are in the black, and that’s good for everyone. Now we can afford to keep doing this and more people will get to enjoy the great cask ales that American brewers are making.”
The Real Ale Festival - sometimes known by its slogan, “A firkin great beer festival . . .” is by far the largest gathering of cask-conditioned ales in the United States and lays claim to being the largest cask ale event anywhere outside of Britain. Now in its fourth year, the festival recently changed its position on the calendar, moving from a late-October/early-November timing during 1996, 1997 and 1998 to a March date for 2000.
“The March date worked well,” says Daniels, “we are already planning on a repeat for 2001 - probably in the first half of the month. To keep track of real ale happenings, check our web page at www.realalefestival.com.”
The 2000 Real Ale Festival was sponsored by Goose Island Brewing Company, Crisp Malting, Brewin’ Beagle and Wyeast Laboratories. The festival is owned and operated by the Craft Beer Institute and staffed by volunteers from various sources, most notably the Chicago Beer Society.
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