PACIFIC GRAVITY CASK ALE PROJECT WITH LA ALEWORKS!
Everyone-
Two quick announcements. First, Los Angeles Ale Works (LAAW) is going to have a cask of their latest beer on tap tonight at City Tavern in Culver City. Tonight’s beer will be a cask of their latest beer Dampfmaschine (California Common with Rye) where Magnum hops have been added to the Cask. One of the latest trends in the commercial beer industry is for craft breweries to offer 5 gallon casks of their beers spiked with additional ingredients. The great thing about these beers is that they offer a unique presentation of beers produced by your favorite breweries. This past January Smog City hosted their first Battle of the Cask where they were serving a Porter in 5 different casks as a competition between employees at the brewery. LAAW has poured a variety of casks at different bars around Los Angeles to coincide with releases of different beers from their lineup.
Second, LAAW has offered to start a semi-regular project with Pacific Gravity. Pacific Gravity recently purchased our own Pin cask to be used by club associates as well as for collaborating with LAAW. With LAAW, we will occasionally host a competition within the club where homebrewers will submit their idea’s for ingredients to add to a cask of LAAW beer. The winning flavor combination will be selected by Kip and John and will be served at a bar here in Los Angeles. This will be an awesome chance for club members to have a beer on tap at a bar that they had a part in creating – something that is a dream for a lot of us. This event will only be open to club members who are paid in full for the 2014 year – so make sure you get your dues in tomorrow night (or ASAP) so you can have a chance at winning the first competition.
At April’s club meeting we will be distributing ingredient forms to all associates who are in attendance and have paid for their 2014 club membership. The next beer that LAAW is going to brew is their Lievre Saison with kumquats and some additional subtle spicing. It should make for a perfect beer to start this fun project. I could see some cool cask hopping ideas for that beer, or even additional spicing.
For now, here is a quick blurb the guys at LAAW put together for us to describe their beer that will be serving on cask TONIGHT at City Tavern as well as info about their cask projects:
From LAAW:
Dampfmaschine is a California Common style beer with rye and finished with magnum. It has a persistant bitterness and a sikly mouthfeel. The cask that will be at City Tavern tonight 3/19 is dry hopped with magnum, which will help bring to light even more, this amazing german hop.
We’re really excited to be collaborating with Pacific Gravity on this cask project. This will be a great opportunity for us to get the word out about the club and serve beer in bars the club helped to make. We’re always open to having people visit us during our brew day as well so if anyone is interested in coming down to Ohana when we make our monthly beer, let us know. We’ve been collaborating with local restaurants and our Kickstarter backers as well to help us select the special ingredients. Whether it’s an extra hop addition only or the addition of tea and spices, we’re really up for trying anything. Obviously balance is key and bringing the club out to taste the beer is also a huge plus. A Pin hold 5.5 gallons of naturally carbonated beer. We would love to have Pacific Gravity help choose the special ingredients that go into the cask. We’ll put the PG logo on the cask head along with whomever chooses the winning ingredients.
Here’s an example of what goes into one of our casks.
- Yeast – re-pitch main yeast into cask
- Priming Sugar – Cane, Turbinado, Palm, Jaggery, Beet, etc
- Special Ingredients – hops, tea, spices, herbs, cocao beans, coffee, etc
We typically make casks 10-14 days after the beer goes into the fermenter. The only draw back will be that you’ll have to be creative if it’s a new beer style we’re doing as we won’t have the base beer for you to try.
Once it’s tapped, it must be consumed quickly – 12-24 hours is best. If we can get the club out to the event, the bars are more likely to continue doing cask events with us – quickly emptied casks mean they get their money and no beer goes to waste. We’re open to pouring at most bars as long as they are okay handling a cask. City Tavern has agreed to carry our casks on a semi regular basis so this is an easy location and probably the location of the first PG tapping.
Here is a link to the website for the Campaign For Real Ale – http://www.camra.org.uk/ – where you can read more about cask ales. Thanks everyone, see you tomorrow night at CCHBS @ 7:30pm!
Brian
President | Pacific Gravity Homebrew Club
