Over the weekend, I was fortunate enough to take in an event called “Cask Days,” which spanned three sessions over two days at Toronto’s Bar Volo. It was, as is the norm at Volo, a beautifully planned and executed event, and a testament to the dedication and beer enthusiasm of Volo owner Ralph Moana and his staff and family.
An impressive 34 different cask ales were available over the course of “Cask Days,” most of them produced by southern Ontario craft brewers. (There were two Fuller’s casks also available, and a few specialty or one-off creations hailing from no specific brewery and poured only for charity.) Given that this part of the country is pretty much the promised land for cask-conditioned ale on this side of the Atlantic – really! It’s far easier to find cask ale in good condition in southern Ontario than virtually anywhere else in Canada or the United States – one might well expect that the beer selection would be nothing less than stellar.
Well, one might expect that, but one would be disappointed, at least where many of the available ales were concerned. What I found instead was an enthusiastic industry whose reach often exceeded its grasp.
Traveling in England, a savvy drinker can easily and quickly deduce that simplicity is key where cask ale is concerned. Milds, bitters, ESBs and the occasional, sometimes stylistically mislabeled IPA are the norm in pubs from Kent to Tadcaster, with oddly flavoured ales and big alcohol brews decidedly the exceptions to the rule. So why, then, did Volo boast numerous hop-laden and out-of-balance ales, oddly flavoured stouts and milds and one curiously thin barleywine? The urge to shock and surprise? The need to do something different? The want of a challenge?
To the above I do not know the answer, but I do think it’s time brewers dialed it back to the basics, at least where this particular festival is concerned. For while I didn’t sample every beer on offer, I was able to at least try the majority and found that the best were those who kept things simple, such as Fuller’s ESB and London Pride, Wellington Arkell Best Bitter, Grand River Plowman’s Ale and the very hoppy but still in balance Hop Bomb from Black Oak Brewing. (Not the special edition “S.T.F.U.” version of the Hop Bomb, a tongue-in-cheek, over-hopped brew the name of which I will leave it you to unravel.)
On the other side of the ledger, the George’s Herbal Mild from F&M Brewing’s George Eagleson was very oddly accented (anise? licorice root? tarragon?) but at least still drinkable, while the weizen yeast-fermented Fog on the Tyne IPA from Magnotta and the Perry’s Atomic Pumpkin Ale from the cask-savvy Perry Mason of Scotch Irish Brewing were far and away the most interesting of the oddities.
I am often seen and heard complaining that the brewers of my home province are too conservative in their approaches to beer, and so I recognize that this lament might appear at least somewhat hypocritical. But it’s one thing to experiment with well-researched styles and techniques and quite another to toss a bunch of vanilla beans into a perfectly good cask of ale. My hope for the next edition of Cask Days is that more brewers elect to do the former rather than the latter, or better still, focus on the styles that make cask-conditioned ale the session beer delight that it is.
