The best way to spend a soggy Saturday is at a cask festival. In particular, Central City's Winter Cask Festival. We look forward to this annual event as it feels like the proper way to kick off the beer year, catching up with our beer friends over samples from some of BC's finest breweries and discussing the latest about beer in our region and elsewhere (including hot topics of the day). We felt sorry for all those who are having a 'dry' January because this 2015 edition was the busiest ever with a record thirty-nine casks to get crazy with. Add in a little surprise birthday fun and you cannot go wrong.
We started our cask day with some coffee (Dead Frog Obsidian Dagger IPA Noire with Coffee) and breakfast (breakfast pizza). With that anchor in us we spent a leisurely afternoon sampling the range from Moon Under Water Le Sang du Merle (a delicious cherry sour) to Driftwood Old Cellar Dweller Barley Wine (beautiful and boozy) and its interesting barley wine friend, Brassneck Spirit Animal (alive with brettanomyces). For those of us who like a nice Negroni, Lighthouse's 'Good Morning, Captain' Negroni IPA with blood orange, campari, and vermouth was a treat. We enjoyed the smoke offerings of Persephone Smoked Porter with Oak chips (big campfire aroma), Yellow Dog Shake a Paw Smoked Porter, Moody Ales Gratzer with Pear Puree and Gary Lohan's surprise Oaked ESB cask was also right up our alley. Standouts in the stout department included Parallel 49's Russian Imperial Stout (deep and delicious) and Cannery's Stoutspirilla, with sarsaparilla root and licorice root. Of the hoppier choices we really enjoyed Powell Street Pale Ale dry-hopped with Topaz, Four Winds Phaedra Rye IPA is a favourite, and Phillips dry-hopped IPA was juicy and bitter.