(WA) Washington Beer Commission Cask Festival Review & People's Choice Winners

Seattle, WA - On a soon to be warm (60'ish) sunny morning, my wife and I got in line for the SOLD OUT cask festival. Rather than risk a Drive Under the Influence citation, we elected to take alternate transport, the bus. As it turns out we arrived about an hour before the event but didn't get in line till 30 minutes before opening. Unfortunately the choice to wait 30 minutes (while eating some food) placed us some 100+ in the back.

Once the doors opened though it was a free for all for tables, glassware, and the first beer of the festival. In our case my wife made her way to grab a beer while I ran around getting a few choice photographs for our photo album. My first beer of choice was from the very effective 'Dano', who offered up a Elysian Prometheus IPA while simultaneously threatening us with the coveted brewer's mallet.

Throughout the festival we enjoyed many beers including Silver City's WTF or Wild Tart Fat (a sour & barrel aged version the Fat Woody Scotch Ale (formerly Fat Bastard), Snipes Mountain’s Mad Cow (named for the previously discovered lame cows of Mabton, back in early turn of the century 2000), and  Ice Harbor's Barrel-aged India Pale Ale. There really wasn’t a bad beer in the hall, although there was quite a few that could have toned down the ABV.

If there any negatives we could take back from this year's event would be the sheet amount of India Pale Ales and not enough casks. In the case of the IPAs, it was mostly my wife who despite my constant urges to enjoy a nice Pale Ale or India Pale Ale, felt there was too many.

Also, some of the breweries despite their best efforts didn't expect the sheer popularity of their beers. Silver City's WTF, I learned was a very limited edition 'one-off' cask and when it was gone (a little over 2.5 hours into the first session) there wouldn't be more. Black Raven too, from what we heard suffered the same fate, including us bearing witness to the withdrawal of the Wisdom Seeker Scotch being pulled right after we received our samples.

On a more personal note, it would be interesting to see if the Commission was able to create a Cask Fest that limited the ABV to 5.50% or less. Although this would be seen as a stifling of creativity, it would be interesting to see what one can do within those confines.

Near the end of Session One, Executive Director Eric Radovich read the results. Below we posted the results and even the second session tally as well. Special thanks to Lisa Miyashita for getting us the information.

1st session

• 1st place: Wisdom Seeker by Black Raven Brewing
• 2nd place: Jerked Brown Scotch by Black Raven Brewing
• 3rd place: WTF by Silver City Brewery

2nd Session

• 1st place:Totonac Bbomb by Fremont Brewing
• 2nd place: Wisdom Seeker by Black Raven Brewing
• 3rd place: Sourlicious by Big Al Brewing (followed by Two Beers in 4th place separated only by one vote!)

Overall another successful WABC Cask Festival and one that goes down in the books.

Want to see more check out our Washington Beer Commission presents Cask Festival 2010 Flick page.

See you next year.

Cheers

About the photos’ author
Paul “Fruit Trees” Orchard, is an amateur craft beer enthusiast and amateur photographer. Throughout the many years in craft beer he is always carrying a camera (smartphone, digital, traditional) and is invites you to see that beer can also be exciting even if you can’t drink the photo.