Editor’s note: This is the first in a series on cask beers in the Albuquerque area, all in advance of Cask Festival at Il Vicino on March 9. The idea is to explain what cask beers are and how different brewers approach this sub-genre of craft brewing.

Hello on a snowy Thursday, New Mexico. Stoutmeister here with the first in our series of brewer interviews. E-Rock and I met up with Mark Matheson of Turtle Mountain at his other business, Matheson Winery, on Wednesday before the snow arrived in Rio Rancho.

Stoutmeister: What is your philosophy on cask beers? How do you approach them and what ultimately do you think of them?

Mark: Well, I love cask beer. I don’t know how many of us in the United States do true cask beer. Cask beer to me is really made for the lower gravity, session beers. Most of us, definitely brew pubs, we can’t have just a beer that’s an English bitter or mild because we’re going to have to split that off, have some of it go to cask and some of it go to Co2 and serve it cold.

What’s ironic is the guy that does, I think, cask beers consistently right, Rod Tweet up at Second Street — he has his Rod’s Bitter, his Kidder Bitter, Rod’s ESB — and he doesn’t do cask because he doesn’t feel he sells enough of it. A lot of us sell about a firkin a week. For us, we were selling 11-gallon firkins and we were going through it in about a week. Really, if you do a firkin I think it needs to be out of there in three or four days. So we went to a five-gallon polypin that you’ll see, like British breweries will if you want to take home cask beer, you’ll get a 20-liter, a five-gallon polypin. We went to that so we turn it over faster.

But I love cask beer. I’ve home-brewed it, done some odds and ends. The last cask we did an ESB and then Santa Fe did an Irish red that was very, very English, very nice, very drinkable, sessionable. If you go back to the East Coast, maybe Midwest, you’ll see more (casks). I think Jeff Erway went through kind of a series with the Fuller’s Yeast and he did some casks off that, but it’s really hard to do true, true casks.

If you go to this Cask Festival you’re going to taste IPAs, Double IPAs. To me the ironic thing is, the reason you drink IPAs and Double IPAs is because they’re so intense hop-wise, it’s so upfront, the bitterness, the aroma, and then you put it in something like a cask and it really softens those aromas. I sometimes don’t understand that. It’s different and it’s cool and it’s fun, but …

We had played with nitro beers. That’s what pubs do, if you go to England or Wales, and they’ll have smooth beers or smoothified or whatever, they’re nitro beers. It smooths out everything and I don’t think you get as many hop aromatics and the hop flavors and profiles you would get if you put on Co2.

I don’t know if that makes any sense, but that’s kind of my observations. I went with my son to the Great British Beer Festival in 2010 and you know drank a ton of cask beer. Drank it at its source in and around London and it was phenomenal. You go back there and you have to downshift. You think this is a really bland beer. … You have a pint of Young’s Bitter and it’s 3.7 (percent) ABV and it’s a bitter beer. But you drink IPAs, and I love IPAs and Double IPAs and hoppy beers, but then you downshift and then when you really examine the beers, there’s a lot there. That’s what great with casks. With a mild, you can still taste all the nuances and subtleties of a mild versus if you put a mild on Co2 and serve it at 40 degrees. It’s just going to be a very insipid light beer.

Stoutmeister: Do you get the sense that as people’s tastes are changing — that there is this evolution in beer drinking, that people more aware of what they’re drinking — are cask beers going to be one of these fads or are more and more breweries going to have them to complement their regular beers?

Mark: I think definitely there will be an evolution. I think one of the reasons IPAs are so popular is it’s easy for someone to tell between two beers this one is hoppier than that one. It’s easy to see, whereas maybe the nuance of a Helles or something that’s maltier and softer and rounder. Different beer styles are made differently. They’re different drinking experiences. You see the same thing in wine. We were a nation of port drinkers. Then people started drinking other styles. Now we’ve got everything that you could want. We’ve got a really, really diversified wine industry. I think we’ll see that (with beers), also.

You read things and I’ll talk to other brewers. You don’t want to go in and see nine IPAs on tap. You want to see a variety. But I think cask is definitely going to fit into that. We’re just going to have to figure out how to get beers that are more appropriate, lower alcohol, more balanced, if you will.

Stoutmeister: We as a nation have been led to believe that colder is better for beers. An entire macro-brew runs its ad campaign around it being the coldest beer. Do you think that’s why, in some ways, cask hasn’t quite caught on yet, because people believe their beer has to be ice-cold to drink it?

Mark: Again, talking to Rod Tweet, we were talking about that. We both love Fuller’s, Young’s, and Timothy Taylor, and Rod is an extremely busy guy, he goes if you’re going to sell it and you’re going to sell a fair amount of it, you’re really going to have to evangelize. That was his word. You’re going to have to tell people is this is what you’re tasting and what’s great about this — maybe it’s not the focal point of the conversation — it’s not a bourbon-aged imperial stout, but it’s something that’s interesting enough and you want another glass, and you can have several and still have a very lucid conversation.

I turned 50 in January and Lagunitas just came into town. I was drinking their Maximus, a fabulous beer, but 8.2 (percent ABV). I had two and I’m not driving after that. Wouldn’t it be great to have three 16-ounce (pints), something about 4.4 or 4.7 that’s interesting, you still have hop character, you still have bitter, a nice aroma, and you can still have that.

If you’re still a brewpub, you can have that. But maybe that’s the niche for nanos, because their lots are so small. If you’re doing three barrels of a beer and so you could knock out five or six firkins and put the rest on Co2. It’s really kind of a logistics issue. If you’re a regular-sized brewpub and you’re doing 10-barrel batches, it’s just hard to do something that’s (a low) gravity. It just doesn’t sell (enough).

I was watching a video of a guy at the American Brewers Guild. He’s English, I don’t know his name, but he was working for a brewer in Philadelphia. They had a very nice, solid beer he thought was going to sell. They made it, carbonated it, and put it in kegs and it just sat because it was so bland. They had to up the alcohol, up the hops, and just amplify it. I think Co2 plays into that in how it impacts the tongue.

Stoutmeister: I definitely get the sense there is a growing market for it. Are events like this good to help people be more aware? But Il Vicino has a built-in audience that anything they do they’ll show up for it. Is it still a good thing to do this?

Mark: Having little events to maybe market it to people, to sell it, absolutely. Il Vicino, that really comes from their old place, they did a cask on Wednesday nights. People came in and there would be a cask done by the end of the day. Second Street did their “Cask and Curry,” that was a great concept. I think if you have an event, but we’re going to have to do real cask beer, the way it’s meant to be. You can’t do that with California ale. It’s a very neutral yeast. Cask really screams for British yeast.

Stoutmeister: Il Vicino will put almost any of their beers on cask. I know what you’re saying about IPAs, but I’m not a big IPA drinker. When I have an IPA on cask, I find I can really pick apart what makes up that IPA. It’s a different beer.

Mark: It’s a lot wider. It’s like taking a Cabernet Sauvignon and icing it down. You’re not going to have all those great (flavors). We may do a couple different (casks). We’re doing a Belgian IPA, just something different. It came in at about 50 BUs. We’re just going to hop it in the server. We might send another one. We’ve got three yeasts in the brewery. We’ve got our house yeast, a lager yeast, and a Belgian yeast. It’s really crowded and really hard to keep three going. Unless your house yeast is an English yeast, it’s really hard to brew like that. I have a mix of beers and I’m going to use the English strain, whatever it is, I’m going to make cask (style) beers, stouts and porters.

Stoutmeister: Do you feel like this is a great era for experimentation?

Mark: Oh yeah, there’s guys doing basil beers right now. The sky’s the limit. I still think there’s a lot of room between Budweiser and IPA. It doesn’t have to be all sours. Everyone has a light lager, but it doesn’t always have to be a pils.

(E-Rock was stuck in Rio Rancho traffic and finally arrives at the winery)

Stoutmeister: We’ve been talking for a little bit about casks. Is there anything specific you wanted to ask?

E-Rock: Um …

Stoutmeister: Sorry to put you on the spot the minute you walk in the door.

E-Rock: It’s cool. So the recent cask from Turtle Mountain right now is Hybrid (IPA)?

Mark: Right, an IPA. Again, that’s what sells. We take stout and brown and people are not interested. I was saying, when you take IPA on cask is you’re digging a hole and filling it in again. The reason you drink IPA is for the hop aroma, taste, and flavor. It just smooths all those out. Same thing if you do a nitro beer. For me cask is a vehicle to sell lower-gravity beers, sessionable beers that are interesting and are very bland (otherwise). You look at London Pride and it’s 4.7 on tap or 4.3 on cask. You just have to make it bigger or beefier to get it through the cold and the carbonation.

We were talking about Rod Tweet, he’s a huge Anglophile as far as cask beers. He has ESB and Bitters, but he doesn’t do casks anymore because people go through one firkin a week. I think there’s room for people doing that, but you’re going to have to sell it to people.

E-Rock: I remember a few months back you had the Collateral Damage Barleywine on there. That’s a little different.

Mark: It’s a specialty strong beer. We’ll do that, too. In Rio Rancho it’s hard for us to sell a lot of strong beer because people want to have some pints, maybe finish it up, and then they have to drive through Rio Rancho’s finest on the way home. It’s tough.

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Tickets are already on sale for Il Vicino’s Cask Festival, so pick yours up soon. Multiple breweries are likely to be involved this year, even places the Crew has never been to like The Wellhead in Artesia. We will have more interviews with staff members from La Cumbre, Marble, Nexus, and Il Vicino in the weeks leading up to the festival.

If you have never tried cask beer on tap at any of the five breweries in the metro area that do it, now is a great time to help prepare yourself for the festival. As always, if you have any questions or comments — and yes, even questions for us to ask brewery staff members — then leave them below or on Facebook or Twitter.

Until next week …

Cheers!

— Stoutmeister