Editor’s note: This is the fifth and final entry in a series on cask beers in the Albuquerque area, all in advance of the Cask Festival at Il Vicino on Saturday. The idea is to explain what cask beers are and how different brewers approach this sub-genre of craft brewing. Click here for our story on Turtle Mountain’s approach to cask, click here for Nexus’ views on the subject, click here for Marble’s take, and finally click here to elevate your beer IQ with La Cumbre.

The Cask Festival is nearly upon us, so to wrap up our series we visited what shall be the location for our Saturday adventure, Il Vicino Brewery Canteen. E-Rock and I, Stoutmeister, were joined by David Facey, the IV brewer who has taken charge of the Festival this year.

While we did talk about Il Vicino’s approach to cask-conditioned beer, much as we did with all the other breweries in the metro area that serve cask, the most important stuff we talked about was what to expect with the Festival itself. When we visited Thursday afternoon, there were less than 25 tickets left for sale at the Canteen and another 50 or so available online here. Get yours ASAP if you have not purchased one already. (UPDATE: As of 2:15 p.m. Friday the New Mexico Brewers Guild reports it is down to three tickets at the Canteen and 14 more online. See what I mean by hurry?)

The general what-you-need-to-know is that the Festival lasts from noon to 5 p.m. and tickets cost $15. Much like the IPA Challenge, you will get a full tray of sample cups to fill (albeit with the obvious fact you will know what you’re drinking and which brewery the samples come from). You will also get a commemorative 12-ounce glass (see the pics below) and can fill it with your favorite cask ale.

Most of the Crew will be there, so stop by and say hello if you feel so inclined. And now, onto the interview for even more info.

Stoutmeister: The Cask Festival, tell the public, what are they in for?

David: The idea was that I felt there was a market for cask ales, or real ales, however you want to put it. It’s something that isn’t as big as it could be. My biggest thing is there’s obviously a hard-core following of people that like cask ales and a lot of people that don’t know about it. Let’s build a festival for both sides of that equation. Let’s build a festival for people who really, really enjoy cask ales where they can try quite a few different casks in one day. And also for people who aren’t quite sure what cask ale is, they can try multiple different styles of cask ales in one sitting. You don’t have to hit up five or six different breweries. You want them to get a starting point.

E-Rock: Jeff (Erway) mentioned there were Cask Festivals before. Is that related to this one?

David: Yeah, it’s the same idea. The Cask Festivals before were just kind of an open forum to purchase cask ales. For example, we would donate casks, X brewery and Y brewery would also donate casks. They would amass 10, 12 casks. The public comes in and purchases pints, which is a great forum for it. However, with they way a lot of local breweries setting up with a three-beer limit, you could only have three, maybe four different styles, but a lot of people would get only one style.

While there were a lot of casks on display and a lot of good flavors, I thought the people who really didn’t know much about casks wouldn’t be able to taste the gauntlet from something light to dark to the hoppy end of the spectrum all in one sitting. That was kind of the idea behind this was to kind of have all the great breweries in Albuquerque to put out some of their best casks and allow the public to experience what really good real ales are.

Stoutmeister: Of the other people’s casks, which ones are you looking forward to trying?

David: You know, I’m always interested in what our neighbor down the road (La Cumbre) is going to produce. Jeff produces really, really good beer. But I wouldn’t say there’s one over the other. Everybody around town makes really, really good beer. That’s the great thing about Albuquerque. I’m really, really looking forward to what Tom at The Wellhead brings up. Tom used to work for us and he got the opportunity to brew down at The Wellhead. I want to see what our neighbor has to offer, one because he produces really, really good beer, two I want to see the friendly competition. I’m sure everything everybody produces is going to be top quality. I think just the public, anybody is going to find that $15 ticket is probably the best deal in town for a small beer fest.

E-Rock: Is it going to be similar to the Year of Beer Festival last year with the food trucks outside?

David: It’s not. We tried to arrange that, but there’s just a lot of logistics that we couldn’t overcome. I think putting on a beer festival in general when there’s so few people involved initially, it’s hard enough as it is. However, this is kind of a trial run for this. This is something that myself and Il Vicino sees that can grow to be a very, very big cask festival. I’m not talking just statewide, I think in four years down the line I’d like to have a southwest firkin fest, have Colorado breweries, Texas breweries, Arizona breweries and other breweries from around New Mexico and really, really make it a big festival. It’s kind of a trial run to see the logistics behind that. We think that this is going to be something big.

So no food trucks, but we’ll have our regular menu out here. It’ll be kind of an open forum, similar to the IPA Challenge, the way we did it this year. You’ll get your beers, a lunch tray, fill it up, then come out here and have a sandwich, sit on the patio. We have a pretty relaxed vibe around here, so that’s kind of the atmosphere we’re going for.

Stoutmeister: Manuel said he’s been to the Firkin Festival in San Diego and there 300 firkins out there. He said “someday I hope we can do that here.”

David: I’ve definitely emulated this around what I’ve read in Washington (state) and I believe there’s one in Chicago, in the Midwest. They have the same thing, anywhere from 30 to 50 different breweries with multiple casks. It’s a huge cask fest. I also was just up in Colorado Springs for the Rocky Mountain Microbrewery Symposium and traditionally the day after Crystal (Springs) Brewing Company has what they call Firkin Rendezvous. It’s 25 different breweries, they all have a cask. That’s their local (event). It’s everyone from Left Hand to Oskar Blues to New Belgium, we’re talking big breweries and they’re still dedicated to doing these little 10-gallon firkins. That was exciting, no matter how big you get, there’s still kind of that joy and nostalgia for real ale, paying homage to the old ways of brewing beer.

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And now to Il Vicino’s “cask philosophy.”

Stoutmeister: All of the brewers in town have a different favorite style on cask. Is that just a sign of that same variance you see in regular beer preferences?

David: I definitely think that’s what it is. I think each brewer, it’s hard in the brewing industry to maintain a favorite style of beer since you’re always drinking a multitude of different styles of beer. But there’s always that one certain beer that you always go back to or one style you always go back to. I think that’s the same thing with cask ales. I think brewers emulate what they like to drink on casks. That’s a natural feeling. But I think that’s the best thing about this town in general with cask ales, with all the different breweries around town and different brewers like their certain casks or likes their certain flavors in casks, it allows for a wide variance in flavor profiles.

E-Rock: I notice you guys do IPAs (on cask) on Wednesdays and stouts or something else on Saturdays. Does it seem like you get separate crowds or do the same people show up for both days?

David: Yes and no. We just wanted to form some sort of consistency, we’re all creatures of habit. We wanted to do something hoppy, whether it’s an IPA or maybe an over-hopped amber or something with hops in the forefront, we wanted to make that our mainstay Wednesday beer. Because we’ve noticed in general Monday through Friday a major majority of our sales are IPAs. So we wanted to put something on (cask) for that same crowd.

What we do Saturdays is let’s have fun, let’s experiment. I’m not saying I don’t have fun experimenting with the casks that we produce on Wednesdays, but let’s take people to something they’ve never seen before, something that we’ve never done and see how it sells. We get a combination of the two. We get people that come in every Wednesday just to try the IPA on cask. But we also have a lot of people that come in on Wednesdays and Saturdays because they have a real affinity for just cask ales in general. Where I think an IPA is not really traditional, but you see a lot of IPAs in casks across the nation. On Saturdays they’re like “what have got they coming out now?” Last week we had a vanilla chocolate stout.

It also people that aren’t too much of IPA fans in general whether it’s cask or on draft to have a few more options. We’re trying to have a little bit of something for everybody.

Stoutmeister: I always refer to you guys as mad scientists because you create so many different styles. Have you ever had it where something you created on cask inspires a regular draft style?

David: I think that’s a really good small test batch. With the volume of a production brewery, you get scared for lack of a better phrase, not wanting to go too far from the stylistic guidelines or the stylistic flavor profiles. At the end of the day it’s a business. If it doesn’t sell you’re sitting on that product for (too) long. So what’s good for casks to get maybe a solid base beer, manipulate it subtly, see what the responses are, and then perhaps go off that. We’re in a really, really good place. We have 16 beers and we have 14 tap handles. Nine times out of 10 they’re full so we can play that mad scientist card, so to speak. We have a lot of styles to play around with and to do on casks.

E-Rock: Do you use polypins or firkins?

David: We do the nine-and-a-half gallon firkin. We are usually able to empty a full firkin in about a day.

Stoutmeister: Do you guys have a special refrigerator or anything to store the casks?

David: We have a special closet, kind of a cask store, where we showcase our firkins. Secondary fermentation can take anywhere from no less than seven days up to 14 days. Then we just rack it into our big cooler in the back. We keep it as cool as possible, that lets us play around with our schedule.

Stoutmeister: Josh is charge of the casks down at Marble, but he said that when it comes time to pick a cask to tap he polls the entire staff. What sort of system do you guys use?

David: As far as the production of the casks, I’m mainly responsible for that unless for some reason I’m out of town. The schedule is kind of up in the air. We kind of just see what’s ready as far as hoppy beers for Wednesday and other beers for Saturday. But when the collaboration happens is on the day-to-day (operations) back here. I’m in contact with the brewers, with the customers, with the staff, on a daily basis. If someone has a good idea or wants to see something on cask or say you have a new hop strain and you want to see how that reacts to cask, that’s where the collaboration occurs. We’ll have a cask for the Festival called “Caskade,” like Gatorade. What I did was also dry-hop it with a little bit of Mosaic hops, which is a new hop that we just got and just brewed Mosaic IPA with. I really liked that hop, so I decided let’s see how that comes out in a Cascade Pale Ale and how they play off each other.

E-Rock: I’ve noticed you guys on Wednesdays that will have different hops, but you tend to use Amarillo hops a lot. Is there something about Amarillo specifically that works well on cask?

David: Yes and no. Amarillo is a pretty versatile hop. We typically have a lot of Amarillo (on hand). The best strategy is we’re going to try to change that. One thing that we’ve found in the sale of casks is repetition (is not good). It should be a one-time or one-off thing or just once in a while. To have a cask that’s Amarillo-this or Amarillo-that, we’re going to try to go away from that. We won’t not use Amarillo again, but just less frequent.

Stoutmeister: We were talking to Jeff about CAMERA certification. That seemed pretty strict to us, I’m not sure it would go over well with American beer drinkers.

David: They’re pretty specific and busting out the textbooks. I think the craft-brewing industry, we’re all for styles and stylistic guidelines, but we’re also practical. We’re a very innovative industry. We want to do it the way it was done generations back, but we’re also about the cutting edge. I think that’s the best thing about brewing in general. That’s what we want to emulate with cask fests, going back to the different styles we have, not just ESBs or bitters or milds, the CAMERA casks, but anything from pale ales to ryes to stouts and everything in between in casks. We try to find something for everyone.

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All right, that wraps our Tapping Casks series. We hope you all enjoyed reading it as much as we enjoyed going out and interviewing the brewers (and drinking their beers). We also hope to see a whole lot of you out Saturday at the Canteen. Do not let this last winter storm stop you from coming out to try some excellent beers!

As of the last published update, the following beers will be on hand at the Cask Festival:

Blue Corn — The Hop Assailant (IPA); Chama River — Sleeping Dog Stout; Il Vicino — Mosaic IPA, Cask-Aid (pale ale), Chocolate Brown; La Cumbre — Red Red Rye, Project Dank (IPA); Marble — Irish Red, IPA; Nexus — Scottish Ale; Turtle Mountain — Steam, Belgian IPA; The Wellhead — TBA, TBA (but the important thing is we get to finally try beers from Artesia’s lone brewery)

Cheers!

— Stoutmeister