Real Ale Festival-Goers chat about the beer. (How many brewers can you spot in this photo?)

The 4th Annual Edmonton Beer Geeks Anonymous Real Ale Festival took place on Saturday. This edition was bigger (double the attendees) and held outdoors in a skating rink (sans ice). With some weather luck, the festival had an even more festive air due to the sunny afternoon and light breeze.

This year’s installment had casks from 15 Alberta breweries, 4 B.C. breweries and an Alberta meadery. I didn’t try them all, but did make my way through as many as I could responsibly sample.  Overall, I will admit none of the ales I tried blew my socks off, although most did have some lovely qualities going for them, and many were near excellent.

Such is the adventure of cask festivals – even the brewers are not quite sure how the beer will work out. You think you have added enough spicing, only to find it doesn’t show up. Or it goes the other way and is over the top. So it is not really a criticism to observe that the cask feature may or may not have worked. Instead it is a celebration of experimentation.

So, with that caveat out of the way, here are a few highlights, divided into very off-the-top-of-my head categories.

• Best Aroma: Hands down the Blindman Brewing Pale Ale dry-hopped with Simcoe and Sorachi Ace. It was a beautiful, beautiful thing. I found the hop character didn’t come through as much in the flavour, but the aroma was dead on.
• Most Assertive Ale: Ribstone Creek’s porter infused with coffee from Transcend. Enough coffee flavour to replace your morning espresso.
• Where did the additions go?: As much as I tried I couldn’t pick up the spruce tips in the Alley Kat Full Moon, although it did alter the beer in a hard-to-describe way. Same went for the Olds College Oktoberfest aged with alder wood – I think alder may be too mellow for wood-aged beer.
• What  happened there?: I am pretty sure the light lactic tang in the Parallel 49 IPA was not intentional. Kind of worked, though.
• Who needs lactobacillus?: Yellowhead’s Strawberry Rhubarb ale also had a hint of tartness, but in this case coming from the rhubarb. The strawberry hung around only in the aroma.
• Glad I can say I tried it, at least: The Fallentimber hopped mead was intriguing and the most unique flavour in the festival. I am not sure it worked for me, but some attendees loved it. I found the residual honey sweetness clashed with the C-hop flavours.
• How did they get it all in there?: The “putting the most stuff in” award goes to Brewsters, who added coffee, star anise and bourbon soaked vanilla beans into their brown ale. It came out surprisingly balanced with an interesting peppery note.

As I say, the fun is in the trying. It doesn’t matter if the beer worked out as planned or not. In a way it is more fun when it doesn’t.

Like last year, the festival highlighted the best that real ale can be. It is adventurous, curious and entertaining. Plus, what can be bad about spending a sunny afternoon swapping tasting notes with other beer fans?

Sign me up for next year!