You had me at “Real Ale”.

The annual Edmonton Beer Geek’s Anonymous Real Ale Festival took place last Saturday. After missing last year’s it was nice to make it back to my favourite party in a rink. (Really, it is always held in the rather low-key outdoor rink at Ritchie Hall.)

I didn’t bother to post a preview of the event because it sold out, as usual, so if you didn’t have tickets a post telling you how amazing an event it was going to be is just cruel.

But I am happy to offer a post-festival review.

It really is an event that only cares about the beer. From the aforementioned location to the lack of any accoutrements there really is nothing to do but stand around, sample cask ales and talk to fellow beer fans. Except maybe eat some food from the yummy Northern Chicken.

The event has grown considerable in terms of the number of beer available. I think the first year I attended there were 20-some casks. This year there were 65! In part the growth was due to the tragic events of last year where the beer ran out at around 5:00.

No such worries this year. 57 Alberta breweries, 2 B.C. breweries and one Yukon brewery had casks available. Olds, it should be noted brought FIVE casks. Crazy, over-achieving beer students! The casks covered the usual gamut of ales dosed with various fruits, spices and hops.

At the risk of over-simplifying, I would argue there were five broad categories of casks at this year’s festival: dark beer with sweet/coffee flavour; traditional IPA/pale ale with dry hops; fruited of both the sour and non-sour kind; ale with hot peppers; and mixed ferment. Some, like the boys at Dandy seemed to do all at once (for the record a Norwegian farmhouse ale with juniper, caraway, orange peel, rose petals, Cambodian peppers, Szechuan peppers and fermented with Kveik yeast. Yikes!)

Sampling all 65 was an impossible task (if anyone did, let me know and tell me how much your liver protested), but I did get to 15 (in part by mooching sips from friends’ samples). In general, as I often find at cask events, none of the beer was really mind-blowing, but most were interesting enough that I was glad I tried them. A few were quite disappointing – mostly due to bad choices of additions but a couple had base beer flaws.

The first cask emptied (a much celebrated achievement) was Blindman’s sour cherry Foeder beer. As of writing I don’t know who one the fan favourite award (I could try to find out but that would mean, you know, writing an email and stuff).

I didn’t take serious beer notes, as it was more a day of visiting and enjoying the sun, but I did mark some of the ones that I was most impressed with. A partial list includes: Alley Kat IPA with dry hops; Ribstone’s Pale Ale with dry hops and fruit; Grain Bin’s Chocolate Stout with bourbon-saoked vanilla beans and cacao; Zero Issue oak aged sour ale (which VERY clearly noted it was NOT a kettle sour); and Big Rock’s bourbon barrel coffee ale.

I think in general when it comes to casks I prefer a more classic approach. Take one or two ingredients – ingredients often found in beer – and use them to accent an element of the beer. (Editor: Gee, Foster is a traditionalist. There is a news flash!) Creative, experimental approaches can be entertaining, but I am unconvinced that they make for a better beer overall. Others will disagree.

And differing tastes is a good thing, because if you have 60-plus casks you want some variety. Thirty takes on pale ale with Citra hops gets boring pretty fast.

So, another hugely successful Real Ale Festival. Those who didn’t attend, the line-up for next year starts on the left.