Tag Archives: firkin fest

2015 Firkin Fest at the Happy Gnome

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The eightieth annual Firkin Fest at the Happy Gnome happened last Saturday, April 4th. Okay, it wasn’t really the eightieth, but it has been going on for some time now. I went to my first in 2010 and it was a couple of years old by then.

For those who haven’t been, Firkin Fest is a celebration of “real ale” – that is beers that are naturally re-fermented in the container from which they are served and poured from the keg using gravity instead of being pushed with CO2. The result is a smooth, creamy-textured beer with relatively low carbonation that is served at cellar temperature of around 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Real ale or cask-conditioned beer is the traditional beer service of England.

Firkin Fest has seen its highs and lows over the years; great beers mingled with serious over-crowding and too few porta-potties, exquisitely well done casks of straight-up beer and monstrosities with added extras like Peeps or mushrooms. Cringe-worthy cask abuse has been common as pourers turn the firkins on end in an attempt to squeeze out every last drop and end up pouring glasses of yeasty sludge that drunk festival goers lap up like nectar.

This year saw some changes to Firkin Fest. While in the past the firkins have come from breweries across the country and the globe, this year every brewery represented was Minnesota born and bred. This meant fewer breweries and fewer beers than previous years, but there were also many fewer attendees. I don’t know whether the lower attendance was intentional. Marketing doesn’t seem to have been all that good for the event. I didn’t even get a press release and I get press releases for EVERYTHING from brewery openings in the UK to announcements for the Hay and Forage Expo. Whether it was intentional or not, it was certainly welcome. This event has historically crammed so many people into the small tent that getting from one booth to the next was an unpleasant chore. That was not the case this year and that made me happy.

Firkin Fest has always been a place where brewers see what kinds of craziness they can stuff into a cask. Sometimes these experiments work. Sometimes they just seem ill advised. This year felt to me like there was less experimentation. That’s not to say there weren’t some crazy casks. Wasabi and pickled ginger, anyone? But for the most part infusions were limited to things like coffee in stouts or citrus zest in IPAs. Many of the casks were simply dry hopped. This also made me happy. Sometimes simplicity is best.

There were a few standouts.

My personal best-of-show was Schell’s Starkeller Peach, which will be the next installment of the amazing Berliner weisse series. Tart lactic acid and sweet, sweet peaches were what this beer is all about. Yummy! Jace Marti says it will be bottled in the next couple of weeks for release later this month. I can’t wait to try it with the proper level of carbonation.

Summit also scored high with an El Dorado dry-hopped version of the new Hopvale Organic Ale. In a tent full of heavyweights, this light, refreshing, hoppy brew was a treat. The added hops gave a nice, citrus boost to its already hoppy aroma.

Staying on the hoppy side, Triple Hop Size 7 from Steel Toe was a treat. Size 7 IPA is already the best IPA in the state. Add a healthy dose of dry hops in the cask to boost that heady hop aroma and you have a recipe for hop heaven.

On the other end of the spectrum was Sideburns Chocolate Milk Stout from Lyn Lake Brewery. This already rich and creamy brew was conditioned on chocolate and vanilla that added extra layers of velvety smoothness. The beer’s sweetness was amplified, making it a delicious, drinkable dessert.

If you like cocktails, the go-to beer had to be Cobra Commander from Lift Bridge. Their 12.5% ABV Commander barleywine was casked with citrus zest and Falernum and rum-soaked oak. It truly was like drinking a rum cocktail. And a good one at that.

2013 Happy Gnome Firkin Fest Recap

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The annual Happy Gnome Firkin Fest happened last Saturday. Firkin Fest is the Twin Cities’ biggest celebration of cask-conditioned beer, boasting some 80 casks from local, national, and international brewers. For fans of “real-ale” it’s quite the fete.

It’s also one of the Twin Cities’ most troubled beer fests. Starting about three years ago when “craft” beer really started to pop, the logistics of Firkin Fest got away from the organizers. Too many people crammed the tent. Too few porta-poties left people peeing on the trees. Long lines kept people standing in the cold and beer ran out with hours left to go. In short, it was a fat mess. 2012 was the first year in a lot of years that the Happy Gnome got it right. Then General Manager and lead organizer Catherine Pflueger left. I had concerns for this year. Experience with big events suggests that new organizers don’t necessarily heed past lessons learned.

Turns out my worries were for the most part unfounded. The tent did get tight as the fest wore on, but it wasn’t the all-out sardine squeeze of past years. The line to get people in seemed to move briskly – at least the tent filled up quickly once the doors opened. I never waited in any line at all to use the outdoor facilities. The food was tasty. I ate immediately upon arrival, so I don’t know how the food lines developed later. By the time I left just before 5 pm, the firkins were beginning to run dry, but no one was in danger of going thirsty. The one complaint I had was that I couldn’t find a trash can anywhere in the joint. I carried around an empty cheese-curd thingy until a brewer finally took it from me and put it on the ground under the counter. It was an oversight, but not one to ruin the fest.

The Beer

Casks have a big hole that kegs do not. You can stuff a lot of stuff into a big hole, and that’s what brewers tend to do at Firkin Fest. The results can be really tasty; O’dell’s orange IPA comes to mind – a personal favorite from both this year and last. But often times they’re not. Does that already hopped-up IPA really need extra dry hops? And alcohol-soaked Peeps? (Although by the brewer’s own admission the marshmallow chicks didn’t really taste like anything.)

My other pet peeve about the beer at Firkin Fest is the number of Belgian styles represented. Some styles just don’t belong in casks. High carbonation is an important part of the profile of most Belgian brews. It adds zip to the mouthfeel that helps lighten the body. Cask ale is by definition low carb (that’s bubbles, not starches). It leaves saisons and tripels tasting flat and flabby. And yet, there were saisons in abundance, each one getting a less-than-spectacular representation. The only one that worked was Surly’s Saison Brett. I think the barnyard funk of the Brettanomyces added a leathery bite that somewhat made up for the lack of fizz.

But there were some real standouts at Firkin Fest. My favorite was Bell’s Kalamazoo Stout. No tricks. No hops. No smirkins of this, that, and the other thing. Just Kalamazoo Stout in a cask. It’s a great beer to start with. It’s a style that’s absolutely appropriate for a firkin. It was fantastic. I went back several times and drank way more than my share.

I was pleasantly surprised by Crispin Cider’s Not You’re Mama’s Apple Pie cask. They started with The Saint, their cider fermented with Abbey yeast. They dosed it with additional sugars and then fermented it again with a different strain of Belgian yeast. To that they added apple pie spices. It really tasted like apple pie. Yummy!

Lift Bridge Brewery won the coveted Golden Firkin for the second year in a row with Manhattan Project. This was a fully-stuffed beer that I enjoyed. They added bourbon-soaked oak chips and maraschino cherries to a single-barrel aged version of Silhouette Imperial Stout for a kind of beer-based Manhattan cocktail. It was delicious.

Also worthy of mention was J.W. Lee’s Harvest Ale, always a favorite of mine. Schell’s Imperial Grain Belt was interesting, but like regular Premium was too sweet for me. And cask-conditioned lager is another fun experiment, but probably not a recipe for great beer. There were others, but travels prevented me from writing this any sooner and I left my program at home. My memory is failing me. Must have killed a few too many brain cells at the fest.

All in all it was a good fest. I can’t believe I didn’t take any pictures. What was I thinking?

 

 

 

Firkin Fest 2012: A Quick Recap

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Firkin Fest at the Happy Gnome…for the last two years I have had little positive to say about it. My recaps of 2010 and 2011 were full of tales of woe; too many people, too few “facilities”, frightening firkin abuse, and many other forms of general unpleasantness. The quality of beers on offer and the mere fact that the Happy Gnome made a celebration of cask-conditioned beer happen seem to be the only positives I could muster. 2011 was better than 2010, but nonetheless I had sworn off the event.

This year though I was convinced to give it another go. The Gnome learned from the past and had instituted some changes that seemed like they would make the event go better. They did!

The improvements started right off the bat with the lines. The entry was moved behind the restaurant where they could have multiple lines heading through the gates at once. This definitely streamlined the process and facilitated getting people in the door more quickly.

An hour of early-entry sampling on an empty stomach was beginning to take its toll. I needed to eat. It took me a minute to find the food, which was tucked on the Happy Gnome patio outside the tent. What a great place for it. It was off away from the hub-bub of the fest and there were lots of tables to sit at, at least when I ate. The food was good too. Pulled pork and cheese curds on a beautiful sunny afternoon on the patio; How can you beat that?

You beat that with barrels of cask-conditioned beer, of course. As in past years the beer was great. All the usual suspects were bringing it strong. Lift Bridge took the people’s choice golden firkin for the too-many-to-count time. I couldn’t hear what the winning beer was, but I suspect it was the coconut infused version of their Irish Cream Stout. It was very nice. J. W. Lee’s Harvest Ale and Harviestoun Old Engine Oil are two of my favorite beers anyway, so I was very happy to be able to taste them on cask. Schell’s Imperial Deer Brand was actually surprisingly good; unfiltered and dry-hopped with Nelson Sauvin hops. The sneak-peek of the Stag Series Czech Dark Lager makes me even more excited about its expected April release. I was happy to see several new comers there like Lucid, Lucette, and Boom Island.

My favorite two beers of the day were a Bazooka Bubblegum infused Fatty Boombalatty from Furthermore Beer and Odell IPA infused with orange. These two beers fell at opposite ends of the spectrum. Bazooka’d Fatty was a gimmicky trifle. The powdered sugar flavor of bubblegum blended right in with the banana and bubblegum flavors of this imperial witbier-ish ale. Odell’s “Danny Mac” IPA was a more sophisticated sipper; kind of a bitter Grand Marnier. Both were delicious.

And what about the crowds? Considerably fewer tickets were sold this year than last, and it worked. Was it crowded in the tent? At the festival’s peak it was. Was it ever uncomfortably crowded? Never. Moving from one side of the tent to the other was never a seemingly impossible task. At no point did I feel like the 30th sardine in a tin made for 20. I miraculously managed not to use the facilities until well into the event. When I did, there was no line at all. I walked right in to one of many unoccupied units. Well done.

All in all I would say that this year’s Firkin Fest was a rousing success. For those who stayed away this year because of bad experiences in the past, you can come out now.

Recap of Firkin Fest 2011 at the Happy Gnome

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Saturday afternoon saw the return of Firkin Fest to the Happy Gnome in St. Paul. This was the fourth year for this annual celebration of cask-conditioned beer. Unseasonably cold weather didn’t discourage beer-lovers from turning out. There were at least a billion people there (okay, not really). It was damned cold for us non-VIP-ticket-holding schlubs who arrived early to be near the front of the line. After nearly an hour waiting, my toes had gone numb. It took a while to stop shivering despite the heated tent. A big barleywine was definitely in order.

Last year I took the Happy Gnome to task for a load of logistical issues that marred the fest. This year some changes were made that fixed many of the problems. The line was handled much better this year, as staff worked their way along it early checking IDs and giving out wristbands. This really sped things up once the doors opened. Despite huge numbers of people swilling large amounts of beer, the wait at the port-a-poties was nominal. In fact, a female friend of mine said that she never encountered a wait. Well done!

The only blot on an otherwise fantastic fest was the crowd. The organizers took a step in the right direction this year by limiting the number of tickets sold and increasing the size of the tent. The number of people was still way too high. By mid-fest one really couldn’t move. I started choosing which beer to taste next based on what booth was closest instead of what I really wanted to try. Getting from one side of the tent to the other was just too daunting a task.

Think about it. At Winterfest the MN Craft Brewers Guild has three floors of the History Center. They sell 700 tickets. Autumn Brew Review and The St. Paul Summer Beer Festival both take place in large parking lots. They sell around 1500 3000 tickets. The Happy Gnome sold 1600 tickets for Firkin Fest; a festival that took place in a tent not quite the size of a football field. It was simply too many people for the space. I got into the tent at 1:00. By 3:00 I could no longer stand it. I was out the door by 3:30, despite the fact that there were still a number of beers I would like to have sampled. I know that I was not alone. As I was making the decision to leave a number of friends were doing the same, and for the same reason.

I’m sure that the Happy Gnome calculated the number of tickets they had to sell in order to turn a profit. In future years, however, they really need to either further restrict the number of attendees (I would say by half) or double the size of the tent to take up the whole parking lot. As it is, it’s really unpleasant. For about the same amount of money I’d rather drink five pints of cask ale in the relative calm of the Town Hall Brewery.

There was more beer (always a good thing). While last year’s fest featured 65 casks, this year’s was projected to include more than 80. I don’t know the final tally, but there was a lot of beer. Another plus – I didn’t witness any gross mis-handling of firkins this year, at least during the time that I was there. Last year was a cask-lover’s nightmare of firkins turned on end to get the last sludge-filled drops. It may have happened at the end, but I didn’t see it.

Fulton Beer Company took the Golden Firkin award this year with their War and Peace, a Peace Coffee infused version of the Worthy Adversary Imperial Stout. Along with their Beer Dabbler win last summer, this should give some of the haters out there pause. In the industry it isn’t about whether a gaggle of nattering beer-nerds think a beer is the best example of such-and-such a style. It’s about whether or not people want to drink it. Given Fulton’s upward sales curve and recent People’s Choice recognitions, clearly they do. I didn’t try War and Peace this year, but I’m told it was good.

My picks for best-of-the-fest this year went to British and British-style beers. Bitter & Twisted from Harviestoun Brewery and “Jaipur” IPA from Thornbridge Hall both went down well and brought me back for seconds. Bitter & Twisted was a nice session bitter with a floral “heather-like” character that really set it off for me. Jaipur was a great English IPA with a bigger, grainy-sweet malt backbone and balanced hopping. It was surprisingly light-colored, which made the big flavor even more surprisingly pleasant. Sticking closer to home, Summit’s Gold Sovereign Ale was every bit as good on cask as I had expected it to be.

In addition to these, I really enjoyed Rush River’s Lyndale Brown with pomegranate and green tea. It was like nutty, chocolate green tea with a strong hazelnut finish. Crispin’s Desert Noir cider was also a favorite. Stronger and sweeter than I expected, it was strong, yet fruity and refreshing with nice notes of agave. I like that Crispin keeps trying new things with cider.

The award for most unusual beer has to go to Psych-Oasis from Tall Grass. What happens when you infuse an Extra ESB with candy cap mushrooms? You get something that tastes like fenugreek and dirt, but in a good way. This was another one that brought me back for more. I liked it. Although I wouldn’t probably want to drink a pint of it.

All in all Firkin Fest was a good event this year. Fix the crowding problem next year and it will be a great event.