Great Lakes Brewing News Archive

Chicago's Real Ale Festival

Originally Published: 12/97

By Bob "Now go have a beer" Paolino & Jim "Wet Hop" Ellingson

It may not be England, but a large room lined with nearly 100 casks of different real ales right here in the Midwest plays a pretty close second for a real ale enthusiast's dream. The second annual Real Ale Fest, presented by the Craft Beer Institute, an enterprise of Chicago beer enthusiast and author Ray Daniels, offered patrons two seminars and three large tastings on November 7-9 at Chicago's River West Brewery. A combined total of 1,300 people attended the five sessions.

The fest opened with a real ale judging of the beers of the participating professional brewers. The first public event was intended to be a seminar on hop varieties, with single-hopped varietal beers to illustrate the characteristics of the different hops. The hop tasting proved much more popular than Daniels expected, with about 150 tickets sold, rather than the 50 or so he originally estimated. The sound system and layout of the room proved unconducive to a seminar format, and after brewers had described the first two beers Daniels decided it would be best under the circumstances to continue the session as a tasting of the beers with servers identifying the hop varieties. It was a pleasant social event, but not quite the serious tasting originally envisioned.

The rest of the weekend went much more smoothly. There wasn't a drop of beer served at Saturday morning's seminars, featuring Roger Protz of the Campaign for Real Ale and author of a number of books on real ale; Alan Pugsley, Master Brewer at Shipyard in Portland, Maine, and one of North America's foremost advocates for a small but growing real ale segment of the craft beer market; and William Crisp from Crisp Malting.

Pugsley spoke about his background in brewing in England at Ringwood Brewery, his association with Peter Austin, and his work in the United States. Most of the talk, however, was on the characteristics of real ale, how it differs from "dead, filtered beer in sealed dustbins," its proper care and handling, and how to market real ale successfully in the United States.

Pugsley refuted the myth that real ale should be cloudy. Live beer should be crystal clear. A beer that has had a healthy fermentation and proper handling should drop bright, either on its own or with the use of finings.

Keeping distribution local is the key to good cask beers, and brewpubs have an advantage in that the beer is served where it is brewed and doesn't have to be transported. A brewer who wants to sell cask ale to outside accounts needs to be careful about choosing customers. Yes, the brewer needs to choose his customers, not the other way around. Going out to sell cask ale in the conventional manner is not the way to approach it, according to Pugsley. "I make people BEG for cask conditioned ale." A brewer concerned about maintaining a good reputation for quality needs to know that a pub owner is going to make the commitment to proper storage and serving conditions and equipment. You don't want your beer in the hands of someone who doesn't understand it, and is more concerned with making money than with good beer. Pugsley noted that "blow out" cask night with $2 pints can be a good way for real ale to catch on. That kind of promotion gets the beer noticed and gets people to try it; it also turns over a lot of beer quickly, thereby assuring freshness. Pugsley has taken his own advice and cut back the geographic distribution of his Shipyard ales, including the Fuggles IPA that took one of the awards at Real Ale Fest.

Crisp discussed British malting industry in general and Crisp Malting in particular. While the big industrial lager factories in the U.S. use 6-row barley in their "beers," in Britain 6-row is used as livestock feed. The plumper 2-row varieties are malted for use in brewing. Crisp pays a premium of $50 a ton for the Maris Otter variety of barley that is preferred by the brewing industry. (Contrary to popular belief, Maris Otter is a variety of barley, not a brand of malt.) Crisp "box malts" barley for the distilling industry. This process takes about 3 days, and is mostly automated. For brewing, however, Crisp uses "floor" malting and winter barley. Winter barley takes up water and germinates more slowly, but also more evenly. In floor malting, the 25 ton lots of malt are spread out on the floor, 36 inches deep. Over the next five days, it is turned or mixed�by hand�one to three times daily each day. As the malt begins to germinate, it produces heat. The malt is spread out on the floor to control and reduce the temperature. After five days, the malt is just 3 inches deep.

Crisp acknowledged that some brewers, particularly outside of Britain, balk at the higher price of Crisp malts, but noted that the price is higher because of the variety of barley used and the labour-intensive floor malting process, both of which cost more, but add to the quality of the malt�and ultimately the quality of beer that can be produced by a talented brewer. (He joked that it's still possible to make bad beer from good malt.) He added that some brewers have found that they get higher extract from Crisp malts, which tends to minimise the cost differential.

The 2nd annual Real Ale Fest took beer enthusiasts from the hop fields to the malting floors, threw in a little politics and marketing, and ultimately ended up at the tasting room, for an enjoyable weekend. The event concluded with a real ale homebrew competition and a tasting of the leftovers for the volunteers who kept the fest running beerfully all weekend long.