CAMRA BC – Vancouver Branch’s 3rd Annual Spring Sessional Cask festival was the best yet with 30 casks of great craft beer and cider packed inside and outside of the Cobalt in Vancouver. Over 300 people attended and with Vancouver again delivering a sunny Saturday the beer garden in the back we heard nothing but praise for the venue’s gritty charm and the beer’s amazing quality.
Again we had live BJCP judging of all the eligible entries and the 1st Prize went to the P49/Vanbrewers collaboration Hooligan ISA by Kent Courtice, Second went to Merridale for their House Cider (dry “hopped” with Apple Blossom) their first cask entry to a CAMRA event.
Third place was last year’s winner Bomber Brewing with a superb collaboration Friendly Fire ISA brewed by the multi-talented Martin Oberg. The people’s choice went to Moon Under Water for their amazing Berliner-Weisse, not a style normally associated with casks but it worked beautifully.
The fact that the winner was a collaboration between a local homebrewer, Kent Courtice and P49 shows how much brewing talent there is in the city. Congratulations to all the Vanbrewers collaborators including Alvaro Reyes who had relatives come up from Portland to try the excellent mild he made with Four Winds (Shown below).
Again our guest of honour was John Mitchell who arrived early and was impressed by the quality of the cask ales and the number of people attracted to the event.
CAMRA Vancouver also unveiled our new toys – we’ve had 30 sets of stillages (racks for casks) made which we can use for festivals and lend out to anyone who needs them – we’ve also bought 2 beer engines, both of which were in use at the festival one for Brassneck v Scott Butchart’s Brown Porter and the P49 / CAMRA Vancouver Collaboration cask.
The Food provided by El Tigre seemed to hit the spot, possibly because of my rave reviews of their legendary Beet Fries and Frickin Chicken! I hope you got something from them or you really missed out!
Many thanks to all our wonderful volunteers, pourers, executive, brewers, breweries, everyone at the Cobalt and of course CAMRA Vancouver’s Event Coordinator and the First Lady of Vanbrewers, Amanda Barry-Butchart.
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