Cask ale brew-off draws amateurs, beer lovers

If you turn 80 amateurs loose in a brewery, you’ll get some interesting results, including chili-spiced four-alarm ale and exploding casks.

But even the scary beers that came out of last year's “Brew Your Cask Off” event sponsored by SweetWater Brewing Co. were in demand among the 2,000 visitors to the springtime brew-off, because people always slow down to watch car wrecks.

“Even the bad ones, people would say, ‘this one is terrible, you’ve got to try it,” said Stephen Farace, part owner and marketing manager at SweetWater. "It was kind of the wild, wild west out there."

The cask ale competition returns Saturday and the organizers decided to rein in some of the excesses by assigning a consultant to each amateur competitor and tightening up the rules. The pros examined the ingredients lists and made a few suggestions. Instead of two pounds of coffee beans, how about six ounces? That sort of thing.

But the occasion is still pretty much the same. A group of would-be brewers – most of them food and drink people – gathered a month ago, mixed their potions, poured the results into 9-gallon casks, sealed the firkins with plastic bungs, and hoped for the best.

At the unveiling Saturday on the SweetWater property, a group of judges will rank the results, and then the public will be invited in. Last year, the “people’s choice” was a vanilla-oak-and-bourbon flavored porter called Knobzilla Vanilla Oatmeal Stout from Midtown’s Cypress Street Pint and Plate. Wes Anderson, beverage manager at Cypress, modeled the ale after one of his home-brew concoctions.

This year, Anderson is going in a different direction, brewing a pumpkin porter with a Halloween theme. "We decided to turn it up to 11," Anderson said. "I actually put the equivalent of what would be a whole pumpkin pie into my grain."