Cask beer will return to the Green in the Spring 2011!
Then every First Monday at 5pm sharp!
Come join us as we tap a special cask at the Brew Works on the Green!
Previous Casks:
August 2010 – Blueberry Cobbler – Inspired by one of the first great flavor combinations introduced to every person! Apples and blueberries give refreshing life to this real ale and bring happy smiles. Perfect for the summer at the golf course.
July 2010 – Strawberry Blonde – At 4.7%, this blonde ale is dosed with fresh strawberries into the cask to create a fanciful summer brew for the west-enders.
June 2010 – DEEP SPACE Monkey! Our Space Monkey-Raspberry Saison loaded with an excessive amount of fresh raspberries weighing in at 7%ABV. This brew has a spicy flavor and predominate raspberry taste. “In space…no one can hear you belch.”
May 2010 Dry Hopped Hop Explosion! KAA BOOOM!
March 2010 This special cask is a Belgian Style Dubbel, a mahogany colored malt accented brew with a spicy and floral yeast aroma. (7.8%ABV)
“What is cask beer?”
If you love beer then this is your chance to experience drinking a real ale*!
“Cask beers are by nature limited editions. Yeast is still active and alive, conditioning the beer inside them,” says Brewmaster Beau Baden, “So because of the limited supply and the fact that it has a short life once tapped, we have to make a bit of an event out of this.”
Cask beers are served at the traditional “cellar temperature” (50-55º F) and are hand pumped or gravity fed. “This way you don’t add any unnatural carbonation to the beer, and it can be experienced the way beer has been for…well, right back to the beginning of beer itself,” adds brewer Nick Micio, “This allows for the beers to open up and release their floral hop aromas and draw out the malt flavors.”
Cask means container, from the Spanish word cáscara (tree bark), and references to alcohol in casks goes back to the 5th century BC. In the Iron Age, European Celts developed Stout wooden barrels with iron hoops to store goods. It wasn’t until the 1950s that these wooden casks began to be replaced by steel or aluminum casks which were easier to sterilize and better at keeping oxygen out (which causes staling). In the 1960s the first metal ‘kegs’ were introduced which allowed for more efficient cleaning, filling and dispensing. However, these kegs which are typical in design today, usually contain beers that are pasteurized (flash-heated to preserve freshness) and are dispensed by being pushed out with carbon dioxide (which dissolves into the liquid and adds carbonation). By the 1970s the British had had enough. They cried foul and created the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), which set out to save the old traditions (and the flavors, aromas, and mouthfeel therein) by defining real ale as “beer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide.”
Mug club members (from all 3 locations!) – don’t forget, it’s not just cask night – in addition to great beer, you also get 20% off all regularly priced food items. Just when you thought Mug Club Appreciation Night couldn’t get any better!
Come see why the Brew Works on the Green is quickly becoming one of the Lehigh Valley’s favorite restaurants!
*NOTE: Real Ales are not limited to beers in casks. A secondary fermentation can happen in a bottle just the same. Fegley’s Brew Works has begun a line of bottled beers that are all bottle conditioned. “Right now we have a triple IPA called Hop’solutely and an Imperial Stout we call Insidious,” Baden says. “We’re bottling high alcohol beers that will age very gracefully and gain complexity over time.” Coming up in production will be the Bagpiper’s Scotch Ale, the beer that won medals at the Great American Beer Festival two years in a row (Bronze 2008, Silver 2009). These bottled beers are available at many distributors and in dozens of pubs and restaurants stretching from Scranton to Philadelphia.
