Back from the Dead: November Recap

My how time flies. It's been over a month since I last updated the blog, but it seems like yesterday I was writing about cask beer. I have to hand it to the blogerati out there, maintaining a blog is a hell of a lot more work than I anticipated, but I will try to post at least once a week from here on out.

Just because there were no blog posts in November doesn't mean that nothing happened in the Lompoc universe, in fact quite the opposite. The month started with the MBAA fall conference in "Seattle" (Renton and Burien to be specific) where the entire Lompoc brew crew were treated to a number of seminars focusing on cask conditioning. Both days included informative and at times hilarious lectures by a pair of well respected English brewers who pounded home the message that "they don't do cloudy beer!" (However they didn't seem to mind drinking cloudy beer at Friday night's cask feast at Elliot Bay Brewing) The most practical presentation of the weekend was given by Elysian Brewing's Dick Cantwell, who provided some "new world" approaches to cask beer including how to modify common US brewery hardware to produce cask beer.

Upon returning to Portland freshly inspired, I sought to apply what I had learned to develop a regular cask beer program at New Old Lompoc. I decided to forgo the cumbersome stainless steel firkins and instead produce cask beer in our regular bung sided quarter barrels. I also disassembled and refurbished our beer engine so our cask beer can be properly dispensed.

Yesterday, in conjunction with our company wide Holiday Beer Extravaganza, featuring 9 holiday beers, I tapped the first test in my new cask beer experiment at New Old Lompoc. On tap now and through the rest of the week is a cask conditioned version of C-Son's Greetings that was additionally dry hopped in the keg. Come on down and have a pint before it's gone. And if one Holiday cask beer wasn't enough this week, Dave delivered a firkin of Holiday Cheer (pre-vanilla) to Bailey's Taproom yesterday, where Geoff plans on tapping the firkin tomorrow, December 1st. I plan on forging ahead with my cask beer program and will be tapping a fresh "cask" every Friday at New Old Lompoc starting next week with Proletariat Red.

Well, that's enough for today, no use rehashing the past, my next post promises to look towards the future. Until next time. Cheers.

-Zach