doing a little phallic gardening

It's become overwhelmingly clear to me that my garden does not share my lesbian values.

Tales From A Red State

My trip to Raleigh consisted of brisk afternoon walks, Italian food and an entirely nauseating dosage of Racism.

cask cask cask... bartender, pull me another!

** Important Disclosure: for those of you that are not beer aficionados, don't even bother reading this because it will bore you senseless. seriously. i urge you to spare yourself. consider yourself duly warned.

I find it a wee bit tragic that the majority of Americans don't know what a real cask conditioned ale is. If you haven't tuned in from the inception of this blog to note my angry ranting diatribes over fizzy yellow American beers versus the British style traditional cask or "real" ales, then please note the definition below so you can have learned something today and follow along with relative ease and new found knowledge as it relates to yummy things fermented.

Real Definition: Cask Ale - Cask-conditioned beer is unfiltered beer brewed in a traditional method that naturally conditions the beer without introducing artificial carbonation. At the end of fermentation the beer is transferred to a cask where live yeast continues conditioning the beer. This process creates a gentle, natural CO2 carbonation and allows the flavors to develop, resulting in a richer and smoother beer.
Traditionally cask-conditioned beer is served at the cellar temperature (around 55∞F) and dispensed by gravity or drawn manually with a handpump (or a “beer engine”). The expression cask conditioning is sometimes also used, as is the term real ale.

Erin Rae's definition: almost room temperature; naturally (though lightly) carbonated with it's own maltose sugars. It's a little known fact that carbonation and chill factor both leech the flavor out of beer; so serving beer at warmer temperatures and with fewer bubbles actually presents the true organic flavor of the beer as it was meant to be. Beers with giant hop aromas and flavors like IPA's or ESB's as well as strong flavored stouts and porters are most benefited from this style of conditioning and serving beer.

My take on it? You can hardly find any brew pubs that serve cask ale around here because American's are just too f*cking lazy or in too much of a hurry to actually sit there and pull / pump the beer out of the tap since there's no CO2 running through it to aid in the beer pouring out of the tap without any force of effort. You actually have to create a vacuum with a pumping action in order to draw the beer out. I think this is where the term "pull me a pint, laddy" originated. I'm just guessing, but I'm pretty smart about some things.

Now on to the point. Yesterday I spent four joyous and inebriated hours at the Washington Cask Festival put on annually by the Washington Beer Lover's WABL organization. I've been attending this festival every year for the past four or five years and quite literally tremble with excitement for even months before the actual event. Typically there are over 40 different breweries representing one or two ales that they brew and cask condition special for this festival. The best part? The 3% percent of the Northwest population that actually do know what a cask ale is are all there! and the drunker we all get, the more passionate and exhilarated the conversations become. I must have spoken to at least 5-10 people who drove hours from Eastern Washington and Portland to make it to this festival and had just ridiculous amounts of fun. The worst part? Drakey doesn't so much like it when she has to peel my half baked self off the kitchen floor at 4 oclock in the afternoon and repeat word for word all the conversations that took place in the previous hours cuz you know... sampling 36 different beers has been known to create a slight short term memory loss problem.

But hot damn did I have fun! And shout out to Mac & Jack's Brewery who did an amazing Anise Wheat beer that not only was absolutely delicious but a great conversation piece when you heard people all around the room shouting "but you've got to like it in the Anise." and "you've really got to enjoy the smell of anise". Oh oh... a good time was had by all. And an extra special shout out to that taxi driver who so graciously agreed to take all 5 of us in one cab home even though it was against all taxi cab rules and regulations after I charitably flashed him my boobs. :) Hey - I was in a Pay It Forward kind of mood, indeed.

I'm counting the days to next October.