This past weekend I attended the Gastown Cask Carouse, a showcase of the ever growing craft scene down in Vancouver’s historic Gastown. For a very small fee my fellow Cask Carousers and I enjoyed a four part meal, each part with a complementing pint, and each part served at four different locations throughout Gastown. Thanks to solid planning by CAMRA we were not just left to fend for ourselves, but guided through this journey by some of the most knowledgeable local hop heads. The following is a progressively blurry account of the afternoon.

Pub 1: The Irish Heather

Beer – Dry Hopped Red Devil Pale Ale by R&B Brewing

Food – Pickled Quail Egg, House Bread, English White Cheddar,  and Pickled Onions.

Notes – First stop of the day and we’re starting off with a bang. The beer is a deep red with a delicious ruby flavor similar to a scotch style ale. Nice mellow hops with a long lasting finish. The food is outstanding. Never had a pickled quail egg before and am enjoying it greatly. The english cheddar and house bread add a nice hearty fill to this part of the meal to keep us from catching a buzz early.

Pub 2: Steamworks

Beer – Cask-conditioned Raven Cream Ale by R&B Brewing

Food – Olive, Meat, Cheese, Bread and Vegetable Plate.

Notes – Second stop in the basement of the brew pub next to the pool tables.  Now this is a session beer, creamy, and malty. I can taste chestnuts and possibly even some fig. This brew was a favorite of many in my group. The food is decent. High quality meats, but nothing to write home about. In addition to the Cask Carouse beer many of us also enjoyed a pint of Steamworks own North by North West IPA. Hard to describe everything going on with this beer, my notes simply say ‘out of control – amazing’.

Pub 3: Six Acres

Beer – Raspberry Sun God Wheat Ale by R&B Brewing

Food – Cornbread and Quesadillas

Notes – Stop three and my notes are starting to become more vague. That said I’m two cask beers and one IPA into my day and should not be surprised by this. The beer is very good; unlike most raspberry beers I have tasted, this one tastes like real raspberries, not artificial raspberry flavoring added to beer. Also worth noting, the beer is not red but yellow much like normal wheat beers. The reasons for this is that it’s not a traditional raspberry beer, but R&B’s standard wheat ale with raspberries added after the fermentation stage. Food notes are really starting to suffer; the corn bread is simply put as insanely good and I’m not sure I even tasted the quesadilla’ but was told it was delicious by all accounts.

Stop 4: Alibi Room

Beer – Dry-hopped Hoppelganger India Pale Ale by R&B Brewing

Food – Sausage Roll

Notes – Clearly the beer has been flowing by stop four. The notes are not exactly well kept at this point. Welcomed to the bar by Nigel, the proprietor of the Alibi Room, and was promptly handed an IPA that’s noted as ‘hard to beat a cask’. Food was listed as ’sausage roll’. That said there are a few things you need to keep in mind, we picked this group because Alibi would be our last stop. This is important because they have the best craft selection in the city, if not all of Canada. We not only enjoyed our final R&B cask beer, but also a few of the other amazing offerings on the Alibi beer menu. I went with a 12 year old lambic from Storm Brewing that is almost impossible to describe in aside from telling you that it’s a must have simply for the experience. After that, more and more carousers made their way from their other bars back to the Ailbi for a bit of an after party. I tried to keep the after party beers to a minimum as I had plans later that evening. As a result, I only chose to quaff one more delicious selection from the menu. What was that choice? Well, lets just say its the one beer I’d drink if I could only drink one from now on. Cheers…

Categories: