A new beer festival to add to our yearly calendar.

Kicking off on Friday at 5pm was the Winter Ales and Cask festival at the Franciscan Well in Cork. This was almost exclusively a cask affair with the majority of beers being cask conditioned rather than kegged. A festival like this can only be made possible now with the recent resurgence (albeit very limited) of breweries old and new willing to either use casks regularly or for limited times. This mini cask revolution meant that there was no less than 14 cask beers available at the event.

The demand was unprecedented it seems because they ran out of many beers on Friday. I arrived just after 2pm on Saturday to find them mostly replenished but two of the main beers I wanted to try were completely gone. The elusive barrel-head pale ale on cask was gone as well as the new Coffee & Oatmeal stout from Dungarvan.

I started off with half pint measures for my tasting and began with the Brown Ale

(messrs maguire) on Cask which was different than the kegged version. I found it sweeter and I believe I prefer it in Cask but I really need to do a side by side.

I then moved on to the White Gypsy Emerald Pale Ale which was one of the first to sell out on Friday so I figured I better get in there quick.

I finally got to try Jule Ol (white gypsy) which I had missed when I got back from the US over Christmas and every Christmas before too. It was lovely on cask. Quite boozy so you could tell it was 6.5%.

The third beer from White Gypsy was Raven Vintage Stout. This was not as good as the one from Easter Fest last year but it was a fantastic beer. This one was 6.5% as opposed to 8% (maybe 8.5%) last year and I believe it was a mix of last years oak aged stout and a newer stout making it quite a traditional way to serve stout.

Franciscan Well themselves had Cask beer going and I got one of my favorite beers, Purgatory pale ale in all its cask conditioned, dry hopped glory. It was absolutely hoptastic and for me was beer of the festival. I immediately ordered a full pint of it.

I also got a pint of their 3 Kings smoked ale which had been aging since 2009, well 15 months in a keg. This was the only kegged beer I had and it was a great beer to finish off the evening with.

Aside from the beer, which lets face it, is the main reason to go to a beer festival, there was plenty of opportunity to talk to people. Of the brewers themselves, Melissa from Messrs Maguire was there as was Cuilan from White Gypsy and Cormac from Dungarvan. Of course the Franciscan Well brewer himself was around but was busy working behind the bar.

A number of fellow Beoir members were there including The Beer Nut (pictured above).

I also met some nice Americans who naturally gravitated to me when they spotted my Lagunitas hoodie. Cassy (pictured above) had just got on to the country and stumbled upon the festival. She had been in Niger (Africa) in the Peace Corps and is now in Cork to do something called WWOOFing. Essentially she will work on an organic farm for 2 weeks. As it turns out, she is originally from the next major town to were my wife is from in West Michigan so we had plenty to talk about. It's a shame my wife decided to stay in Bandon but she is off the drink at the moment. I met another couple of American guys who are studying in Dublin. They are in the first picture in the far right. One on each side of Cuilan (in the blue tracksuit top).

The festival continues today and started at 2pm, so about an hour ago. Right now it is time to watch the Ireland V France rugby match.