Over 150 Beers Featured at Blue Point Brewery’s 20th Annual Cask Ale Festival on Saturday
At the 20th Annual Cask Ale Festival at Blue Point Brewing Company in Patchogue on Saturday, there were so many beers from breweries gathered from across Long Island and beyond that it was hard to keep track of them all. At one point you’re drinking a Strawberry Cheesecake Golden Ale from a homebrew club like Handgrenade in Long Beach, next you’re downing a Vanilla Pumpkin from Jamesport Farm Brewery, then you’ve moved on to a lager from Great South Bay Brewery with notes of Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Lucky Charms, and serendipitously, you might discover that Alex from The Crafty Witch is pouring her Crimson Queen, a red velvet cake ale.
There is no shortage of flavors and the beer flows freely all day. When the casks do get kicked the brewers hoist them over their heads in celebration like Vikings. It’s like Disneyland for beer drinkers.
Long Island’s largest cask ale celebration returned as Blue Point Brewing Company showcased more than 150 firkin-style beers under the tent of a cool but sunshiny day. The event transformed the brewery’s Patchogue headquarters into a craft beer destination featuring live music, local vendors, and interactive entertainment.
Watch our video recap of the event below:
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Some proceeds from the festival also supported two local organizations, with a portion of proceeds benefiting Long Island Cares’ hunger relief programs and Seatuck’s environmental conservation efforts.
Before the event, we caught up with Mark Burford, co-founder of Blue Point Brewery, to chat about the cask ales and the genesis of the festival, which is in its 20th year (although that’s a bit of a misnomer as there were a few skipped years in there due to unforeseen circumstances like a global pandemic.)
“Cask Ale is a traditional style of beer, specifically from the British Isles, where the beer is finished inside the physical barrel,” Burford explained. “So, the barrel that the beer is being served from, the fermentation finishes in that barrel.”
Ingredients are added to the cask to help enhance flavor in a variety of ways. As evidenced by the sheer number of interesting and out-of-this-world flavors available at the festival that day.
“That ability to innovate on a small level, like per barrel, is really one of the things that drives the cast festival because the brewers have a chance to experiment way outside the ability to make something that they would have to make in a large vat,” Burford said.
In essence, it’s like a micro-micro brew. Because it’s carbonated in the cask with a sugar or fruit, Burford says it’s smoother.
“So the carbonation is typically less, so it’s softer on the palate,” he said. “You don’t get the fullness that you would get in regular carbonated beer. And you also don’t get the CO2 burn on your tongue.”
Burford said that cask-style beer is more popular overseas but here in America, most of us like the sameness of flavor you get across a beer brand. In general, the public doesn’t want the variety and uniqueness from cask to cask.
“You can make these very unique beers in small batches,” he said. “I’m gonna be honest, I think it’s the way beer should be served.”
The Blue Point Brewery cask ale festival gives people a real insight into this type of beer drinking.
“Now there’s a place and a time for all different types of beer but in our world, for cask beer, this is as good as it gets,” he said. “Like an outdoor day like this, a beautiful sunny 60 degree day, perfect. The amount of people that are participating, the breweries out there, it’s very heartening to see everybody involved.”
Over 20 years ago, the idea to throw a cask ale festival on Long Island didn’t have the same cache as it does today. There were far fewer local breweries but Burford said that they planned the first one on a whim.
“I had worked in a cask only brewery before Blue Point and we always had cask ale on tap at the tasting room,” he said. “And then Alan Brady, our brewmaster at the time, just sort of said it offhandedly and we were like, that’s a great idea! Let’s have a festival. Let’s let everybody enjoy this.”
Burford said that he thinks the first one had Blue Point and maybe one other brewery but they kept at it and as the beer scene grew, they wanted more local breweries to take part.
“Because, you know, it’s more fun,” he said.
