Cask Beers At DBA Brooklyn

Friday night, on the way home from the Brooklyn Brewery, where we enjoyed the cask Irish Stout, Mary's Maple Porter, Ama Bionda and others.

We had both cask beers on offer, the Castle Rock Harvest Pale Ale and the Adnams ESB --  both British brewers.

The fact that we saw Alex Hall of the Gothim Imbiber and Wander Start Brewery and his lovely wife Felice there was a sign that we were at the right place for cask ale!

Wandering Star Brewery

WFMU's Beer Hear! Wandering Star podcast

The podcast is also presented in three shorter sections, linked below.

Last week, we were able to catch up with two-thirds of Massachusetts' Wandering Star Craft Brewery at a tasting event that they did at Idle Hands Bar. Head brewer Chris Post and NYC sales and events guru Chris Cuzme hung out with us in the upstairs hallway to discuss beer. Sadly, Alex Hall, the inspiration for the name of their Raindrop Pale Ale was feeling under the weather but we'll catch up with him for another Beer Hear! episode to talk about his mission to introduce proper cask ale to New York.

Wandering Star, located in Pittsfield in Western Massachusetts, is a 15 barrel brewery which started production this year although they were ready much earlier. Thanks to a proposed change in the Farmer Brewer license category, they avoided having to pay $4500 a year for a manufacturing license, a significantly heftier sum than the $110 that "tiny farm breweries" like Sam Adams and Harpoon pay even though Wandering Star grows some of their own hops and contract for some locally grown barley malted at local maltsters, Valley Malt.

[podcast - How did Wandering Start start?]

[podcast - Why the Berkshires; Valley Malting; Farmer Brewers; compare to Sam Adams.]

[podcast - Alex Hall; real ale; types of Wandering Star beers brewed.]

Chris & Chris toast with 2 Wandering Star beers. Cheers!

Juren, the man who took all the photos above.

Juren in action!