The Chicago Real Ale Festival is in its 5th year of competition.  This is a beer festival devoted only to British cask ales.  It is the biggest cask ale competition outside of Britain.  This is the GABF of cask beers.

This year's festival will feature over 230 beers from about 82 American breweries.  They also feature 10 cask beers delivered fresh from Britain.

All beers are served out of firkins, 10.6 US gallon (9.5 Imperial gallons) kegs that are traditionally used for cask style beers.  The festival also sets up British beer engines, or hand pumps for all the cask beers served.

The festival is held on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday March 1st, 2nd, and 3rd.  Judging of the cask ales is done Saturday afternoon.  Bottle conditioned ale judging is held on Thursday.

Magnolia Pub and Brewery won a third place award for the Blue Bell Bitter.  Magnolia is entered again this year, and other Northern California breweries include:  Bear Republic, Coast Range, Hoptown, Marin, Mendocino, Moylan's, Russian River, and Third Street Ale Works.

****After returning home from Chicago, I can only say one thing.....It's so good to be home.  Chicago just isn't for me.  But the Real Ale Fest was an incredible time.  I had to roll into Magnolia for a few pints of Prescription in a laid-back environment just to ground myself.

It started Thursday night with the homebrew competition.  All the homebrew was served through hand pumps, and everyone was supposed to vote on their favorites.  I hate to say this over the internet, but I tried all of them, and there was nothing worth voting on. 

The bottle conditioned beer judging was also Thursday night, but they weren't available for sampling until Friday.  Cask beer judging was Friday morning at 9AM!  Arne and Dave from Marin and Magnolia had to judge.  25 stouts for Arne and milds, strong ales, and barley wines for Dave.  Good Morning!

The IPA category was swept by California breweries.  It was 1. SLO Brewing (which I think is a knock-off of my favorite, 20Tank War Bonnet), Russian River, then Magnolia Proving Ground.  Congratulations Melissa and Dave!  Just more proof that California leads the rest of the country in awesome beer.  Denise from 3rd Street Ale Works also won a 2nd for the Porter.

There were 155 American cask beers, 9 British casks, and 64 bottle conditioned beers.  Unfortunately the bottle conditioned beers were held in a really small room that was over crowded, so I was only able to have one.  As for casks, I sampled 51 in all.  I managed to tackle 24 of 29 IPA's.  I have to admit, after 20 or so, my palette hit a wall.  I have much more of a tolerance for tap beers than for cask beers.

Most of the casks were gravity fed.  They had about 25 beer engines for some of the beers.  I preferred the gravity beers - they kept the carbonation better.  They had a glycol system set up that had jackets that covered the kegs, with glycol running through them to cool the kegs.  The kegs in the back room were left alone as it was cool enough on it's own to chill the beer.

My best of show were the Kalamazoo (Bell's) Two-Hearted Ale (IPA), and the Emmett's Tavern Oatmeal Stout.  Neither one won a medal, but they both should have.

The fest continued Saturday all day.  It was very crowded, which was good, but it also sucked because there were too many people most of the time, and it got to be un-enjoyable. 

There were many brewers there from around the country.  From the Bay Area we had:  James from Moylan's, Arne from Marin, Denise From 3rd Street, Dave and Melissa from Magnolia, and me (from Potrero, but weaseling in on Magnolia's extra ticket).

Here's a link to the winners.

Here's some pictures from the weekend.  Some are hard to see because of the poor lighting, but hopefully you'll get something out of them.