NERAX cask festival is coming to The Tap

I guess it has been a while since I wrote. The NERAX cask festival is coming, the NERAX cask festival is coming! It is one of the few times per year you can get multiple real cask conditioned beers. Most of the time (if you are lucky enough to find someone service cask) you get 1 option. To have 20-30 options is just awesome.
Setup for the festival started last weekend. With the kegs settling in, http://www.tapbrewpub.com/">The Tap is ready to start this show on Thursday. I will be there on the weekend, so be looking for me. I will be the one with the big smile on her face.
Come, drink, and enjoy some of the best beer in the world.

Refractometer - what the heck is that - NERAX is back!!!

So I totally forgot to take pictures yesterday of the brewing process. Steve braved the cold-ish temperatures and brewed a Porter. About half way through the process when he used his Refractometer to measure the density of the beer (this helps us we figure out the alcohol %) he realized that he forgot to account for the hard water of Amesbury. It is funny, but the water you use really really really does make a difference in your beer. Offsets are needed to negate the chemicals in the town water – especially when it comes to dark beers. Anyway it looks, smells and tastes good – so that is all that matters
Another note NERAX is back at The Tap from Nov 5-7th. This cask festival should not be missed. It is great way to taste some beers the way they were meant to be served. If you have never had cask – you may think you beer is flat – but that is the way it was designed to be served. Steve and possibly myself will be working this event. Come and say hi and drink some awesome beers.

New concept - sober blogging – NERAX deserves it!!!

Sorry again to my fan base (now possibly at 3??) for the latency of my blogging.

This past weekend I went to a NERAX the New England Real Ale Exhibition festival. For those of you not familiar with it, it is basically a cask-conditioned ale fair. Cask- conditioned ail is served flat and warm (on purpose), and can be considered by North Americans an acquired taste. For beer geeks, it allows us to taste the true flavor of the beer.

The NEREX fest in Somerville MA is one of the largest in the US, but it is still not that big. It is a total beer geek fest. The first time I attended one of these the Fullers ESB was so good, that I almost immediately scheduled a trip to England – just for beer. We decided to make vacation out of it and visit Hungary, but the #1 reason we went was beer. This was not the first, nor the last time a good beer has ignited a trip.

We attended the last day of the fair, so the beer selection was a bit limited. That is to be expected at this event. They still had a solid 30ish British and Americans on tap, so all was well.

My favorite for the night – the classic – Old Speckled Hen. Yum.