by B.J. Gamboa
After Saturday’s massive Cask Ales Festival at Blue Point, I headed back to River Avenue for the release of Blue Point’s Hazy Bastard (a juicy, hop-forward, New England style IPA).
Read: A dispatch from Blue Point’s last Cask Ales on River Avenue
The tents were partially taken down, the sun was out and Lombardi’s Market was on hand, providing brunch for folks who bought any of the cans.
Before partaking, I sat down with Elyse Carlucci, Blue Point Brewing Company’s events manager, to talk more about Cask Ales, the nation’s largest cask festival.
Q: This was the biggest one that I’ve seen so far. What went into planning such a huge event?
A: This [was] our 15 annual Cask Ales festival. It’s been going on for a long time, but last year was the first year we expanded it into both parking lots. So, we added a lot more space. Usually we sell out within a few hours of the festival [being announced] so it’s great to be able to sell more tickets this year and meet the demand of the festival.
I think it’s a really unique concept. Not everyone does niche festivals. We served only cask ales yesterday, which was awesome. We had 65 breweries come yesterday so [we had to coordinate] all the breweries that arrived and all the volunteers and vendors. We also host a lot of people from out of town.
How did you select which brewers were invited? I noticed that there’s a good representation of the local guys.
The local guys were here at the very first festival in a blizzard in 2004. Some of them even arrived literally by snow mobile. That was not a joke. They’ve been supporting us for a really long time and collaboration is at the heart of the craft brewing community and especially with the Cask Ales Festival. This cask fest we really focus on the collaborative effort. A lot of homebrew clubs came… we invite all Long island breweries, all New York City breweries, breweries from upstate and then we send the invite to a lot of the bigger players from all over the country.
We encourage people to come and pour their own casks; that’s one thing we really push for. We really want the brewers to come and show off their own creation. I think that really hits home with the guests because they get to drink the beer from the brewers [themselves] and talk about it.
What’s cools about casks is that because everything is done in the vessel you can add a lot of crazy ingredients and it lends itself well to a lot of innovation and some really cool ideas.
I know you guys wanted to be the biggest cask fest. Did you achieve this?
Yes! We [officially] beat Milwuakee’s numbers from last year in both attendance and number of breweries. We’re really excited about that. Cask ales isn’t something a lot of breweries do because the concept isn’t as modern and new and hip, so really being able to teach people about cask and having people experience it is really fun for us.
Were there any special considerations you had to address?
We have two big signature events that we host here every year. The cask festival, which has been happening since 2004, and this past year we just added The Logger Lager; a lager-only festival and it’s just New York State breweries. We thought that was a cool differentiation.
We think niche beer festivals are becoming more and more appealing. Since there are so many beer festivals happening everywhere [it’s good to be able to] differentiate yourself.
We’re also looking forward to the Alive After Fives that we host too.
You guys are gonna be in a great position for that.
Yeah, we’re really excited about the new brewery and being able to host more people and have more visibility. I think that’s really important. It’ll be really, really fun!
What do you have planned for the new facility?
It’s all still in the planning but the official date is April 21, 2018, for the next Cask Ales Festival. Opening day [at the new brewery] is still TBD but we’re hoping for December or January. We’re really excited about and hopefully we’ll be able to have a bigger tasting room, more brewing capacity and obviously a much bigger parking lot so we can host a lot more people.
So we’ll be excited to see how the cask festival goes with the new facility.
Well, it looks like Milwuakee won’t stand a chance!
(Laughs) Yeah, I don’t think so. We’ll see.
