Late Night Brewing II
So here I am again, brewing late. Today I had lunch at the Old Capitol Pub and Brewery.. something that is becoming a very enjoyable ritual. I had Paul’s new Mardi Gras Bock beer. Its a little on the sweet side, I guess he had a sticky fermentation, and I admonished him for not borrowing our awesome lager yeast. Don’t worry though, its still very yummy, and has some great German malt character.
I had recently dropped off some Wit yeast that we just used in making our latest batch of John’s Generation’s White Ale, and today he was brewing his wit beer with the yeast. They seemed very frothy and ready to ferment! It was nice to eat lunch and watch someone else work hard at brewing for a change, I have to admit. 
Tommorrow they will be tapping their first Cask Conditioned Ale. Unfortunately I will miss out, as I will be here brewing. If your not brewing though, you have no excuse to miss out! This is the first tapping of a Cask Conditioned Ale in Eastern Iowa since the one tapped at the Iowa City Beer Festival last summer. A rare event indeed. They said they are going to stay up drinking until the cask is empty, so don’t be expecting any Friday, get there on thursday and enjoy it while it lasts! I love Cask Conditioned Ales, but i’m afraid its just not something that we can easily do here, so I’m glad to see Old Capitol doing it. Hopefully they will be tapping another one soon, so that I can get to drink a pint or three.
I’ll be at Fluer Fine Wine and Ale in Des Moines doing a product demo from 2pm to 5pm this Saturday. So if in the area feel free to stop to sample some free beer and chat.
Well I better get back to brewing, its going to be a long night!
UPDATE: I stopped in and had a pint. It was GLORIOUS! Every swallow was like juicy, zesty ecstasy. If you have never had a cask ale, then you just don’t know what beer was meant to be.