Saturday was the 2014 Edmonton Beer Geeks Anonymous Real Ale Festival. Due to scheduling conflicts I had not been able to make previous incarnations of this unique event, but was pleased to finally have darkened its doors this year.

For those unfamiliar, the EBGA Real Ale Festival is a one-day event celebrating traditional cask ale. This year 14 Western Canadian breweries sent a cask specially designed for the event. All were tapped at the beginning of the afternoon and were served until the beer was gone. About 150 people (alas, mostly men) were in attendance in a cozy community hall in south Edmonton.

When I arrived, the room had a quiet buzz about it. Tables of beer-shirt attired attendees were hunched over their half-pint of beer, quietly sharing thoughts with their companions, some taking notes. It reminded me, in a strange way, of an English pub (except it was in a community hall…). No music, no fancy accoutrements, all the focus was on the beer. Twelve casks were lined up at the serving station and a steady stream of empty glasses awaited to be filled. (Sadly, two of the participating casks – Yukon and Paddock Wood – never made it to the final destination and were mourned as transportation casualties). While it was still early in the day, I felt pretty confident that no drunken antics were going to emerge. These were people serious about their beer appreciation rather than party types. Now, a good chunk of the room had the explicit goal of sampling every ale on offer, but they were doing so either in teams or had a carefully timed pace.

Because I only had a couple hours, I jettisoned the hope of sampling all the offerings, but still tried to get to a few. And there was a lot of interesting beer on offer. Every brewery took the project seriously, providing an interesting cask ale. There was everything from a hefeweizen dry-hopped with Mt. Hood (brewed by Wood Buffalo), to a brown ale with vanilla and cocoa (Brewsters) to a variety of dry-hopped IPAs and an Oak-aged oatmeal stout (Alley Kat).

In the end I got to seven of the twelve in some form of sample (including sips from others’ glasses). The most surprising was Jasper Brewing’s Sutter Hill Pilsner with ground chocolate and roasted barley added. The additions transformed the beer entirely. Olds College Brewery also stood out with an Imperial IPA dry-hopped with Citra, oaked with four kinds of oak cubes and primed with dark candi sugar. I will lay odds many of the festival attendees will have docked it points for the thin, dry body. But having just been in San Diego (more on that in coming days), I was impressed by just how much the beer had in common with San Diego IPAs. I also discovered that Red Racer IPA tastes good no matter what form it takes. Finally the Alley Kat 61/2 Bears Stout was a nice finisher, the oak-aging taking some of the roasty edges off it, but adding an earthy complexity.

It was a fun event. I can think of far worse ways of spending an afternoon than sipping on pints of real ale, chatting beer with knowledgeable, passionate people and generally just relaxing. I wish I could have stayed another hour or two. Now I just gotta hope I keep the date free in 2015 so I don’t miss it ever again!