Summer Firkin Féile This Saturday Is Going To Be Firkin Wild!

Local breweries from around the North Star State are gathering in Buffalo on Saturday for an outdoor all-cask ale festival at Hayes Public House. The festival will not only feature cask ales but also have live music playing throughout the day too.

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According to an online event page, the list of visiting breweries is pretty big, and prestigious.

Torg, Spring Lake Park
Hackamore, Chanhassen
Lupine, Delano
Under Pressure, Golden Valley
Nordic, Monticello
Mana, Shakopee
Boathouse Brothers, Prior Lake
Spilled Grain, Annandale
Heavy Rotation, Brooklyn Park
Rustech, Monticello
Lupulin, Big Lake
Sunken Ship, Princeton

Hayes Public House on Saturday will also have a food truck on site. According to the event page, starting at 12:00 PM Pep Island Food Truck will be there, the summer firkin feile from 2 to 5:30, and then the live music will be from The Star Chiefs, starting at 2:30.

Tickets to the event are $35 in advance and $40 at the door. To get tickets to the event you can go here.

What is cask ale?

According to CraftBeer.com cask ale is "Unfiltered beer (usually ale), that is racked (transferred) into casks, krausened (carbonated), sealed and then undergoes a slight final fermentation in the cask"

If you attend the event you might even see the cask ale being dispensed, and that is a pretty cool thing to see. Craftbeer.com goes on to detail that process, "While the traditional method for dispensing cask beer is through a beer engine (hand pump), it can also be dispensed using a cask tap. This is literally a faucet that is hammered into the cask through the keystone (hence the term tapping a keg). Once tapped, the beer is dispensed by gravity. As the beer flows, air is allowed to enter through the spile (a small wooden peg used to control the flow of air into, and carbon dioxide out of a cask)."

It's looking like the event itself should be fun for those that enjoy a cask ale, and educational for those that don't know a lot about craft beer, but more importantly it's getting together with people and enjoying summer in Minnesota.