This week is what we call Cask Week–the week leading up to the Washington Cask Beer Festival. To start things off, on Tuesday the Rogue Issaquah Brewhouse celebrated the official release of Herbert’s Legendary Cask Fest Ale (read about the beer here). Oh momma! It did not disappoint. We were fortunate enough to try both versions–one dry-hopped with Amarillo hops and the other dry-hopped with Ahtanum hops. Both of them are eye-poppingly hoppy, as they should be.

Tonight – Thursday, March 25h

Celebrate the Huskies’ victory (or mourn their defeat) with a tasty cask-conditioned beer. We have some ideas for you. We’ll be out there. As usual, find us and win free beer. Details below. As always, you can find information about upcoming events by checking out our Washington Beer Events Calendar.

• Cask Fest Preview - The Washington Cask Beer Festival takes place this Saturday at Seattle Center. The event is sold out. Tonight you can enjoy a sneak peak when the Latona Pub hosts the first of two official Cask Fest Previews. They will be pouring cask-conditioned offerings from Big Time Brewing and Big Al’s Brewing. Also, they will be tapping a cask of Herbert’s Legendary Cask Fest Ale. Things get hopping at 6:00 p.m.

  The second Cask Fest Preview will take place tomorrow (Friday) at Brouwer’s Cafe, where they’ll be tempting your palate with cask beer from Anacortes Brewing, Black Raven Brewing, and Elysian Brewing. Of course they will also be serving up “the Herbert’s,” as well. Things get rolling at 6:00 p.m.

• Brewers Night at Beveridge Place – West Seattle’s Beveridge Place Pub welcomes the crew from Elliott Bay Brewing for a brewers night celebration. They will be tapping a cask of Elliott Bay Pro-Am Imperial IPA along with 4 other Elliott Bay offerings. The evening will include swag give-aways and all the usual brewers night hoopla. The fun starts at 7:00 p.m.

  We will be at the Beveridge Place Pub. Find us and tell us the secret password and we’ll buy you a beer. Today’s secret password is Cask-o-Rama.

• Cask Night at Naked City Taphouse - Up in Greenwood, Naked City Taphouse will be tapping a cask of their own Spark in the Dark Smoked Porter. I just got off the phone with Naked City’s Donald Averill to confirm tonight’s selection. He also told me that their intention is to consistently offer cask beer every Thursday – they open at 4:00 p.m. They want everyone to know that you can always expect to find cask beer at Naked City on Thursdays. Cheers to that!

It was a dark and stormy night, one that would make even a gothic freak like Edgar Allen Poe shudder against the wind and rain, when suddenly out of the unsettled darkness Black Raven Brewing came tap, tap, tapping at the door. Enough with the highbrow literary crap.

Last night the Beveridge Place Pub announced the winner of its annual Hoptoberfest competition – a month-long elimination tournament of Washington IPAs. The competition determines the house IPA at the Beveridge Place for the coming year. This is an illustrious honor in itself, but also represents a significant number of guaranteed keg sales. The three finalists were Boundary Bay IPA, Harmon Pt. Defiance IPA, and Black Raven Trickster IPA. Last night, Black Raven took home the title.

The Beveridge Place announces the Hoptoberfest winner at its annual Cask-o-Rama festival. For the past four years, Boundary Bay IPA has been the champion. Every year Boundary Bay won in a landslide and it was beginning to seem like it would never change. Last night, Black Raven Brewing had a trick up its sleeve. The upstarts from Redmond upset the champions when their Trickster IPA was announced the winner of the 2009 Hoptoberfest competition. Our sources behind the bar at the Bev tell us that Trickster IPA won by a landslide.

The video below shows Beveridge Place publican Gary Sink announcing the winner. It also shows Beaux Bowman and the crew from Black Raven enthusiastically accepting the award.

Boundary Bay IPA is a seriously fine beer and holding the title for as long as they did is truly impressive. Thus quoth the raven, “Nevermore.”

Mark your calendar – Thursday November 6th. Time once again for The Beveridge Place Pub’s Cask-o-Rama. Last year they had 24 kegs of cask conditioned IPA lined up on the bar! You’ve never seen anything like it. It starts on Thursday and rolls on until the casks are all empty. Get there on Thursday for the ultimate selection of cask conditioned IPA you can imagine. Get a tray of tasters. This is an awesome event.

Here’s what Gary Sink, your humble publican has to say about it – “We started out with the idea to have a couple of cask IPAs on the bar when we announce the winner of Hoptoberfest. The problem was how do we pick from all the great IPAs brewed in Washington? Who could we leave out? NOBODY! So we’ve invited every Washington brewer to plunk a keg on the bar and last year we had 24 casks!”