Pic(k) of the Week: Oliver's conditioned casks.

Today: a photo only a cask-ale partisan could love.



These two firkins (10.8 gallon casks) definitely have seen some use over the years: beat up on the outside but pristine clean on the inside.

The proof of the latter was indeed the beer on the inside. Brewed and conditioned by the Oliver Brewing Company (in Baltimore, Maryland), the ales were full-flavored, bright, naturally carbonated, and traditional, devoid, as it were, of extraneous, 'non-beer' ingredients. (My parameters for that last requirement appear to have become more forgiving: the strong brown ale on the right was infused with oak spirals.)

At a cask ale festival, at ...
Mad Fox Brewing Company
Falls Church, Virginia.
7 November 2015.

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• After years of creating cask ales (and fizzier beers) in a tiny subterranean brewery in the Pratt Street Alehouse brewpub in downtown Baltimore, Maryland, Oliver Brewing Company moved its brewing operations into a more spacious, new production facility during the summer of 2015. The Pratt Street Alehouse, where it all began in 1993 (then known as the Wharf Rat), remains open (just no longer brewing). By virtue of attrition and success, Oliver Brewing is the oldest, continuously operating brewery in Maryland.
• Caveat lector: At the time I took this photo, I was a representative for Select Wines, Inc. —a wine and beer wholesaler in northern Virginia— some of whose products are the beers of Oliver Brewing. Any opinions here are mine alone.


• Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of personal photos, usually posted on Saturdays, and often, but not always, with a good fermentable as a subject. Camera: Olympus Pen E-PL1.
• Commercial reproduction requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.


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