“Our 17th Annual IPA Cask-O-Rama is this Friday at 5pm! Enjoy cask-conditioned brews from eight Washington breweries and stick around for the announcement of the winner of our HOPvemberfest competition!”
So said Beveridge Place Pub’s announcement on Instagram, but there’s more to the story than that. For lovers of cask-conditioned beer and lovers of IPA, this is one of Seattle’s premier beer events of the year.
Beveridge Place Pub spends the entire month of November paying much attention to IPA. A rotating selection of IPAs, all month. Featuring as many as 20 IPAs on tap at a time. In a tournament-style competition, Washington-brewed IPAs are widdled down, as voted on by pub patrons, to a final eight and then a final three. Voting ends as December begins.
This year the finalists included Georgetown Brewing’s Bodhizafa IPA; Good Society Brewery’s Welcome to Alki, Beaches IPA; and Bale Breaker Brewing’s Top Cutter IPA. Eventually, the HOPvemberfest champion is named. At IPA Cask-O-Rama, the winner is announced.
That beer becomes the house IPA, the always-on-tap IPA, at Beveridge Place Pub for the coming year. It’s a nice “contract” for a brewery. A lot of guaranteed keg sales in a world where keg sales are getting harder to come by. The runner-up is guaranteed one keg per month. The second runner-up is guaranteed one keg every other month.
The casks get tapped at 5:00 today (December 8th). The big announcement is usually around 8:00.
Check out the Washington Beer Blog’s events page for more beer-related events around Washington.
