Cheeses often provide the perfect foil for the flavoursome and diverse styles that are brewed across the lowland country; some fatty, rich and creamy, whilst others are high on funk, some carry a woodier mushroom type taste and others can be driven by acidic, tart flavours.

Carbonation is a key element in Belgian beer; a stark contrast to British cask which itself holds a much lower carbonation and really is designed to tick other boxes for the drinker.  This carbonation provides a fresh acidity, good for cleansing the palate and for bringing out or complimenting the flavours in the food the beer is paired with.
 
On this occasion, two of the Ladies that Beer, Julie O’Grady and Fiona Hood were presenting a crowd, gathered at the Head of Steam in Liverpool, pairings to showcase the versatility of Belgian styles.  As a frequent visitor to Belgium, Fiona brought a lot of knowledge on each of the carefully selected beers whilst Julie selected some cheeses to match from local favourites, the Liverpool Cheese Company.  The breadth of the beers selected took in sour Gueze, fresh and lively saison, heady and malty Tripel and an aceticly sharp Flanders Red ale, as detailed below:
 
Pairing one – Brasserie de la Senne - Taras Boulba / Gorwydd Caerphilly
 
Pairing two – Oud Beersel - Oud Gueze / Vacherin Mont Dor
 
Pairing three – Saison Du Pont / Monte Enebro
 
Pairing four – Westmalle Tripel / Comte St Antoine
 
Pairing five – Rochefort 10 / Munster
 
Pairing six – Duchesse Du Bourgogne / Forme D’Ambert

Cask Ale Week is and has been organised by Cask Marque for well over a decade, with the intention of improving awareness and celebrating one of Britain's most famous beverages, which is often misunderstood, but frequently celebrated when brewed and conditioned correctly.

Here on Merseyside, we have a wide selection of pubs and bars that are now keeping excellently conditioned cask beer as it should be, served with care and full of flavour.

On 20th and 21st September, at the start of Cask Ale Week, Liverpool will experience the Modern Cask Festival, to be held at Gibberish Brewpub in the Baltic Triangle.  The mini-festival will see a mix of styles from breweries across not just Liverpool, but the rest of the UK.

More information through here: 
https://moderncask.com/2019/09/05/modern-cask-fest-start-the-conversation/
Tickets:
https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/modern-cask-fest-liverpool-tickets-66750782387

The official Cask Ale Week website (link below) has a list of events that are happening across the UK, although there may be some which are missed off or not added just yet, so it may be worth keeping an eye on it!  More locally, below is a list of some of the the excellent places in Liverpool and across the city region that stock a brilliant pint of cask ale, be it best bitter, pale, IPA or a rich deep dark stout.

Find out more about Cask Ale Week here.

Pubs serving great cask ale across Cask Ale Week and all year round:

The Ale House, Prescot Road, Old Swan
The Bard, High Street, Prescot 
Beer EnGin, Greenes Road, Whiston
Beer Station, Victoria Road, Freshfield
The Belverdere Arms, Sugnall Street, Liverpool
The Bow-legged Beagle, Victoria Road, New Brighton
The Bridewell, Campbell Square, Liverpool
Cask, Queen's Drive, Stoneycroft
The Cornerpost, Bridge Road, Crosby
The Cricketers, Peter Street, St Helens
Dr Duncan's, Liverpool
The Fly in the Loaf, Hardman Street, Liverpool
The Freshfield Hotel, Massam's Lane, Freshfield
The Grapes, Roscoe Street, Liverpool
The Grasshopper, Sandon Road, Hillside, Southport
The Handyman, Smithdown Road, Wavertree
The Head of Steam, Hanover Street, Liverpool
The Lady of Mann, Dale Street, Liverpool
The Lion Tavern, Moorfields, Liverpool
Love Lane Brewery, Bridgewater Street, Liverpool
Maghull Cask, Liverpool Road South, Maghull
The Pen Factory, Hope Street, Liverpool
Pi, Rose Lane, Mossley Hill
The Pilgrim, Pilgrim Street, Liverpool
The Roscoe Head, Roscoe Street, Liverpool
Sanctuary, Lime Street, Liverpool
The Ship and Mitre, Dale Street, Liverpool
Tap and Bottles, Cambridge Walks, Southport
Thomas Rigby's, Dale Street, Liverpool
Three Piggies, Allerton Road, Allerton
Trap and Hatch, South Road, Waterloo
The Turk's Head, Morley Street, St Helen's
The West Kirby Tap, Grange Road, West Kirby

The grain was loaded into the mash tun when the hot liquor had reached the correct strike temperature and as the grain in the tun steeped, our next job was to weigh out the = bittering and whirlpool hops for our beer.
After a generous round of sparging to ensure that we had obtained the residual fermentable sugars from the grain, the sugary wort was transferred across to the kettle to boil and sterilise, but also to receive bittering hop additions from what we had weighed out.
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The next step was to dig out the mash tun, again! By this point we were all getting quite a bit of déjà vu from moving spent grain out of a tun and into empty sacks?!  Though good fun was had by all with the porridgey spent grain; it is an honest and cathartic pleasure at times.

This took us up to lunchtime, and for this Runaway’s head honcho, Mark Welsby, took us on a little adventure into the city centre to visit beer festival favourites, Holy Crab in their current home at the Arndale Market.  Put simply, their food is to die for!  For any food enthusiast (that isn’t averse to seafood of course) Holy Crab are a must visit if you’re ever out and about in Manchester!  Top tip - keep an eye out for their in-house mayonnaise, which is funnily enough, made using Runaway Brewery beer!

After stopping for coffee at Red Berry Club around the corner, we were fashionably late for the morning brew.  We met with Sean, the head brewer at Black Lodge and made our way around the back entrance where an open barrel fire was already roaring, ready to cleanse some barrels the rustic way.  Although Black Lodge have expanded into their new space, we were working from the some of the old kit, which although not as shiny as the new equipment, are a token reminder of their smaller beginnings but no less effective.

After heaving the bags of grain and malts in, we got stuck in with the mash tun.  Both Angela & Natalie had turns mashing in as this was a hefty amount of oats, making the mash begin to turn quickly into the consistency of a thick and almost cemented porridge – this made for very tough work.  As Sean was feeling experimental, we added a thick layer of flaked oats to the top, to release more sugar, body and oaty-flavour into the brew.

, CaliThe reason for that activity is simple: Box Social make a boat-load of really excellent beers. We tried pretty much everything they had, in all honesty (pun intended): Try Honesty a West Coast pale was first, Cry Agony – a smooth peanut bourbon milkshake pale, and Die Tragedy – a berry and marshmallow sour (tip of the cap to Lally @ Mad Hatter on that one) swiftly followed. Incredibly generously, they have donated a range of four-packs for inclusion in our charity raffle – be sure to pick up tickets before the draw at the end of Beer Week.
 
There wasn’t a great deal of time for standing around and drinking, however. All hands to the pump as the pressures of transferring beer, weighing cans, and monitoring the underback: We did our best to muck in where we could to help out with the regular brewery business. It was a real eye-opener for the pressures that microbrewers are under to produce and package beer consistently: Ross, Steve, Calum and co were incredibly calm under what was a highly pressured day. Definitely earned a beer themselves at the end of it – as did we, and we partook back at their City Centre tap, alongside some of the other crafty sights Newcastle had to offer.

The split grain bill (Pale Ale, Carapils and Mild malts - plus Oats) was loaded into Blackjack’s remarkable and oddly shaped square mash tun (the Blackjack brewers love the efficiency that they achieve using this bit of kit and proceeded to give us a lowdown on what that meant – it’s a technical business this brewing lark!).

After the grain had steeped for an hour or so, the wort was then recirculated through the mash tun, whilst an additional 15kg of lactose sugar was gradually poured in to bolster the liquor for transfer to the kettle.  After further circulation - to ensure even distribution of the lactose throughout the wort – the grain was sparged to release any last sugars before being transferred to the kettle for bittering hop additions (Saaz and Marynka) and boiling/sterilising.

Once the boil had started to roll, it was time to dig out the spent grain from the mash tun; This technical task was carried out expertly by our very own Angela and Sam (with the help of Dave and Pedro).  Nailed it.

It was safety first, with dust masks handed out whilst mashing in (we were smiling behind these for the pictures) and while we worked on the mash tun.  Pedro hefted the sacks of malt and grain into the new, larger mash tun which Neptune have recently acquired whilst Angela stirred to ensure no claggy lumps of grain; neither an easy task and a good workout! All lumps and clumps successfully eradicated, it was left to allow all the sugars to release and the enzymes to do their job, creating the wort ready for transfer to the kettle.

The fun part, or so Angela said, was digging out the mash tun with the help of the manway, which is particularly helpful for us shorter folk.  After digging out the spent grain from the tun, we weighed out the hops ready to introduce some heady aromas and big flavour to our beer; an extravagant amount of Citra hops was used in this beer and the single hop. Added to the boil before adding some additional sugar (dextrin), we then waited for the hot liquor to cool down before transferring across to the fermentation vessel.  Our day way done upon pitching of the yeast, but there was some additional dry hopping of the beer by Les, with more of the big, oily Citra hops to introduce yet more flavour and aroma.