The Foul English, Village Brewery
like campfires and marshmallows, music and beer are just better together. Calgary’s Village Brewery recently came up with a particularly ingenious way to integrate the two, to entertaining and surprisingly delicious effect. Tonight (Friday, Feb. 23) marks the third in a series of monthly events hosted in the brewery’s tap room. The Village Cask Sessions see one local band dream up a custom cask of Village beer, which is dutifully brewed then opened and tasted for the first and only time while the band performs. The event is free and open to the public, but there are only about 40 pints of the never-to-be-brewed-again beer ($6 a pint; standard varieties of Village beer are available all evening once that stuff runs out).
Last month, fans of the folk-punk band Ghost Factory came up with a take on a white IPA by mixing Village Wit and Village Neighbour with extra hops; before that, punk quartet The Shiverettes added tequila and lime to a cask of Neighbour. For this session, local punk rockers The Foul English are on tap. (Fair warning: a larger pun lies ahead).
Tonight’s offering came together following a couple of meetings between taproom co-ordinator and marketing guy, Eric Daponte, and band members David Sereda, Mike Semenchuk, Stephen Rubletz and Nick False (above, left to right). Big fans of The Clash, The Foul English, who describe themselves as “beer-league, dad-core, punk-rockers,” ran with a take on the Village Bobby, a northern English brown ale. “We thought it would be clever to mash Caribbean flavours to an English ale,” says False. “The Clash were one of the first bands to put punk and reggae together, so this is like a pint of The Clash.” The name of the brew, coined by Rubletz, is a pun on the circa-1979 Joe Strummer-Mick Jones duet, “Rudie Can’t Fail.”
Rudie Can’t Ale (good, right?) infuses a dose of tamarind paste and a dash of allspice into the Village Bobby. It wasn’t an easy sell. “I’ve made a lot of custom casks, but I’d never used tamarind before,” says Daponte. “It has a sourness to it that I wasn’t sure would complement the ale.” He and the band did a few test runs on pints, and Daponte was sold. “It’s got a cool taste, and sour beers are up and coming right now.” Two weeks ago, the bandmates themselves put the ingredients into the cask to steep.
Starting at 8:30 tonight, the band will play two sets—some new songs, some covers—followed by a performance of their entire 2016 album. Before that, however, the cask will be tapped at 6 p.m. Break out your best “chicken-skin suit,” to quote The Clash, and don’t be late: punk-rock beer waits for no one.