On Brooklyn Brewery’s blog yesterday, brewmaster Garrett Oliver was asked a question we’re all dying to know the answer to: what beer pairs well with KFC’s new monstrosity - the Double-Down Sandwich?

For those not in the know, the Double-Down includes cheese, bacon, and spicy mayonaise sandwiched between two fried chicken breasts. It packs quite a bit of fat, but even more sodium, so you obviously need to wash this down with something before your mouth becomes as dry as a desert.

So, what pairs best with the Double-Down? Here’s your answer:

Colt 45 with a dissolved Pepcid AC. It works every time.

Well played, Mr. Oliver. And a hat tip for your Patton Oswalt “failure bowl” reference.

Tomorrow night, Blind Tiger in the West Village will be serving up an impressive amount of beer from Brooklyn Brewery. A great deal of it will be from Brooklyn's Brewmaster Series, including a couple personal favorites of mine: the Brooklyn Cookie Jar Porter on cask and Brooklyn Manhattan Project and Brooklyn Sorachi Ace on draft. Brooklyn brewmaster Garrett Oliver will be on hand for the festivities as well.

Here’s what you can look forward to:

Brooklyn Manhattan Project
Brooklyn Saviore Faire
Brooklyn Cuvee de Cardoz
Brooklyn Intensified Coffee Stout
Brooklyn Blast
Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout 2006
Brooklyn Monster Barleywine 2007
Brooklyn Soriachi Ace (Draught & Bottles)
Brooklyn Cookie Jar (Cask)
Brooklyn Back Breaker
Brooklyn Extra Brune
Brooklyn Schneider Hoppen-Weisse
Brooklyn Wild One (Bottles)
Brooklyn Pilsner
Brooklyn Pennant Pale Ale
Brooklyn Brown
Brooklyn Summer (Cask & Draught)
Brooklyn IPA
Brooklyn Lager
Brooklyner Hefe-weisen

The fun gets underway at 4pm tomorrow. Enjoy!

There were plenty of casks at The Gate on Friday. By Saturday night, though, they were all empty (photo via Imbiber on Flickr).

Brooklyn beer bar The Gate can toot its own horn after Gotham Imbiber's 2nd Annual Cask Festival there this weekend. The event, which was scheduled to run from Friday until Sunday, was too successful. This certainly isn’t a bad thing (unless you ask the people who were planning on going on Sunday), and it shows just how popular craft beer has become in New York City.

The Park Slope bar tapped 13 casks on Friday afternoon at 3pm. The first one to kick, Ballast Point’s Sculpin IPA, was gone by 1pm on Saturday afternoon, according to their Twitter stream. Nine hours later - a full day before the festival was supposed to end - all the beer was gone. I ran into owner Pat Fondiller on Sunday at Blind Tiger, and he told me that cask beer accounted for a whopping 80% of their total sales on Saturday. It wasn’t just the crowds that drained the casks; nearly everyone at The Gate was drinking cask beer.

The festival was a victim of its own success. I’m impressed that the demand for cask beer - a niche within the craft beer scene - is so high. Good job, Brooklyn! Guess they’ll have to find room for some more casks next year.

In the meantime, whet your whistle for two more cask festivals: Rattle-N-Hum gets their cask festival underway tomorrow afternoon starting at 1pm, and Gotham Imbiber will host the next in their series of cask festivals at the Brazen Head in Brooklyn starting on Friday night, April 30th.

If I wasn’t sick as a dog, I’d be drinking the beers I’m about the mention below. Of course, the stuffy nose certainly doesn’t help when I’m trying to enjoy these beers. Soon enough, I’ll be able to taste again, but in the meantime, have a few of these beers for me this weekend!

It’s usually hard to find, but Captain Lawrence’s Birra DeCicco is available in the city. This dubbel is a sweet little number brewed with chestnut honey and jam. The beer was brewed specifically for a chain of supermarkets in Westchester County, but you can drink it in the friendly confines of Brooklyn today at Mission Dolores. Outside. On an 80 degree evening. Sounds good, right? If you’re looking for something a bit less creative, you can find Captain Lawrence’s Freshchester Pale Ale at newcomer Matt Torrey’s on Ainslie Street in East Williamsburg, a/k/a Bushwick a/k/a the neighborhood the anti-hipster crew loves to hate. Regardless, it’s worth a visit for its great beer selection and relaxed vibe.

Over in Manhattan, Standings is holding its annual spring Dogfish Head event tonight, pouring the illustrious Aprihop - a sure sign of spring, if you needed another sign another than the weather these past few days. This IPA brewed with delicious apricots can also be found on draft at Barcade in Brooklyn for those who don’t want to cross the bridge.

If you’re on the hunt for some cask beer, this is your week. First, get your whistle whet by heading to Brooklyn for Gotham Imbiber’s 2nd Annual Cask Festival at The Gate, which will kick off tomorrow at 3pm. They’re promising at least 10 “rare and interesting” casks of beer for your perusing, with no entry fee, of course. That’s good training for next week’s Cask Festival at Rattle-N-Hum in Midtown, which starts next Wednesday and runs all next weekend. Among the casks promised: the Cigar City Humidor Series Maduro Brown, Brooklyn Backbreaker, Pretty Things Fluffy White Rabbits, and BrewDog Isle of Aran. Get your cask drinking shoes shined.

Enjoy the beer!

While the buzz has been building for a couple weeks now, Thrillist blew the door off this year’s New York Brewfest on Governors Island with an offer this morning for a discount off early admission tickets to the beer festival on Saturday, June 19th. The discount is $20 off, which brings the ticket price down to a reasonable $55.

The New York Brewfest is a great outdoor event with live music and an impressive list of local, regional, national, and international breweries, including Captain Lawrence, Flying Bison, Dogfish Head, Cisco, and Oskar Blues, just to name a few.

You can purchase tickets here and use the code Thrill10.