Are there any breweries or bars in Houston that serve cask ales? I know occasionally Holler has its ESB or Pub Crusher on cask, but I haven't found anywhere else yet. TIA
I don't know anywhere but Holler that does it these days. I remember the good old days when Hay Merchant would have 3-4 beers on cask all the time. I miss that bar!
Holler just finished a cask of Pub Crusher, not sure if they plan on having anything else on for a while though. I went right after it kicked this weekend, and they just had it on tap now. Saint Arnold had Elissa on cask the last few times I was there, and it was great. Though that is not on all the time. New Magnolia has a few cask handles, but I don't think they use them a lot, though the one time I did have something on cask, I wasn't impressed at all, and to my knowledge they haven't had it since. I seem to remember Cobble & Spoke had 512 Double IPA on a while ago, the cask was just sitting on the bar though (I have had cask served that way before, but they didn't even try to cool it in any way), and they were filling growlers of it, ha. So if they do that again, I would probably avoid but just mentioning it. There use to be a good number of bars that had cask, The Gingerman, Hay Merchant, Stags Head, Mongoose Vs Cobra, which are all closed. Then places like D&T Drive Inn, and Mucky Duck, even Anvil would also have a handle, but all have been removed a long time ago.
Man, very disappointing, but not surprising. Thanks for the info on St. Arnold Elissa, though. I will definitely be going by this weekend to see if its still there, as well as their nitro stout Irish Hello. My dream is to open a joint with proper pints that can keep at least one cask ale regularly, but I'm not totally confident that there would be enough breweries to provide for it. Holler seems to be the only one to rely on around Houston. Acopon out of dripping springs would be another, but doubt could get distribution here.
Hay Merchant bought their own casks and supplied them to breweries, making it easier for the breweries to be willing to supply casked beer back to them. That's probably what it would take to get casked beer on tap and it probably makes it not very profitable for the bars...
I think it's tradition for English casked ales to be served unrefrigerated. Those casks might sit in a cooler basement, but they are not cold. Maybe Cobble & Spoke was trying to recreate that as much as possible?
Yeah, I drank my weight in cask while working in Scotland. It is cellar temp, being the ideal, which is a huge difference than a cask just sitting on top a bar in Houston ha.
Hmmm that's pretty interesting. I never thought about supplying the casks for the breweries to fill. As far as temps go, I would think storing a cask in the equivalent of a wine refrigerator at around 55 degF would be the best representation of how the cellar casks are maintained in the UK.
