Keep Cask Alive #2 [February - April 2025]

I just got done watching this week’s episode of the TV show What’s Brewing and for St. Patrick’s Day they had a lot of Irish Beer content. The whole episode is worth watching.

But as regards the topic of Cask beer, at around the 20:30 mark they interview the head brewer (Zach Svoboda) of Trouble’s End Brewing and part of that discussion is the aspect they have two beer engines (handpumps) which are always in use with a choice of two cask ales (right now a Dry Stout and a Dark Mild Ale). At the 22:00 mark you get to see Zach pour a cask beer.

Zach also discusses that on Fridays they have a Firkin Friday event where a pin will be tapped and served via gravity pour.

Cheers!

 

Gotta love these guys. Good Word Brewing bringing back the $5 pint for a limited time. Great time for anyone in the area who wants to try a cask ale to do so economically.

 

First Cask pour for me in 2025. One cask hand pull handle at The Beer Temple, needs more hops and bitterness to pull off a regular option for me, but the cask pour was superb.

Phase Three The Claddagh

Reviewed by ChicagoJ from Illinois

3.83/5 rDev -2.5%
look: 4.25 | smell: 4.25 | taste: 3.75 | feel: 3.5 | overall: 3.5



3/18/25 (Chicago, IL) - Cask Pour at The Beer Temple Notes (Chicago, IL) - $9 16 oz hand pull cask pour into a nonic glass. 4.2% ABV, Dry Irish Stout.

Appearance: Rich creamy decedent egg white tan head over a near black chestnut brown impenetrable base. Sharp looking pour. 4.25

Aroma: Rich roast malt, coffee beans, milk chocolate and hazelnut battle in that order. Bold, strong, enticing. 4.25

Taste: Consistent with the aroma plus, with caramel toffee a co-lead with the milk chocolate and roast malt. Coffee still there, but not on equal terms. Nice. 3.75

Mouthfeel: Light and easy, sweet more so than expected, hops are AWOL. Drinks under the listed ABV, nice and easy sweet session beer through the finish. 3.5

Overall: Nice and easy Dry Irish Stout, needs to add more hops and bitterness to make this a regular option on my end. 3.5

 

Cask Marque means they know how to cellar a cask; now this pub needs to learn how to pull a pint!

Seriously, not picking on the OP or the bar, but advocating cask means respecting how it should be served.

That head (and it's not alone in this thread) is way too high - in England that would get you a "Where's the Flake?"

 

It is not commonly seen in the US but I am always a fan when I obtain a glass with a fill line. Below is an example photo I found from an internet search:



Cheers!

 

That’s a funny video, thanks for the link? I get why she’s upset, but what does “flake” translate to in American?

 

There is a post in the reddit thread which seems to explain for us Yanks

 

May be England, but that sounds like an Irish accent....either way, she's badass!!

 

My guess was Scottish.

 

Thanks, I read through a lot of that thread for an explanation, but couldn’t find it. Mostly it was complaining about grabbing the glass from the top.

 

I had no complaints. It was still an excellent cask ale. And I take that over the ridiculous poured to the rim with no head beers I get at many places.

 

I don’t really know or fret over these types of certifications. The Beer Temple knows what they are doing, have great staff and ownership. When the initial pull did not yield a proper pint, it was dumped and restarted without me prompting. IIRC someone mentioned one or more places certified in Chicago, but cannot recall where. Revolution resumed their cask service at the Taproom as few months after they closed their brewpub where the service was previously served.

A few places closed here which served proper cask. Mohave (Henderson) and Alarmist (Chicago) can be hit or miss with quality and service. Trips to ChurchKey in DC are one of the few things I miss about working. I do like these threads to give me ideas about future trips / recommended locations.

Cheers!

I’ve only seen this phenomenon with European glasses. Have you seen an American example? A shaker pint is usually 1-2 + oz light of an American pint, or what I call “Gulf” of America.

“They give you this, but you pay for that.”

- Neil Young, October 22, 1978

 

I have seen these glasses in America (e.g., US craft beer bars) but to your point they have been glasses with European (e.g., German) brewery logos.

I wish fill lines on beer glasses were more common.

Cheers!

 

Wetherspoon is a bare basics British pub chain, for those who don't know it, but in Dublin they are the only option for cask.

This was chocolaty but cloying for a porter that's not even 5%.
Still, nice to be drinking beer from a 230-year-old brewery.

 

I suppose this means that cask beer is not popular in Ireland (Dublin)? An artifact of nitro beer being preferred?

Cheers!

 

100% - that's even an understatement.

Guinness invented nitro in the late '50s exactly because cask takes more effort to keep and serve.
Once nitro caught on, Guinness proceeded to drive cask to extinction across the country.

Any cask now is a revival by the handful of breweries - West Kerry, Dungarvan and Brehon, to name three - that care about natural carbonation.

 

This was the case as well at the first annual RIFRAF (Rhode Island's Finest Real Ale Festival) back in January. All of the beers, in my opinion, were perfect temperature (which was what I would describe as "unfinished-basement-in-a-New-England-home temperature"). My guess is that they chilled them to slightly cooler than where they wanted them to be and then just let them go to the floor. I wager there wasn't a huge difference in temp from the first beer served and the last beer served a few hours later, but I've no idea.

 

Guinness was interested in driving other breweries to extinction.
Their aggressive acquisitions and anti-competitive practices in the early to mid 1900s are well documented.

Killing cask was just collateral damage, iirc.