Need Cask Help

I think it had something to do w/tomato soup in a paper bag.

 

Obviously OP has found out where not to go when looking for suggestions! I would drink your beers OP! Keep working at it! Cheers!!

 

I agree with the traditionalist, but unfortunately that' not what sells. The public really likes trying crazy one off casks.

 

How bout to add a little fun to this thread, put a bottle of pliny in the saison.

 

Total, total bollocks. Sorry, but that's simply untrue.

 

You asked for recommendations as to what add to a cask. Nothing, when explained, seems a reasonable response. And what would be my answer? If you really want to add something, a pinch of ginger and a shitload of Goldings or Saaz would be my recommendation.

 

English Style Brew's would be a good start.

Cheers!

 

Thank you for posting what I was going to post. Just make a good beer and put it in a cask and properly condition it. Don't throw even more adjuncts into a beer, please!

 

Ron, I fully recognize you are a fan of the term “bollocks”.

With that out of the way let’s properly consider the difference between the beer cultures of America vs. Europe. A person (such as you) could advance that there is a different path from BMC beers for American craft beer drinkers vs. what has been discussed in this thread and that is a fair argument but the majority of US craft beer drinkers have a differing viewpoint that what you would likely espouse. In the contemporary US craft beer scene what is demanded by the majority of American craft beer drinkers is something different and unusual. I am personally not one of those beer drinkers but I see and talk to them regularly. If some brewer put something like: peanut butter, coffee beans, kumquats, or some other atypical ingredient in a beer those other beer drinkers would be ecstatic!!

I personally do not disagree with you (and others) who would advocate that nothing ‘extra’ be added to these cask beers but that is frankly not an option here since the customer (the bars serving these cask beers) wants something ‘different’ since they have a perception that the end customer (the people drinking the beer) would prefer to something ‘extra’ added to those casks.

There may be a craft beer future where ‘traditional’ beer is the preferred beer of American beer consumers but that day is not today.

I personally appreciate your efforts to make ‘traditional’ beers the beer of choice among craft beer drinkers and IMO that may indeed be the case in the future. I am hopeful in that regard.

Cheers!

 

I wouldn't. I would be drinking dopplebocks, hefes, imperial stouts, barleywines, Vienna lagers, saisons, quads, etc. You seem to have a highly inflated sense of American innovation.

 

Some might see the rise of the "craft brewer" in the US as a reaction against "innovation" - the innovation of the big national brewers making American lager lighter and lighter, the near disappearance of any other choices ("old fashioned" styles like dark lagers, bocks, ales, porters and stouts) until they finally got to the ultimate "envelope-pusher" - low-calorie, no carbohydrates "Light Beer" - which was already by then on it's way to become the dominant beer "style" in the US.

There was nothing particularly innovative about the beers coming out of those first craft breweries during the 1970-1990s - quite the opposite, most of those beers at that time were modeled on older styles that had died out in the US, or European styles that were not particularly well-represented in the US on the import shelves. Craft brewers were looking backwards.

There was no obvious demand by consumers or desire from brewers at that time for "flavored" beers. Even now, while the tiny "craft geek" segment of the small craft market might be enamored of the non-traditional flavors from fruit, spices, barrels, etc, those sorts of beers still don't have much of the craft market - seasonal "pumpkin ales" might have the largest and "cross-over" market, along with the newer, rapid rise of the alcoholic Root Beers. (In latter case, it's hard to think of them as "beer" at all, much less "craft beer".) There's no flavored brands among the top selling 20 or so craft labels (outside of a few bigger brewers' "seasonals").

 

I've expressed similar sentiment, but your first two paragraphs perfectly express things I've attempted to say but couldn't do as well. Thanks.

 

I slightly disagree with that statement. One of the distinguishing aspects of the early US craft breweries (Anchor, Albion, Sierra Nevada,...) was that they were brewing with newly developed hops (e.g., Cascade) which provided a very different flavor profile to those beers. Yes, people will argue that a Pale Ale was something that was brewed for centuries in Great Britain but the American versions of Pale Ale (what we call APAs today) are very different beers due to the citrus and floral aromas/flavors of these newly developed hops.

I recognize that there are diverging opinions on what the word "innovation" means but IMO the development of new American aroma hops (e.g., Cascade and others) deserve to be recognized as being an "innovation".

Cheers!

 

Jack, I see it like this: By design or need, American "craft" brewers were looking forward and looking back... but they did more of the latter than the former. Placing priority on what has come before has been a good thing for drinkers. (this thread is crazy)

 

Ah, the Hokey Pokey, eh?

Yup!

Cheers!

 

That about sums it up.