Cask ale appreciation thread

That was the synonym I was looking for!

 

Yeah I've had some delicious stuff like that on cask. I suppose it can add a lot of depth to all manner of good beers! But in my experience lacking in that je ne sais quoi I get from some other classics.

 

Fullers ESB from the cask, in the pub at the brewery, with a Stilton & chutney on brown bread sandwich; that's livin'.

 

those additions were in the design of the beer not added in cask. the beer itself was a grains of paradise and jasmine saison, it's part of a series of pepper + flower saisons we do each spring, as a study on french saison yeast's characteristics.
we have a beer engine and a specified cask cellar in our brewery, we split a certain amount of all our beers (except boat) off for cask conditioning this is just another of those

 

Not much on the site these days makes me feel like commenting, but a good reminisce (as an American) about properly kept casks in a properly kept pub is one of them.

Young's Bitter, my first pint in the UK a few years back, at the enjoyably cozy Buckingham Arms, just a stone's throw from Westminster Abbey. I can still remember drinking it and feeling like the barley could've been crushed right there at the tableside and dropped into the drink, so distinctive it was. I love American IPAs and pales, love getting clobbered with all manner of hops, but there is something special, I say, about a finely balanced bitter (aside a sandwich and a few chips, ideally ). Cheers, my friend.

 

Fair enough...and I am glad those weren't additions thrown into the cask. Still, the subject of real ale/cask as a sort of separate animal goes far beyond putting a certain beer in a Firkin, as Im sure you would agree. For example, most German Kellerbier is served by gravity from a cask, but I would not say it is the same thing as UK real/cask at all. Your cellaring sounds interesting as well, but I'm again not sure we are really comparing apples to apples...especially as it applies to the subject of this thread.

 

I gave up yesterday after seeing this thread. Went to The White Cross in Richmond and had a pint of Winter Warmer, followed by one of half Warmer and half Special mixed together. That second one was just perfect. Going to start blending more beers in the pub!

 

i don't think you need to draw many lines in the sand, i can't really see how it would help any thing.
as far as i am concerned "real ale" is Camra's game and its not hard to get a member started on the minutia and joys of "real" so i will leave it to them.
that being said "cask conditioning" is definitely a thing, a very simple and beautiful thing for some beers. real kellerbier (although lager and not british) is brewed traditionally and matured in the vessel it is served from with no forced carbonation, as are all my cask beers. so i am not sure beyond that what your point is.

 

Again, I agree with much of what you are saying. Just trying to limit discussion to what the OP said: UK cask ale. Sure Kellerbier conditions inside the cask/fass after filling, but the process is markedly different than that of UK cask ale.

 

yea i get it. i only came in to clarify the confusion you had on my beer in reacting to a post where someone mentioned enjoying it

 

Bathams Bitter, absolutely love it alongside, Harvey's Bitter, Taylor's Landlord, was my favourite for years, you just can't find a decent pint of it these days.

 

The last London Burton. A bit of history.

 

Harvey's, Batham's, Tim Taylor's - beers that still taste like they did in my youth. They should be cherished while they're still around.

 

Landlord suffers from its own success - it's still produced properly, ie it needs conditioned in the cellar when the publican receives it, but unfortunately a lot of it goes to chains like Ember inns and they clearly don't have the staff who know how to treat it, so you can often get a shit pint of it. I think they still cask it with a few points of gravity left to ferment as it should be done then send it out, whereas a lot of other breweries just prime the casks and condition in house, then send it out so pubs only have to let it settle.

Unfortunately the proper great traditional family owned breweries are only going to get less and less over time, which is a very sad state of affairs.


I'm also a bit amazed that Youngs is still getting love considering that Charlie Wells now own the brand and I find their beers utterly awful - they have ruined the McEwans ales, never the best to begin with to be honest but solid enough and the likes of Bombardier are rather rubbish to my tastes. We never get their youngs output up here though, it must be better I assume?

 

I'm quite impressed with the relative lack of spelling errors in that post given how far gone I was

 

Do you know how Harvey's get around this problem? They store their casks in a warehouse for two weeks after racking. already conditioned before it gets to the pub.

 

I wonder what % of brewers do that? I assume space would be the main problem, especially as the brewer would want the casks at the proper temperature. I'm impressed Harvey's do it given that most of their beer is sent out in cask

 

A crawl in Cambridge? That's a perfect memory jiggle to many memories of visits to the U.K. and enjoyment of well cared for cask ale.

In my experience the U.K. Is synonymous with outstanding beer. There was a multi-year period in my life where the only two types of alcoholic beverage I chose to drink were cask ale and single malt whisky (including cask strength). Indeed, the effects of having been able to drink multiple pints on many visits while chatting with different friends in out of the way local pubs in several areas of the U.K. was so strong that one day, here in the US, a co-worker casually asked me where I went to get a beer, and without much thought I replied, "The UK."

There have been too many beers and pubs in too many large or small towns enjoyed during those years to single out a single beer, a single pub, or a single town for special praise since I somehow seemed to manage, with the guidance of friends or local folks, to find something on offer that was worth finding, especially when staying in places where a visitor from the US was a rara avis. Indeed, I can recall more than once learning a great deal about local pubs and beers to sample from the dabates that ensued when asking about the best local pub or the best local bitter. (Although I suppose that if I were pressed to name a particular brewery as my favorite, I'd probably allow as how Adnams might well be on my short list.)

The problem for appreciation of cask ale within or outside of the UK seems to me not so much to do with fans of one latest thing or another, or what goes into the brewing of a good beer, but with maintaining or recreating an environment where the emphasis is on taking the time to quietly enjoy flavorful beer, preferably in the company of good friends in a place free from the distractions of the electronic world.