Cask Beer Question

I would keep an open mind and try cask ale again....and again if necessary. It really all depends on the beer as well as the bar that is taking care of the cask. I remember the first cask ale I had years ago was "just okay" (Mayflower Pale Ale) but it was a few days old and it was almost kicked. I had the same beer a couple weeks later freshly tapped and it was mind-blowingly delicious. Since then I've had my fair share of average/below average cask ales as well as several exceptional ones. The exceptional ones are what make cask ale a risk worth taking, in my opinion....they just can't be beat.

 

Thanks for the response and the suggestion. I have tried cask beer many times over a many decade period. It is not for me. That being said, I have been to many breweries, tastings and festivals, I am sure I will try cask at least one more time.

 

Glad to hear it. Obviously you should simply enjoy what you like but I just wanted to give you some "hang in there!"-style advice.

 

I just watched a youtube video on what makes cask ale different (The Craft Beer Channel, Brew School) and @drtth hit it on the head. Cask is still "active" when it arrives and needs to be properly prepared for consumption like chilling and bleed off of the pressure which can take time. Because of being active still it can actually be rather fresh compared to your couple week sitting keg.

I would find a brewery near by or bar that regularly offers cask or specializes in cask to try them before writing off cask altogether.

 

@Jm5471 You're still not giving any real detail about what flavors you tasted that could really help people here give you an informed response. The descriptions of the beer you've provided so far are stout, warm, low carbonation, "difficulty drinking" and "bad," none of which are flavors, and the last two are merely opinions. There are some very knowledgeable members who have responded in this discussion but they are just stabbing in the dark without more specifics of the flavors. Beer that is flawed or "gone bad" has distinctive flavors. Was there an old cardboard/paper flavor (typically oxidation)? Was it fruity/sour (like an infection)? Like vegetables? More or less hoppy than expected? Something else?

In addition to the ideas others have stated above, I'll also throw in the possibility that there could have been an ingredient added to the cask not normally in the beer. I've commonly seen cask beers with extra hops, fruit, or spices in the cask, and some bars/breweries don't do a very good job of clearly stating what the cask-addition is.

 

I'll add a general comment here that there are several cask versions of different styles which I greatly prefer over the canned or bottled version, and cask beers which I think are not nearly as good. The only way to know is to try a few, and few higher rated ones.

 

I've had several cask beers and find them very flat and watery. I stay away from them. Same goes for nitro beers.

 

The first time I was in London I found cask beers to be thin, flat, warm, and not to my liking.

The next trip they were silky, enough carbonation to just notice, cool but not cold, full of subtle flavors and to my liking.

I'm glad they figured out how to make them in the time between.




That last part is a joke.

 

It’s difficult to know whether the OP just doesn't like cask or if he was served poor cask.

Ambient temperature is too warm. Even in Britain some pubs serve their cask beer too warm. 17C (62ºF) is just about borderline drinkable. 10C (50ºF) is better. In America, where it is often much hotter than in Britain, you might well want to serve it colder than that.

 

Jeff, that reminds me of another Mark Twain quote:

“When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.”

― Mark Twain

 

That came to mind as I typed it. It was less than seven years between visits though.

My palate has progressed through intense practice and repetition. Education and judging has helped too.

 

I will echo what's been said and say most likely the cask was ill-cared for, ill-prepared, or simply old (or maybe a combination thereof).

Cask beer has become one of my favorite things in beer, period, but it's irritatingly difficult to find it done right in America (even in a big city like Chicago, where I live, there are only a handful of places that I can be certain will do cask correctly, and there are no breweries that focus heavily on it besides the very-unknown, barely-started Present Tense). My favorite place in the USA has been Town Hall in Minneapolis, where Masala Mama on cask was (and still is) one of the best beers (and beer experiences) that I have ever had. Most breweries seem to use cask as a way to throw a bunch of random stuff into a one-off batch and treat it like a keg otherwise, which is certainly not what I expect or want out of cask beer.

I think most people are woefully uninformed and inexperienced with cask beer and unfairly bag on it without understanding that it is supposed to have a different feel and be a different temperature, and those factors are going to obviously change the flavors that one can taste as well as the overall experience of the beer.

As for nitro, whether on tap or in bottles/cans, it's pretty mediocre to awful, in my opinion, and I find it an absolutely pitiful attempt at imitating cask beer; true Real Ale versions of beer enhances the flavor, whereas I find nitro almost always masks flavors. If I never have another nitro beer ever, it will be too soon, and I dearly wish that people would not compare it to cask (even if that was what it was intended to recreate), because it truly is nowhere close to the absolute majesty of a great Real Ale.

As a side-note, @MostlyNorwegian I am one of those people that finds force carbonation to have a distinct taste and feel to it in a lot (most?) of cases. Cask has ruined me for normal beer (not to mention nitro...even though I definitely mentioned it).

All told, Real Ale is awesome, and I want to see more of it (and the pub culture that surrounds it) in America. And if anyone has any recommendations on a place to get great cask beer in Chicago or Wisconsin, please send them all my way.

 

I've had a lot of bad cask beer in the US...where it is generally treated as a hobby/novelty.

That being said, I genuinely love the format, and look forward to it every time I visit England (once a year or so).

It's a different animal, and requires some care and skill to execute properly.

 

As a fellow Chicagoan, I am also amazed that with all the breweries which have opened, and that we have a market large, and diverse enough to support breweries who do not, and will not brew IPA's, that it's almost harder to find cask ale now than it was when Goose Island was the only brewery in town, and Piece Pizza was new.

 

It is interesting to note how things have changed with time, and the differences in word meanings from culture to culture.

 

It leads to confusion and misundersanding. For example , milds and porters are normally dark beers and some brewers create them the same way. But milds are ales and use dark sugars for the colour and porters use roasted grains.
By no means all people consider porters to be ales, in particular one very highly regarded American contributor refuses to do so.

 

I suppose all things in life would be less confusing if there was agreement across boundaries on all things. We all know this isn't the case. I find it all interesting, as noted in my post.

 

The long defunct New Albion had 3 bottled beers: Ale, Porter and Stout.