Cask conditioned beer

For those who don't know, a firkin is simply a 9 UK gallon cask. Other sizes are pins at 4 1/2 gallons , kilderkins at 18, barrels are 36 and hogsheads are 54 UK gallons. I only know of one brewery still using hogsheads.

 

Which brewery? How's their beer?

 

When I lived in Michigan I tried it a couple time and didn't care for it much, Its been much better in my experience in England. Its at every single pub, with several options, and its usually very good. Now if I could just convince them to stop watching the soccer match and turn on the American football game

 

Joseph Holt of Manchester was certainly delivering beer in hogsheads until recently.Their base beers, mild and bitter are good old fashioned examples of their type and I always have one wherever I see one on the pumps.

 

I am a fan of cask ale but always terrified of ordering it at a bar when the beer isn't on a CO2 breather and kept in a temperature controlled environment or very recently tapped. Cask ale is great after 2-3 days as long as it has been treated well during that time. If the cask has sat out in a warm environment (like a bar counter) or been exposed to air for an indiscriminate amount of time then it can very easily turn into liquid cardboard.

 

Ugh, this is entirely too common. I've seen places with a firkin or pin sit out for many days on the bar counter. No thanks.

 

Big fan of cask here. I see it fairly frequently on around here, but I've been burned enough times to make sure I ask them about it, and ask if I can try a sample before committing to a full pint. PLaces will say, "oh, it's been there for a week or two..." yeah, not good for cask. Generally if it's been there 3 or 4 days, it's still fine, 5 sometimes, after that, no way.

 

A cask breather negates much of the magic of cask ale-it needs the ingress of air to generate the extra layers of flavour nuances.It is of course the instrument of its downfall and within a few days deterioration occurs (unless the bar judges things right and sells it before this). All too often I've had an amazing pint and when I've gone back for another it had gone , the last pint was the best.
There are many devices to keep the beer cool on a bar counter ; cooling jackets and cooling probes are available. You might not notice a cooling probe and assume the beer will be getting too warm.
http://www.pubshop.co.uk/catalog/al...p-1825.html?osCsid=srlukhksunovdfa0lmm2qkmc25

 

It's the loss of condition that will affect it before too much o2 imo . Although every beer is different

 

I enjoy the gentle carbonation of cask pours (both with and without a beer engine) even if I can't enjoy it with the oxygenation that comes along with it but if I have to choose between a cask on a breather and a two week old room temperature cask then I'll opt for the former every time. The problem is that those are two very common options locally. If the cask is fresh and not on a breather then it was probably just dropped off by the brewery that day.

Sadly I've seen casks dumped on the bar counter with no cooling at all. It isn't just the lack of visibility. I once asked a bar if they did anything to keep the cask cool and the bar manager looked at me like I was an idiot and told me cask ale is supposed to be room temperature. No, just no.

 

Some beers on cask people will flock to it, but I've always had a tough time selling casks because most Americans don't really enjoy the serving style.

I personally don't care for all the adjuncts people throw in casks, but give me just the base beer and I'll drink it all day.

 

Can you please expound upon that, what adjuncts are people throwing in casks?

Cheers!

 

I agree with all the comments above from people who clearly have good experience with cask ale. Including cask breather, don't like it and don't like sprinklers. But I must say that I've had the odd beer in England, not just here, that was barely conditioned or whose condition had bled out from poor cellaring.

Top-fermented beer shouldn't be ice cold or even cold, it should be circa-50 F but I can enjoy them much warmer if they taste good. Some APA and IPAs do taste very good on cask, and all English beer (I mean when made with traditional hop varieties) does. If well kept. A big if.

 

Anytime a brewery puts fruit, spice, coffee, chocolate. Not always bad, but I wish there would be more casks of the regular versions of the beers.

That's why I loved Mad Fox in Va so much.

 

I have yet to experience a cask beer with spices/flavorings added to the cask. I too would not enjoy that.

Cheers!

Edit: I have had cask beers where hop plugs were added to the cask; I did enjoy those beers!

 

Lots of times I have seen brewers in the US use cask as a vesicle to just through what ever in, and normally comes out really bad. Two examples local to me, a local brewer makes what they call Old Fashion Alt. It is their regular Alt beer, which is not even close to what a German Alt is in the first place, aged in a bourbon barrel with angostura bitters and orange peal, on cask. Horrible. Another example from a beer bar near me, and had Odell Myrcenary Double IPA with peppers, basil, and mango. I love Odell, but that was crap. I can go on with many other examples.

I do love cask, and think when done right it is the best you can drink, of pretty much any beverage. Though a lot of US brewers use it as an excuse to "experiment" as I mentioned above, and I think that should stop.

 

Edit 2: I just remembered that I did once taste a cask beer that had fruit added (Key Lime); the Key Lime flavor was too strong for my palate. This was at a cask beer event and I ended up dumping that particular beer.

 

i suppose i've been lucky since most casks i've had were at NERAX and therefore properly handled, including those with added ingredients/spices/hops. stone and troegs for example have had their stouts/porters with vanilla beans in the cask and they were pretty good. but i do agree that brewers shouldn't be wantonly using consumers as guinea pigs.

 

Unfortunately there's a heck of a lot of badly conditioned beer in England (as well as good). My local Wetherspoons always has a cracking line up but they can't condition beer for shit. In all my years drinking there I've never had a decent pint.

 

Yeah, I am not opposed to adding adjuncts completely. Brewers should just think a little, and if a bar comes across a particularly egregious release like the two I mentioned, maybe they should say no thanks