Something Old, Something New: Dispensing Draft from the Barrel

Certainly eye-catching, but little more than novelty, IMO. Just package your beer normally, please.

 

Didn't they use something like this on the Starship Enterprise to create beer facsimiles.

 

This is reminiscent of the cask breather system which purports to serve cask ale.
When will people realise that oxygen ingress is essential for cask beers to blossom and develop over time? That is the secret why cask beats the same beer from bottle every time.
Just judge the sales so that the cask will be used up in around 4 days and there is no need for CO2 or N2 , and every reason to avoid it.

 

You said two very important things here, that most people who are not cellarmen probably don't understand.

 

I think that the need to exclude oxygen when bottling,canning or kegging beer has caused people to regard it as the enemy of good beer under all circumstances.
But as a couple of aspirins cure your headache and make you feel better but a lot of them are life threatening,a little oxygen at the right time will transform and enhance beer.All a matter of dosage and timing.

 

I am not sure how i feel about it. It takes some of the mystique out of cellaring and serving direct from the cask - the CAMRA people are probably freaking out - and as EvenMoreJesus and Marquis point out - it will be different beer. It will make the new direct dispensed from the barrel beer more accessible but it won't be like getting a pint at Gleesons in Holyhead. Alas - I guess I will go back and bask in the rays of my one remaining incandescent light. It reminds me of Franik Zappa's question: "Is that a real poncho or is that a Sears poncho?"

 

I'm sure it'll make a pretty display, but I question the actual value as far as providing quality cask beer goes.

 

Something new doesn't necessarily mean something better.

 

Seems like this system is meant for barrel-aged beers, not cask ales. Reading DFH's blog post about it and it looks like an interesting system, even if seems like more of a novelty than a need. Would like to try a beer poured through it someday to see it in action, and if I'm lucky, try the same beer out of a usual keg/nitro tap setup to compare the two.

 

It's not even new. It just looks like a solution to a problem which doesn't exist.

 

Yes, an ingenious solution to a nonexistent problem.

 

Actually, beers of this strength could be served straight from the cask.Normal "pub strength" cask beer is good for 4 to 5 days after tapping but at higher ABV this time is much extended.
A local pub used to put a cask of "strong" beer (say 8% ABV) on the bar for Christmas and the New Year and serve it on gravity from there. It lasted well right through the holiday season and was at least as good at the end as in the beginning.

 

Aren't cask beers somewhat flatter than keg? Seems a bit incongruous and not really true to tradition.

 

Somehow (before the era of steel, stainless steel, aluminum and plastic) brewers were able to rack beer into wooden kegs, and bars were able to serve fully-carbonated beer "from the wood" using their normal draught systems.

 

I have had many beers from the barrel in Germany, gravity dispensed.

There are also wooden kegs with Sanke fittings similar to what @jesskidden posted. Saw those on a trip 2 years ago.

 

Yes.