Shut-Down Maintenance for Cask Ale.

If your pub serves cask ale via a draught dispense system (e.g, beer engine, dedicated cellar, cask lines, etc.), there are specific procedures you should follow when shutting down the system for an extended period of time (such as now, during the time of coronavirus).

Cask Marque, based in the U.K., offers these guidelines, more applicable to cask-predominant pubs, but useful for all.

Related

• How to close down beer dispense systems for 1 week+
  — Avani Solutions
• Draught quality recommendations during extended bar/restaurant shutdown (pdf)
  — [U.S.] Brewers Association
• Hibernating your draught beer system
  — Micromatic

What is Cask Marque

Since 1997 Cask Marque has been ensuring that the cask ale you drink in pubs in the UK is in perfect condition. Our 50 qualified assessors make over 20,000 visits to pubs each year in England, Scotland, Wales, Europe, and even America to check the temperature, appearance, aroma, and taste of Britain’s favourite drink. Visit a Cask Marque accredited pub and you are guaranteed to receive a great pint of cask ale.

— Cask Marque.

• Cask Marque accreditation (and training) has been available in the U.S. for a few years (Link: here.) That's something to consider for the coming time when COVID19 will be reined under control and pubs return to their perch as the good third place.

-----more-----

Inked and Real

Ah, the beauty of cask-conditioned 'real ale.'

Real ale is a natural product brewed using traditional ingredients and left to mature in the cask (container) from which it is served [without extraneous gas pressure] through a process called secondary fermentation [and served at what is called 'cellar' temperature —in the low to mid 50 degrees Fahrenheit.] It is this process which makes real ale unique amongst beers, and develops the wonderful tastes and aromas which processed beers can never provide.

— CAMRA [with edits].

A bartender pours real ale directly from a firkin (10.8-US gallon cask). At Spacebar in Falls Church, Virginia, USA, on 8 September 2012.

Think of real ale as uber-fresh, as if it were being poured directly from a brewery fermenter. It is a deliberate process, involving both a brewery and pub.

What cask-conditioning is NOT is tossing beer into a cask; that's just tossing a beer into a cask. In fact, cask-conditioning does not imply or require the infusion of artificial or extraneous ingredients. That's just —as a friend describes it— tossing in "cocoa-puffs and dingleberries."

What real ale IS —as Jeff Alworth described it on p.84 of The Beer Bible— is "living beer."

A bartender pulls real ale from a firkin via a beer engine (hand-pump). At Metropolitan, in Baltimore, Maryland, USA, on 13 November 2008.

***************

Cask Marque USA

If your U.S. pub, brewpub, or brewery taproom serves cask ale on a regular basis, you can receive accreditation from Cask Marque, now also available in the United States. Consultation is also offered. Information: here.

Cask Marque, begun in the U.K. in 1997, is a voluntary accreditation scheme that allows publicans to display a special symbol indicating that their cask ale is of good quality, as judged by a series of surprise inspections.

-----more-----

Is your AMERICAN pub a Cask-Ale hero?

Since 1997, Cask Marque has been ensuring that the cask ale you drink in pubs in the U.K. has been in perfect condition. Qualified assessors make over 20,000 visits to pubs each year in England, Scotland, Wales, and Europe to check the temperature, appearance, aroma, and taste of Britain’s favourite drink.

—Cask Marque

Does your American pub (or brewery taproom or brewpub) serve a "great pint" of cask-ale? If so, you should know that Cask Marque accreditation IS now available for pubs and breweries in the United States.

In fact, Cask Marque has been assessing American pubs for several years, initially led by Paul Pendyck, a purveyor of cask-ale equipment in the U.S. and assisted by Alex Hall, a cask-ale partisan in New York. Both, by the way, are British expats.

Now, Steve Hamburg, one of the premier cellarmen in the U.S., has taken the reins as Cask Marque's USA Director and Chief Assessor.

****************

Criteria

What does it take for a pub (or brewery taproom or brewpub) to gain accreditation in the U.S.?

First and foremost, as self-evident as this may sound, your pub must serve cask-ale every day, or close to it. Simply tossing a cask up on the bar once a week for Firkin Friday doesn't cut it.

After that, it's the big five criteria: temperature, aroma, taste, appearance, and cleanliness.

• Temperature of beer.
  Real ale ¹ should be served, in the customer's glass, at between 11 and 13 °C. That's 51-55 °F. (And here in the U.S., we could lower that to 10 °C / 50 °F.) That's not warm, it's cellar cool: neither too cold to mask a beer's flavor nor too warm to rob a beer of refreshment. (Unfiltered beer that is served too cold can could also develop a 'chill haze' as proteins come out of solution, which speaks to 'clarity,' discussed below.)
• Aroma of beer.
  No evidence of staling, contamination, or otherwise off-aromas that don't belong in the beer as brewed.
• Clarity of beer.
  This one gets tricky. As classically presented in the U.K., cask-ales should be bright as a filtered beer without filtration. But American brewers often eschew clarity (and some UK brewers do as well). So, as with aroma, the clarity should be as the beer was brewed. No extraneous yeast or proteinaceous sludge.
• Flavor (& conditioning) of beer.
  Not gassy or foamy; not flat. No evidence of staling or age. The flavor should be representative of the beer as brewed; conditioning (carbonation) should be as the brewery intended.
• Cleanliness.
  A clean beer-cellar, clean beer-lines, clean beer-engine and/or tap, and beer-clean glassware. Of course.
• NO extraneous gas pressure
  NO gas pressure can be used to dispense from the cask, whether CO2, nitrogen, or whatever. That being stipulated, a cask breather ² does not add pressure to a cask and, thus, a pub may employ one if it wishes. Using a cask breather is not a demerit: only badly served cask-ale is.

When your pub passes its inspection, it receives a Cask Marque metal plaque, with an attached expiration date tag. This works as does a car license plate. A pub must renew each year (and pass its subsequent assessments) to get a new valid sticker.

l-r: Paul Nunny —Director, Cask Marque (UK);
Steve Hamburg —USA Director, Chief US Assessor Cask Marque (US);
Paul Pendyck —Owner, UK Brewing Supplies (US).
At Craft Brewers Conference in Washington, D.C., 2017.

****************

Value to pub

Most pub owners are very money conscious, as, of course, they should be. And, yes, there is a nominal annual fee for Cask Marque accreditation, which helps defray the cost of the U.S. licensing fee and materials. Thus pub owners should view Cask Marque as a valuable value-added business-augmenter.

It's a consultation: how to do things right so that customers return for repeat pours. It's an advertisement of achievement, just as a victory at the Great American Beer Festival would show brewing skill or a Cicerone accreditation highlight serving acumen. It's a public acknowledgment of a pub's (or brewery's or brewpub's) cask excellence and, thus, of the value to a customer. And it's not (yet) a common thing in the U.S.: again a mark of distinction for your pub or taproom.

For further details, and to arrange an assessment, contact Mr. Hamburg directly, via email: shamburg@cask-marque-americas.com.

Serving a great pint of cask-ale is not rocket science. But it does require care and attention to detail.

So, do it. Be that cask-ale hero. Get your pub its Cask Marque accreditation. That Cask Marque plaque is a damned nice thing to display.

-----more-----