Pic(k) of the Week: The spigot is closed.

Commercial cask ale in America is dead.

After a resurgence —beginning in the late 1980s and continuing through the late 20-aughts— American 'real ale' now appears moribund, relegated (with rare exceptions) to one-offs, terrible technique, and Frankensteinian experiments in extranea.

The photo above is a redo of a shot I took in 2012, at a cask ale festival at Mad Fox Brewing, a brewpub in Falls Church, Virginia. Mad Fox is not a cask offender but a fierce advocate for real real ale. Alas, it closed on 21 July 2019, after a nine year run.

The timing feels congruent. I'm sad (and thirsty). The spigot is closed.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Wooden cask, deconstructed.

A wooden cask, deconstructed...

1) TOP HEAD (purple arrow)

The entire front disc. Even though it's referred to as "top", it faces forward, not up. It's circumferenced by a wooden ridge called a chimb (white arrow), or chime. The head consists of four planks: two crescent-moon shaped pieces called cants (bright green arrows). Between them are the two middles (blue arrows). The lower cant is where the keystone bung sits.

2) BACK HEAD (not pictured)

The back of the cask.

3) PITCH (forest green arrow)

The BELLY of the cask, made up of several wooden planks called staves (aquamarine arrows). The shive bung (fuscia arrow) sits at the top of the pitch.

4) QUARTERs (forest green arrows)

The two sections of the belly between the pitch and the front and rear chimes, respectively.

5) HOOPS (red arrows)

Metal bands keep the heads and staves securely in place.

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BITS & PIECES

1) SOFT SPILE (pale green arrow)

Porous bamboo peg inserted into the tut in the shive bung. The tut (not pictured) is an indentation in the center of the shive bung. When venting a cask, the tut is hammered through, and the spile inserted.

2) STILLAGE (dark blue arrow)

Stand on which the cask sits, angled slightly forward toward the top face, the bottom of the back chimb no higher than the level of the top of the keystone.

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MORE

1) WOOD OR METAL

A beer cask can be made of wood or metal although stainless steel is much more the common choice these days. Although metal casks are welded together and don't have staves as do wooden ones, one can still refer to a cask's heads, chimbs, keystone, shive bung, spiles, stillage, etc. Ditto for plastic casks.

2) FIRKINS

• Casks come in many sizes. A firkin is one size of cask, equal to 10.8 U.S. gallons.
• The cask above is NOT a firkin, but a 10 U.S. gallon wooden cask. It did, however, contain cask-conditioned ale. *.
• Volume sizes here are given in U.S. measure. Thus, a 10.8 U.S.-gallon firkin (U.S.) is identical in volume to a 9 U.K.-gallon firkin (U.K.)

3) FIRKIN DIMENSIONS

Here.

4) WEIGHT OF STAINLESS STEEL FIRKIN:

• Empty: 24 pounds (11.24 kilograms).
• Full: 114 pounds (51.71 kilograms).
• One gallon (of water) = 8.34 pounds (3.78 kilograms)
• The weight of one gallon of beer will be a bit more than that of water, due to its specific gravity (weight of unfermented starch, sugar, etc.)

5) WEIGHT OF WOODEN FIRKIN

?? ... but more than 90.072 pounds, the weight of 10.8-gallons of water.

6) More CASK VOLUMES

Here.

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NOTA BENE

A barrel and a cask, while superficially similar, serve two distinct purposes.
☞ A barrel is for aging.
☞ A cask is for cask-conditioning.
☞ A barrel-aged beer is well-aged; a cask-conditioned beer is, well, fresh. It's the package and the intent.

Fobbing at the Tut:
A series of occasional posts on good cask cellarmanship.

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Cask advice for 2017...from 1850.

In 1765, the Swan Brewery began brewing in London. It would continue doing so for an additional one hundred seventy-one years until 1936, when the Ind Coope/Samuel Allsopp & Sons brewing consortium purchased the brewery ... and promptly closed it.

But nearly a century earlier, in 1850, when The Swan was still going strong, it published a pamphlet for the trade that described its brewing procedures and its beers, and offered advice on how to properly care for them. Included was a short passage on cask cellarmanship. It was sensible advice then and remains so now, nearly two centuries later.

The Management Of The Beer Cask

• Place it in that part of the house which is coolest and most free from damp.
• Tap it when it first comes in, and NEVER SHAKE OR DISTRUB IT AGAIN [emphasis mine].
• Let it stand two or three days before you draw any of it for use.
• Never leave the peg out.
• Do not draw it until just before it is to be consumed.
• Do not have a supply which will last longer than (on the average) three weeks: —a little longer in winter— and shorter in summer.

—"The Proprietors of the Swan Brewery, Walham Green, Fulham - (Established 1765) - Beg to Present These Pages on Beer and Brewing; and Will Feel Honoured by Their Acceptence and Perusal."
1850

Note the cask sizes mentioned: 4.5, 9 (firkin), 18, and 36 gallons. Swan, of course, listed them in Imperial (U.K.) measure. Translating to U.S. volumes, they would be, respectively: 5.4, 10.8 (firkin), 36, and 72 gallons.

The short pamphlet also discussed the clarification of cask ale, i.e, the fining of casks.

Fining is performed sometimes by the brewers and sometimes by the Publican. When beer is brewed in the best manner, little fining is necessary. The proper, and it is perfectly unobjectionable material is Isinglass, which being dissolved in cold acid beer, and then added to the proper beer, separates itself from the liquids which held it in solution, spreads, in the shape of gelatine, through the whole body of liquor, collects all thick particles to itself, and when it has thoroughly done its work, very obligingly takes itself out of the way with the rubbish it has collected, up at the top of the vessel, leaving the beer below, beautifully clear and bright.

Ah, but what is the "perfectly unobjectionable material," isinglass? Here, from the The Oxford Companion to Beer (2012):

Isinglass is derived from the swim bladders of certain tropical and subtropical fish. [...] Traditionally, isinglass for brewing purposes was derived from sturgeon, although modern commercial isinglass is more typically derived from tropical estuarine dwellers. [...] When used as a fining agent, [isinglass] has the ability to settle yeast and beer proteins very quickly and can do so repeatedly. This latter property is essential for cask-conditioned ales, where the casks may be moved several times prior to serving.

Many cellarmen in 21st-century U.S. have switched from the use of isinglass to non-animal-derived agents for clarifying cask ales. Others rely on gravity and time and/or rapidly-settling yeast strains.

But many others, sad to say, when it comes to cask quality, isinglass or no isinglass, couldn't give a f care less.

Fobbing at the Tut:
A series of occasional posts on good cask cellarmanship.

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Mark Dorber on Real Ale, Cask-Conditioned Ale, & Cellarmanship

If he had lived five hundred years later than he did, Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus might have translated that ancient Greek proverb as a reference to cask-conditioned ale.

Indeed five centuries later, a gentleman named Mark Dorber has been working to prevent cask "casualties." From 1981 to 2007, Mr. Dorber was the manager at the renowned White Horse pub on Parson’s Green, in London. Many traveled (and commuted) there to learn about 'proper' cask-conditioned ales, and to drink them.

Now, in the 21st century, Mr. Dorber is the landlord of The Anchor, "an award-winning inn and restaurant-with-rooms [...] in the charming village of Walberswick across the footbridge from the market town of Southwold" on the English North Sea coast, about 100 miles north-east of London.

Still serving 'real ales' and still imparting knowledge, Mr. Dorber has kindly posted a concise tutorial on cask ale service at the inn's website. I've reprinted it below.

Cellarmanship & Real Ale

"Real ale" as an expression was adopted by CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale) in 1973. First known as the Campaign for the Revitalization of Ale, its name change was an attempt to simplify and shorten what was an uncomfortable mouthful of letters at the most sober of times. The appellation is a convenient campaigning device that has attracted a lot of crass comments about the "realness" of filtered beers.

Cask-Conditioned Ale

I prefer the simplicity and nondidactic expressions "cask-conditioned" or "bottle-conditioned" to describe beer with live yeast. The qualitative difference between cask-conditioned beers and filtered beers lies in the presence of live yeast, which is able to feed on any fermentable sugars remaining in the beer from the time it is racked into cask at the brewery and to impart its own individual imprint of aromas and flavours as well as life-enhancing carbonation.

Oxygen and beer

However, what might be termed CAMRA's "clause celebre" has inspired the fundamentalists of the campaign to insist that even a non-invasive blanket of carbon dioxide at atmospheric pressure * to protect slow-selling beers from the ravages of oxidation must be construed as an unnatural interference with the aroma, flavour and mouthfeel of cask ale, thereby rendering it non-real.

Their strongest claim is that the air drawn into a cask on dispense somehow softens the palate of the beer resulting in beneficial flavour changes analogous to the effect of oxygen on a young red wine. The fact that not a smidgen of evidence can be produced to support their thesis appears not to deter them in their dogmatic determination to be wrong and to penalize those who wish to get it right by excluding from the listings of beers in Good Beer Guide pubs those beers that use blanket pressure as part of their dispense and preservation regime.

The Art of Cellarmanship - Cask Conditioned Ales

Cellarmanship in the broadest sense covers the gamut of drinks sold by retail outlets and requires a detailed technical manual. The purpose of this short piece, though, is to set out the general principles for the successful management of cask- conditioned ales.

An avaricious brewer may define cellarmanship as the art of serving a continuous supply of saleable beer with the least financial loss. Here, compromises will be made on quality in order to fulfil the primary requirement of profit maximization.

My view on the primary goal of cellarmanship, which, incidentally has not changed since August 1981, is the following:

"To promote the most beauty in each cask of beer by developing the most interesting range of sound aromas and flavours; by nurturing wherever possible high levels of natural carbonation consistent with each beer style and, moreover, by serving each beer in a manner and at a temperature that enhances its aroma and flavour profile and creates an appropriate mouthfeel."

The above must follow the disciplines of good husbandry continuity of supply and speedy turnover in order to keep the beer in each broached cask as fresh as possible.

The Techniques of Cellarmanship

• 1. Setting a Stillage
  
  Securing a cask of beer: A stillage is the name given to any solid object that enables a cask of beer to be laid down and prevented from moving by means of the insertion of wooden wedges (also known as scotches or chocks). It is important that casks be set horizontally with the shive pointing straight at the ceiling. If a cask is stillaged with a forward tilt, sediment will fall to the front of the cask and be concentrated at the tap, leading to fouling of the tap and the need to draw off three or four pints of beer before the clarity and quality of the cask's contents can be judged accurately. If the cask is tilted backward, problems of unstable yeast and finings slurry slipping forward may arise when the cask is tilted in order to decant the final few gallons.


• 2. Conditioning
  
  The purpose of conditioning is to reduce the level of carbon dioxide in the cask to enable a good finings action to occur and then to build up the level of carbonation appropriate to the style of beer.
  
  Venting excess CO2 is achieved by inserting/hammering a porous peg ("soft peg" made of soft wood, usually bamboo cane) into the sealed shive tut causing a sudden escape of gas and the immediate emergence of fobbing beer. This procedure should be carried out in a controlled way; i.e., the contents of each cask should be chilled to 52 to 55 degrees F in order that a relatively calm and nonexplosive purging of excess CO2 can take place.
  
  It is also important that upon soft spiling, the cask should have an even distribution of finings and yeast. It is sensible to roll each cask vigorously before stillaging, securing and venting. The time taken for the beer to "work" through the soft peg will vary according to each yeast strain, the concentration of yeast cells per millilitre, and the yeast's general friskiness, along with the amount of residual sugar/primings in the cask and the temperature/state of agitation of the cask. In the case of exceptionally lively beers, it may be necessary to replace the soft peg every hour for a day or more. The pegs sometimes become blocked with yeast and, occasionally a plug of dry hops may form underneath the soft peg, preventing the release of gas.
  
  The rule on the amount of time to soft peg beer is that there is no rule. It is entirely dependent upon the yeast fining regime adopted. The object of soft pegging is to reduce the amount of CO2 to the point at which the finings will prove effective.
  
  But do not over vent. You are preparing the yeast for a marathon journey not a short sprint, hence the need to vent at low temperatures and avoid exhausting the supply of sugars. The tension to be observed is the need to produce clear beer and the imperative to stimulate good to high levels of CO2 in solution. Flat, clear beer is the norm in Britain. We drink with our eyes and then jazz up flat beer by forcing it through a tight sparkler. We cannot put our well-conditioned pale ales through a sparkler at the White Horse without substantial wastage due to the relatively high level of CO2 in solution.
  
  Hard pegging should occur when a cask has "worked" to the point where it takes 3 to 10 seconds for the fob to re-form on top of the soft spile after being wiped clean, again depending upon the style and strength of the beer, the yeast/finings regime, and when the beer is required for dispense. The soft peg should be replaced with a nonporous hard spile to prevent the escape of any more CO2 and to slow down yeast activity.
  
  Dropping bright will now occur and is, in my experience, greatly assisted by a rising temperature. Again, it is a matter of trial and error with the yeast strains used, but I have found that taking the ambient cellar temperature from 52 to 54 degrees F up to 58 to 60 degrees F for about 8 to 12 hours produces consistently bright, polished results across the range of ale yeasts used in Britain today. Dropping bright times from hard pegging vary from four hours to four to five days.
  
  Carbonating should now take place after a spell of warm conditioning at 58 to 60 degrees F. It is important to chill back down to 52 to 55 degrees depending upon the temperature that your yeast is happy with. The lower the temperature tolerated by the yeast, the greater the level of carbonation possible.
  
  Bass yeast remains one of the liveliest and most tolerant of yeast strains in Britain and will work happily at 50 degrees. After a four-week maturation period in the cellar at 50 to 52 degrees F our pale ale has the most glorious, mouth caressing effervescence that one could wish for.


• 3. Maturation
  
  This part of the process of cellaring beers, sadly, is seldom given much attention in practice. However, aging beers not only allows the appropriate level of carbonation to be generated but also allows the beer to dry out the effects of krausen or priming additions, thus taking away any insipid qualities from the palate of the beer. The fresh kiss of yeast, the hallmark of cask-conditioned ale or unfiltered lager, develops further impact and complexity during the process of maturation, be it in a lagering tank or in a cask. Aging also enables the effects of dry hopping to achieve maximum impact after two weeks or so in cask, developing its own particular grace and delicacy of aroma.
  
  For beers such as low-gravity dark milds, we would expect to put the beer on dispense in the shortest time possible, perhaps only four or five days after racking, in order to promote the slightly sweet, fresh malt character of this supremely quaffable style. We cellar ordinary 1040 original gravity pale ales, such as Harvey's Sussex Best Bitter, for two weeks in order to extract the succulent malt characteristics and earthy Sussex hop flavours, but stop before the dual strain, spicy, clove-like yeast imprint becomes dominant. A period of two weeks also enables us to build up good levels of carbonation to provide the complementary mouthfeel so sought after.
  
  Draught Bass we keep for three to four weeks as described above. Old ales have been cellared successfully by us for months; two months for Highgate Old (1050 og.) this past winter to a year in the case of Traquair House Ale and Adnam's Tally-Ho (1075 og.).


• 4. Dispense
  
  The key areas to get right here are:
  • Temperature, ideally 50 to 55 degrees F depending upon the style of beer and the ambient temperature. Please don't excessively chill a rich, biscuity, malty Scotch ale or an ester-laden, vinous barley wine. Therefore, pay attention to insulated beer lines (and beer engines) carrying beer from your cellar or chill cabinet behind the bar to the customers' glass.
  
  
  • Use either tap-fed gravity dispense or beer engines. If you use beer engines, decide which beers benefit from the use of sparkler attachments in order to produce a tight, creamy head. Stouts and dark milds can be enhanced by the use of sparklers, but think carefully and experiment before you connect a carefully crafted IPA to an 'Angram Pip'.
  
  
  • Each cask broached and put on dispense should be consumed as quickly as possible; ideally within 24 to 48 hours unless a cask breather is used. It is not just a question of oxidation and acetification setting in, but the loss of CO2. In all but the most carefully prepared casks, such loss will result in a notable loss of freshness and vitality, which matter a great deal to me.

For those of you who are preparing pale ales for cask-conditioned dispense, the following quote from the head brewer of Marston's in 1899 provides a rare insight into his perception of quality and indicates just how far brewing techniques had advanced from the 16th century:

Dorber concludes in high fashion by paraphrasing the "late, great Bill Shankly, pioneering manager of Liverpool Football Club":

A true fact, that.

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Fobbing at the Tut:
A series of occasional posts on good cask cellarmanship.

• * Some American pubs apply CO2 to a cask at 1 or 2 psi to forestall oxidation. The goal is noble; the suggestion is very wrong. Any additional pressure will add carbonation to the cask —more so the longer beer is served from it— defeating the purpose of the naturally-derived carbonation of cask beer. Dorber, on the other hand, is recommending blanket pressure of CO2 —net zero CO2 pressure— to forestall oxidation.
  • The atmosphere exerts pressure on us, which, at sea level, is 14.7 pounds-per-square-inch (PSI), depending upon weather conditions. A standard CO2 gauge measures only any additional pressure greater than atmospheric. Thus a gauge showing 1 pound-per-square-inch-gauge (PSIG) is actually releasing CO2 at one pound PLUS atmospheric pressure.
  • A cask breather does not really pressurize a cask. It's an aspirator valve that responds to the slight vacuum created when beer is pulled from a cask, by releasing CO2 at atmospheric pressure (or maybe a wee, wee, wee bit more) —thus, effectively, zero PSIG— completely filling the space vacated by the beer pulled out with CO2. This CO2 rests atop the beer like a blanket, accomplishing two things. It prevents ingress of air —and the oxygen in it— into the cask, which would oxidize, that is, stale, the beer. And, it slows the flow of CO2 —dissolved in the beer— into the headspace, that is, it slows the beer from going flat.
  • With a standard CO2 regulator, a setting of '1' would permit enough CO2 to flow into a cask to actually carbonate it, thus making it kegged beer rather than cask-conditioned beer, albeit at lower pressure additional beer carbonation. And a setting of zero would prevent any CO2 at all from flowing into the cask, and thus prevent little beer, if any, from being pulled out.
  • By the way, using nitrogen instead of CO2, or even mixed gas —so called Guinness gas (a blend of nitrogen and carbon dioxide)— would also protect the beer from oxidation, but it would NOT protect the beer from going flat, that is, losing CO2 into the headspace. (Why? Look up Dalton's Law of Partial Pressures!)


• Yvan Seth, an expat Australian who runs a beer distribution company in England, has written two myth-busting cask-ale-service posts based on his in-the-trade experiences: Three Cask Ale (semi)Fallacies (12 May 2014) and Followup: Cask Ale Fallacies (18 May 2014).
• Justin Hawke, an expat Californian in Britain, owns and operates Moor's, a small brewery in Bristol. Here are his Cellar Management Tips.
• From YFGF: America is doing cask ale wrong. (16 September 2015).
• Mr. Dorber's original essay at The Anchor: Cellarmanship & Real Ale.


• For more from YFGF:
  • Follow on Twitter: @Cizauskas.
  • Like on Facebook: YoursForGoodFermentables.
  • Follow on Flickr: Cizauskas.
  • Follow on Instagram: @tcizauskas.

Pic(k) of the Week: Three for cask.

After three hundred and eighty-eight or so Pic(k) of the Weeks, it's a first. A selfie.

That's I, there, in the middle.

The occasion was the 13th annual Atlanta Cask Ale Tasting, on 21 January 2017, at 5 Seasons Brewing and Taco Mac Pub, in Sandy Springs, Georgia. These three (left to right) were discussing matters cask ale —in the United States and Britain:

• Des de Moor—
  British beer educator, beer writer, accredited beer sommelier.
• Thomas Cizauskas (me)—
  cask ale partisan; American beer blogger.
• Steve Hamburg—
  American cellarmaster; USA Director: Cask Marque.

Georgia beer impressario Owen Ogletree (not pictured) had invited Hamburg and de Moor to help him judge fifty-one cask ales. Of those,

• 32 (62%) were flavored in some way;
• Of the 19 (38%) that were not filled with extraneous flavorings:
  • 8 were unflavored IPAs;
  • 7 were sours (8 if you include one British beer that had gone off);
  • 3 (only!!?!) were bitters (or Scottish export style);
  • 1 was an unflavored stout;
  • 0 were milds

Hamburg and de Moor had strong opinions on all that. I recorded those (with permission). There will be a transcript. Stay tuned.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Harvey's Sussex Best Bitter

“Ordinary bitter is perhaps the single greatest achievement of British brewing, combining a huge amount of character, flavour and variety into something that, by international standards, is untypically low in strength.”
—The Pub Curmudgeon.

By definition, [ordinary bitter is] intended as an everyday quaffing beer for having a couple of pints at lunchtime without writing off the rest of the day, or an evening session in the pub that still leaves you reasonably clear-headed the following morning. It’s not meant to be an exotic show pony for sniffing, sipping and holding up to the light.

While its market share has been eroded in recent years by the rise of widely-distributed premium best bitters such as London Pride, Bombardier and Wainwright, ordinary bitter

—defined broadly as any beers between 3.4% and 4.0% ABV in the gold-amber-copper colour spectrum [emphasis mine]—

probably still accounts for half of all cask beer drunk in the UK, and undoubtedly more if you extend the definition to include keg ales too. But it still tends to be regarded as something of a poor relation against more fashionable, stronger and more heavily-promoted beers.

Which ordinary bitters stand out amongst those currently available? The one that immediately springs to mind is Harvey’s of Lewes, which many see as a perfect balance of malt and hops.

Whether Sussex is an ordinary (but not so ordinary) bitter or a best bitter, I'll not debate dinging nits. I'll simply stipulate to its goodness.

In 2005 and 2006, it won the Best Bitter category at the Great British Beer Festival. Last year, I was happy to taste it, not there, but over here, at the 12th annual Atlanta Cask Ale Tasting. It had survived its trans-Atlantic voyage well. I hope it will again be so fortunate, later today, at the 13th annual.



The Pub Curmudgeon concludes his encomium as a devils' advocate: “So can any beers in this category truly be regarded as great, or are they all well, just a bit "ordinary"?”

To which, I answer, “Yes —a hearty quaff and repeat— yes.” Bravo, session beer.

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Why it's time to ‘just say no’ to cask ale.

Pete Brown is a British beer writer. He was, until 2015, the author of The Cask Report, a yearly analysis of the state of the business of cask ale in the U.K., sponsored by the British brewing community. Which is why it was so surprising to read his essay today in the Morning Advertiser, entitled, “Why it’s time to say no to cask ale”*:

I have a terrible confession to make — terrible for someone with my CV anyway. I've mostly stopped drinking cask ale. [...] I've had enough of :

• Bar staff saying 'it seems all right to me,' or 'well, no one else has complained,' when I take a pint back to the bar and patiently explain that it's laced with diacetyl.
• Being told that the beer is supposed to be flat and dead because that's what real ale is like.
• Taking back hazy pints and being told it's supposed to be like that because it's craft beer.
• Pints that are not off, or infected, or hazy, but just dull and sub-par, whether because the beer is tired or because it's not finished its cellar conditioning and shouldn't be on sale.

We're always saying cask ale is special, unique, a cut above other beer, that it requires more care and attention. If you're not prepared to treat it like that, you're not supporting cask ale - you're wrecking it. [...] Do yourself, your customers, and cask ale brewers a favour and stop selling it.

For Pete Brown, of all people, a partisan of cask ale, to confess, “I’ve mostly stopped drinking cask ale,” is a disconsolate and surprising thing indeed. Commentators have noted that the article's title is click-bait: Mr. Brown is referring to 'bad' cask ale not to cask ale per se. But, in fact, Mr. Brown states that he has "mostly stopped drinking cask ale" because he finds too much in poor condition. It's this confession, his finding, not the editor's title, that is inflammatory.

How NOT to tap a cask (of cask-conditioned ale)

And, I’m afraid that I’m 90% there with Mr. Brown when it comes to cask ale in the U.S.

Here's my bill of particulars. When, instead of producing cask-conditioned ale as the freshest and most vibrant it can be,

• American breweries, too often, toss 'shit' into their casks, not because they should, but because they can;
• American breweries, too often, rack unfinished beer into a cask and call it cask-conditioned;
• American ‘craft’ beer bars, too often, toss casks onto a bar and serve them unattended for days;
• When American cask ale, too often, is warm, flat, infected, crud-speckled, amateurishly prepared, and horribly served...

Why should I waste my dollars on that? Why, indeed, when I can enjoy a well-crafted beer ... on draft?

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Pic(k) of the Week: Firkin Thursday.

A blast from the past: in November 2008, a bartender is pulling a pint of cask-conditioned ale from a firkin, via a beer engine, at the Metropolitan Coffeehouse & Wine Bar, in Baltimore (Federal Hill), Maryland.

A beer engine, also known as a handpump, is a uniquely British dispensing device that is specifically appropriate for traditional cask-conditioned ales. The beer engine is a piston pump that allows the casks to be kept in a cooler cellar beneath the bar [in U.S. pubs, often in a refrigerator under the bartop] and the beer to be pulled or drawn up to the bar. [...] A version of the beer engine was patented by the prolific British inventor, locksmith, and hydraulic engineer, Joseph Bramah, in 1797.

—The Oxford Companion to Beer

There are several sizes of British-style ale casks. The most common is the firkin, the British term for a cask that holds 9 Imperial gallons, which, in U.S. measurement, is 10.8 U.S. gallons.

There's an amusing anecdote connected with this photo. Read it here: Tradition and 'traditionalists', and beer engines.

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America is doing cask ale wrong.

It should go without saying, but I'll say it anyway. There are exceptions to poorly constructed and wretchedly served cask ales in America. But sadly, they are in the minority. America is doing cask ale wrong.

Patrick Berger is the publican at the Kaiser Tiger, in Chicago, Illinois. He is a fan of cask-conditioned ale. "Is there anything as lovely as a perfectly cellared and properly poured pint of cask conditioned real ale?" he asks. No, there isn't, I'll stipulate ... at least in beer.

But ... despite being an obvious partisan for cask-conditioned ale, Mr. Berger REFUSES to serve any cask ale at all at his pub. And, why? Because, as he writes in a clear and convincing essay, "As with most things, the devil is in the details, and cask beer in America more often than not gets the details wrong."

• Oxidation
  
  A hand pump introduces oxygen to the beer in the cask every time you pull the handle. Oxidizing beer will create a fruity 'off' flavor that is very apparent after only a day or two so the beer's shelf life is very short. Many places use a CO2 breather that places a blanket of gas over the beer in the cask to give it a few more days of freshness but you're still left with 3 or 4 days tops to finish that cask. This might work out if all the bar is offering is a few cask beers, but in my experience the hand pump is usually sitting next to many other taps thus making it difficult to plow through one selection.
  
  
• Lack of expertise
  
  Many breweries don't normally fill casks and therefore aren't experienced with it. Try to remember that the perfect pint of cask beer you perhaps had in London, was filled by a brewery that fills firkins everyday and probably has been for the last 100 years. Pro tip: if a brewery doesn't own a firkin, chances are they don't know how to properly fill and condition them.
  
  
  
  
  
• Inappropriate beers
  
  Traditional English ales are way more balanced than ours and the softer carbonation [as cask ale] brings out the nuances of the caramel malts and earthy hops. But ... modern American craft beer flavors are not designed with casks in mind and do not necessarily get better when you put them in one. American craft beer is made to be served through a modern (hopefully clean) CO2 draft system. Some beer geeks get downright giddy when they find out their favorite IPA is being served in a cask, but I'm not sure the beer tastes any better. American beers are meant to whack you over the head, not highlight the subtle balance of malt and hops.
  
  
• Freshness counts
  
  Why not serve imported firkins from England? Well, mostly because it defeats the whole purpose of fresh cask beer. Some beer will be fine in a cask for a month or two while it sits on a boat and then sits in customs and then in a distributor's warehouse -- but most won't. [This can also be a deleterious issue with American casks, often shipped thousands of miles, refrigerated or not, and served weeks or months later.]
  
  

And what of the cocoa-puffs and dingleberries American brewers seem to add willy-nilly to their cask ales?

A recent Wall Street Journal piece on cask ale quoted a brewer on just that: "Casks are an incubator for experimentation, a chance to do something new all the time.” In other words, in America, cask ale is not about freshness of flavor and condition, but is used as a pilot brewery on the cheap, with the consumer picking up the tab for experimentation, good or bad. I would think that a brewer would be proud of her beer, as it tastes, as she brewed it. But maybe that's just me.

And what of cask ale at American bars and pubs? Mr. Berger recommends skipping that experience altogether. Go to a brewpub, instead, he writes.

Many brewpubs are able to pull it off because they have a trained cellarman (the brewer) who can pick and choose which beers are going to benefit from the cask. They also have a willing brewery partner (themselves) and they usually only pour a small selection of their own beer which they tend to plow through.

With laws changing to allow consumer consumption at production breweries, I would add brewery taprooms to the list, but only if those breweries understand cask ale and its preparation. Drinker beware!

Last week, I was involved in the following conversation at a 'craft' beer bar near to where I live. It was a conversation that, in similar form, recurs in many American 'craft' beer pubs far too often (but minus the honest admission).

Me: "When was the firkin tapped?"
She: "Two weeks ago." [Points for honesty.]
Me: "What do you have on draft?"

American publicans, on the whole, have little clue as to what cask ale is or how to serve it properly. Without respect for the beer, or the brewery, or their patrons, publicans toss cask ales on bartops without conditioning or care or cellar coolant, and serve room-temperature messes, tilting the casks to catch the last dregs not brewery-intended for human consumption.

Or, they will serve a cask via a hand-pump, and, assuming a magical quality therein, will serve the beer well past a cask beer's two day, three, or four day best-by date (or, on rare occasions, five day lifespan). Often several weeks.

And, after all that, they'll have the temerity to say that that sour, flat, warm, and stale sludge they've served you is cask ale. No, it is not cask ale. It's crap.

What publican Patrick Berger says he desires is proper, well-tended cask ale. I couldn't have said so better myself, so I've quoted him above, and summarized. Please read his entire piece. He has more to say. Read it, and act upon it.

Consumers: demand better. It's your dollar; it's your missed opportunity for 'real' cask ale.

Publicans: learn the art and science of cellarmanship. But if you can't or won't —and that's understandable: there's a lot of work in a busy multi-tap pub— please don't do injustice to cask-conditioned ales. Your patrons won't appreciate that; and cask ale, itself, in the process, will lose drinkers for life. Please choose instead from the wealth of wonderful non-cask kegged beers.

Brewers: likewise. Cask-conditioned ale is so much more than, simply, ale in a cask. If more of you would take care to learn the art and skill of cask-ale preparation, maybe Mr. Berger might be convinced to change his mind. And I. And maybe, as well, more Americans, unaccustomed as they are to beautiful cask-conditioned ale, might change their minds.

I don't want to dismiss all cask beer in this country. I think when it's done right it's a wonderful worthwhile thing. So while a lot of us beer nerds like to lose our shit over any beer in a firkin, try to keep in mind - it doesn't automatically make it better.

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Pic(k) of the week: Cask & draught

A pretty pair: a glass of cask-conditioned double IPA ^* on the left, and, on the right, a glass of draught pilsner.

William Jeffrey's Tavern
Arlington, Virginia.
10 September 2015.

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Pic(k) of the Week: A cask's keystone should never look like this!

Would you want to drink a beer poured through this keystone? I wouldn't.

That green stuff is mold. Mold growing on beer residue left on the keystone of a firkin after that 10.8 gallon cask was sealed at a brewery. Mold insinuating itself into the wood (and maybe the beer). Should the brewery have done a (much) better job of cleaning the keystone? Uh, yes.

Should the pub have done a better job of cleaning the keystone upon receiving the cask? Uh, yes (although I suspect that no attempt was made).

At some point, the publican will be tapping that firkin through that keystone. So, I ask again. Would you really want to drink the beer poured through that bung? Not me!

I have left unmentioned the identities of the guilty brewery and pub in order to gently prod them toward better, more hygienic, practices. They know who they are.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Fobbing at the tut.

A volcanic beer shower when tapping a cask? Uh, no. That's the result of an unskilled publican, tapping with macho posturing. A skilled cellarman, who understands how to properly handle and condition a properly-brewed cask ale, rarely will be bathed in beer.

And, contrary to much opinion,

cask conditioned beer should never be flat. A certain amount of carbon dioxide must be retained in the beer to give it liveliness on the palate; this is the "condition" sought by the cellarman, and without it the beer can become flat and lifeless. The flavor of the beer is materially affected by the secondary fermentation.

— The Oxford Companion to Beer: Oxford University Press, 2012.

The photo above was taken, in Baltimore, Maryland, on 16 May 2009, at a festival at a brewery then known as Clipper City Brewing Company (and now known as Heavy Seas Beer).

Excess carbonation (and beer) was fobbing through a soft spile (made of bamboo) which the cellarman had earlier inserted into the tut (an indentation) in the top shive bung of the firkin (a cask holding 10.8 U.S. gallons). When the fobbing dissipated, and only then ... was the beer ready to be drunk.

And it was.

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Cask ale production in the United States?

Every year for the past eight, a group of brewer's organizations and breweries in the U.K. has released a report on the state of cask ale in Britain. Called, cleverly, The Cask Ale Report, it's a joint project of such organizations as SIBA (Society of Independent Breweries), CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale), and Cask Marque, and several breweries. Beer writer Pete Brown authors the report.

This week, here in the the U.S., the Brewers Association released its bi-annual survey of industry benchmarks and brewery operations for America’s 'craft' brewers, a study in which it collects and compiles data on:

• Salary/benefits information
• Production and package mix (draught, bottle, cans, etc.)
• Revenue and COGs data
• Distribution profiles

But no cask ale data.

Via Twitter, I asked Bart Watson —chief economist for the association— whether he and the BA might consider compiling stats on casks. Here's the exchange.

@Cizauskas A decent % of the "other" in table 14 is cask. We may break it out specifically next time.

— Bart Watson (@BrewersStats) July 8, 2015

The "Table 14" of the report deals with "Draught Beer Sales" by barrelage and format (i.e., the size of the keg, etc.). The growth of the miscellaneous formats and sizes (which includes cask and growlers, and I would guess, 51-gallon wooden barrels) was much smaller, by percentage, as compared to 'standard' sizes. This information is proprietary, reserved for members of the Association. But, it's safe to say, there was steady growth, and considering the amount of 'craft' beer produced and sold, not insubstantial (or, as Mr. Watson tweets, "decent.")

Let's assume, for arguments sake, that cask ale production equalled 1% of all 'craft' beer production in the United States, which, in 2014, was 21,775,905 barrels. If so, cask ale production would have equalled 217,759 barrels. (Remember that a barrel is not a keg. It's a measure of beer volume, equal to 31 U.S. gallons).

Doing the math, we could guess production at 625,048 firkins (10.8-gallon casks) produced in 2014. That would have been quite a lot of 'real ale,' but, of course, the figure is only an unsubstantiated guess. (Cask-production shared in the report's 'miscellaneous' growth figure with beer sold in growlers and beer produced in wooden-barrels.) We may find out, for 'real,' in 2017.

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We need a book on cask-conditioned ale in America. Please!

The Session is a monthly event for the beer blogging community, begun in March of 2007 by Stan Hieronymus of Appellation Beer and Jay Brooks of the Brookston Beer Bulletin.

On the first Friday of every month, a pre-determined beer blogger hosts The Session: Beer Blogging Friday. He or she chooses a specific, beer-related topic, invites all bloggers to write on it, and posts a roundup of all the responses received. For more information, view the archive page.

Alan McLeod —at the blog A Good Beer Blog— became the emergency host of the 95th iteration of The Session, when the original host went missing-in-action.

For January 2015, his topic is "What beer book which has yet to be written would you like to see published?"

I co-authored three books which were published in 2014 and now know what a mug's game it is. In fact, there was very positive talk of another at a more advanced level. But it was not a piece of work that was within the reach of the budget if a proper job was to be done. Travel and hotel costs to allow for research. Time away from work. We wanted to do the complete thing. No rush around the world or the internets for a skipping stone study would do. So it wasn't done. It may yet be but at this point it's on the back burner. Now that I know this I realize that resources may well stand between many a good author and many many more good readers. Does good beer suffer overall because of it? I have no doubt that it does.

So... on January 2, 2015, let the fates know that you know of their cruelty. What is the book you would want to write about good beer? What book would you want to read? Is there a dream team of authors you would want to see gathered to make that "World Encyclopedia of Beer and Brewing"? Or is there one person you would like to see on a life long generous pension to assure that the volumes flow from his or her pen?

***************
Jason Oliver is the heavily-medalled brewmaster for Devils Backbone, a brewery and brewpub in central Virginia, which, although flagshipped with a Vienna lager, is multi-modal, known for ales and lagers. A decade earlier, Mr. Oliver had been the executive brewer for the mid-Atlantic group of Gordon-Biersch brewpubs, a chain heavily Teutonic, where lagers predominate.

Thus, I give great credit to Mr. Oliver, who, when he was still with Gordon-Biersch, uttered this pearl of wisdom, not about lagers, but about ales. Cask ales. To an assemblage gathered at a beer tasting at RFD, a good beer pub in downtown Washington, D.C.

You put beer in a cask: that's beer in a cask. Anyone can do that. You condition ale in a cask: that's cask-conditioned ale. There's a big difference.

That is an understanding so simple, yet so profound. So why is it, a decade later, one sees and tastes so many cask ales whose construction shows only ignorance or churlish whimsy?

Cask-conditioned ale is fresh beer, tasting as beer straight from a fermenter: bursting with flavor not dulled by time, temperature, or travel. But such a pure ale-as-art has become harder to find in America. Indeed, it is easier to find beers tossed in casks by brewers with no consideration of appropriateness or skill, than it is to find beer whose freshness is sine qua non. No, to these brewers, a cask is merely a thing in which to toss a beer for sport, a pot in which to toss extraneous, irrelevant ingredients. And, unfortunately, more and more drinkers are coming to think the same, as well.

Exhibit one. This apostasy actually masqueraded as a 'craft' cask-conditioned ale.

Twix bars? That is what they're putting in a cask and calling it 'craft'? Did those brewers even know what was in a Twix bar?

Milk Chocolate (Sugar, Cocoa Butter, Milk Ingredients, Cocoa Mass, Lactose, Soy Lecithin, Polyglycerol Polyricinoleate, Artificial Flavor), Enriched Flour (Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Sugar, Hydrolyzed Palm and Palm Kernel Oil, Corn Syrup, Milk Ingredients, Dextrose, Salt, Cocoa Mass, Sodium Bicarbonate, Soy Lecithin, Soybean Oil, Artificial Flavor.

Cask-conditioned ale is not a sponge from which to squeeze out Twix, or thiamine mononitrate, or cocoa-puffs and dingleberries^*, or whatever else might catch a brewer's fancy, with no forethought except for, "hey, what the fuck?"

And mind this. Not all beers taste better at the lower carbonation level or warmer temperature of good cask-conditioned ale. A cask saison? Why? Give me a bottle or draft.

Cask-conditioned ale is a skill; it's an art; it's the beauty of a beer at its freshest. It's unfiltered beer, brewed from traditional ingredients, that has undergone a final fermentation WITHIN a cask, and then served from that cask, at cellar temperature (52-54 °F, or so), without extraneous gas pressure, either pumped from the cask by hand, or by simply opening a tap which has been hammered into a bung. Think of a cask as a fermenter (albeit a small one) containing active, still fermenting, beer.

Exhibit two. Don't get me started on those (oh, too many) pubs that toss a cask on the bar, tap it with a —WOW— huge explosion of beer, and think that the resulting sludgy, now de-carbonated mess, is good beer.

Recently, after I had explained the cask-conditioning process to a newbie publican, he replied, "Why, that's easy." Why, yes, I agreed, it is simple, a truism that makes the presentation of so much bad beer, served in the name of cask-conditioned ale, all the more perplexing and distressing. Why can't others have this easy perspicacity?

Cask-conditioning is a continuum from brewer to cellarman to deliveryman to publican. Be lazy at any part of that chain, and the ale is not cask-CONDITIONED. It's crap.

This rant concerns 'craft' cask in America. The British, from whom we learned it, 'do' cask-conditioned well. And, yes, there are many conscientious brewers and publicans in the United States who have learned their lessons well, who understand the process. But, for the most part, cask-conditioned ale in America has jumped the Twix bar. It's become a bad joke.

Thus, it's due time. It's past time. We need a book, a primer, on cask-conditioned ale. Ask for it; plead for it; hope for it. So that our brewers can learn what an amazing thing cask-conditioned ale is and how to make it, and that our drinkers will understand what it is, and thus come to demand the same of their brewers.

Please.

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The NeverEnding CaskAle Lesson

Cask-conditioned ale is a process that starts at the brewery and continues at the pub. Bad practices at either end yield poor cask ales. For example:

How NOT to cellar and tap cask ale

Were the casks improperly conditioned (or grossly over-conditioned at the brewery)? Sure looks like it. You have to feel sorry for the guy, but, still, hilarious.

In contrast,

How TO tap cask ale

Paul Pendyck —star of the second video— is the owner of UK Brewing Supplies. Based in Pennsylvania, U.S.A., he sell casks, cask equipment, and traditional British pub supplies. He dispenses (pun intended) excellent advice on cask ale, and has a few more cask how-to videos online.

Fobbing at the Tut:
A series of occasional posts on good cask cellarmanship.

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Fobbing at the Tut: Cask Ale 101 with Alex Hall

Alex Hall is an advocate for cask ale in the U.S., based in New York City. Here, he is interviewed by Barry Wasser, of the Brewed Palate, on cask ale fundamentals.

There's a lot more to serving cask-conditioned beer properly than many publicans in the U.S. may realize. This is an excellent primer.

• 00:00
  Vent the beer well before serving it: one to two days or more. Tap and sample; wait for beer to condition and clear before serving.
  
  
• 2:00
  Who is Alex Hall?
  
  
• 4:38
  "It's always hands-on. You must never neglect a cask. Watch for clarity; don't put it on too early!" Possibly add finings. Constantly monitor the progress before and after serving.
  
  
• 6:20
  Pulling the beer up to the bar. "It's all manual." No extraneous gas.
  
  
• 7:35
  Cask breathers are controversial in the U.K. But, "The cask breather is seriously, seriously helping to spread cask in the U.S." But it's much better to have beer that's not going to stale in 3 or 4 days. "If you don't like it, don't drink the beer!" [I would add that even though the cask breather receives pressure set at 4psi, it sends CO2 to the cask at ZERO pressure.]
  
  
• 10:05
  What's a beer engine?
  
  
• 12:10 Temperature, clarity, flavor. Casque Marque is a cask ale quality accreditation program in the U.K., which has now come to New York City and eastern Pennsylvania, thanks to Paul Pendyck of UK Brewing Supplies (located in Pennsylvania).
  
  
• 14:00
  Keep casks cool with wet towels, placed all around the cask, not just on the top, "like some sort of hat." Keep them wet!
  
  
• 16:55
  How a brewery fills a cask.
  
  
• 17:40
  Less than a quarter of U.S. breweries use finings to clarify the beer. A good pub cellarperson knows how and when to add finings.
  
  
• 21:40
  Low gravity beers can be surprisingly complex. British cask beers tend to be low-gravity. American cask beers are often much stronger, and often flavored within the cask.

Fobbing at the Tut:
A series of occasional posts on good cask cellarmanship.

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Pic(k) of the Week: Gordon-Biersch from the wood

Served from a wooden barrel, Gordon-Biersch Solidarity Ale was one of 22 cask beers, brewed by Washington, D.C.-area breweries, presented at Cask Night, a festival of cask ale held at brewpub District Chophouse, 9 August 2013.

Well, the beer wasn't exactly from the wood. And, it wasn't exactly cask-conditioned. What was it then, besides delicious? First, some background.


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DC Beer Week Solidarity Ale

In July 2013, several Washington, D.C.-area brewers gathered at brewery DC Brau to collaboratively brew a "Solidarity Ale," in style, an English Summer Ale, to be released during the festivities of DC Beer Week 2013.

What, you might ask, is an English Summer Ale? The British themselves might be perplexed by that question, but the Great American Beer Festival has deemed English Summer Ale a beer style and offered these guidelines:

Light straw to golden colored with medium-low to medium bitterness, light to medium-light body, and low to medium residual malt sweetness. Torrefied [sic] and/or malted wheat are often used in quantities of 25% or less. Malt flavor may be biscuit-like. English, American or Noble-type hop character, flavor and aroma are evident, and may or may not be assertive and always well balanced with malt character. [Unclear. Is it balanced or unbalanced?] Mild carbonation traditionally characterizes draft-cask versions. In bottled versions, normal or lively carbon dioxide content is appropriate. The overall impression is refreshing and thirst quenching. Fruity-ester characters are acceptable at low to moderate levels. No butterscotch-like diacetyl or sweet corn-like dimethylsulfide (DMS) should be apparent in aroma or flavor. Chill haze is allowable at cold temperatures.

OG: 1.036-1.050
FG: 1.006-1.012
Alcohol by volume (abv): 3.7%-5.1%
IBUs (a measure of bitterness imparted by hops): 20-35
Color SRM: 4-6

DC Brau's official Solidarity Ale debuted at Cask Night, cask-conditioned.

• Malts: Pale, Maris Otter, Torrified Wheat, Wheat, Carapils, and Honey malt (not honey!)
• Hops: Fuggles, Willamette, Amarillo, and Mosaic
• Yeast: Scottish Ale
• 5% alcohol-by-volume. 25 IBUs.
• The cask was 'dry-hopped' with Zythos and Ahtanum, and primed with brown sugar. 4.7% abv. 25 IBUs.

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Gordon-Biersch Solidarity Ale

Several of the collaborating brewers would brew their own versions of Solidarity Ale as well. Scott Lassiter —brewer at the Washington, D.C., downtown location, of national brewpub chain Gordon-Biersch— was one. He brewed his iteration from a simple grist of imported English Maris Otter malt —imparting a graham-cracker maltiness and ruddy hue— and from English Fuggles hops —imparting an earthy spiciness. A simple ingredient list, but not a simple beer: elegant, bright, well-carbonated, with a hint of yeasty, estery fruit (pear), and finishing dry. 5.1% abv and 30 IBUs.


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What is cask-conditioned ale?

CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale, a consumer-based cask ale advocacy group based in the U.K.) defines 'real ale' (its term for cask-conditioned ale) as ...

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. It is this process which makes real ale unique amongst beers, and develops the wonderful tastes and aromas which processed beers can never provide.

'Real ale' is fresh, unfiltered, and unpasteurized; the yeast in the cask is still active. The level of carbonation is less gassy than that of draft or bottled beer. The ale is served at what is called 'cellar' temperature, in the low to mid 50 degrees Fahrenheit (never at room temperature!): the beer's flavors, especially those of lower-alcohol cask ales, are more evident at this temperature.


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Was Gordon-Biersch's ale cask-conditioned?

Lassiter's brewery is lager-centric. His regular practice, as primary fermentation nears completion, is to close the pressure-release valves of his fermenters. The final carbon dioxide produced by the yeast is trapped in the fermenters and absorbed into the beer. This is a traditional German method called 'gespundet,' meaning bunged or capped, and results in natural, full carbonation.

Lassiter did the same with his Solidarity Ale, but then racked (transferred) a small amount of the unfiltered, finished beer into the vessel pictured above. It's not a wooden barrel but a stainless steel cask, decoratively wrapped by wood.

So, was Gordon-Biersch's Solidarity Ale a 'real ale,' as defined by CAMRA?

No, technically, it was not. It was tank-conditioned and it was transferred into a serving cask. But, was it delicious, with no added frou-frou ingredients, but with that sense of uber-freshness common to cask-conditioned ales, and with a decidedly British-ale flavor? Yes, and, coming as it did from a lager brewery, it was a special ale indeed.


*************
Tasty casks

I don't want to give the wrong impression. There were many well-made cask-conditioned ales (and a couple of lagers) at Cask Night. Here are three I'll give special mention to.

• Host District Chophouse's Solidarity Ale: minty and citrusy from hops Amarillo and Mosaic. 5.6% abv.
• Mad Fox Brewing's (Falls Church, Virginia) English Summer Ale, hopped with Citra hops: bright, orange-citrusy-zesty. 5.2% abv. A bronze-medal winner at the 2011 Great American Beer Festival.
• From Oliver Ales (Baltimore, Maryland): Human See, Human Do. A wheat ale, spiced with coriander and bitter orange peel, and only 3.2% alcohol-by-volume, it was a powerhouse of flavor, and quite bright for a wheat beer. In fact, it was one of the brightest (clearest) cask beers of the evening, unfiltered, demonstrating mastery of cask-conditioning technique. A touch of diacetyl (buttery flavor produced by the Ringwoood yeast) was malt-like and not unpleasant or inappropriate.

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Towards an American cask ale-style?

There seem to be four major trends gaining traction in American cask ale, and all could be seen (and tasted) at Cask Night.

• One is Cask anything. If it's beer, American brewers put it in a cask.
• Another is the flavored one-off. Many American brewers seem to be producing their cask-ales —not as an expression of the absolute freshest their beer can be— but as opportunities to toss in extraneous ingredients. When done in chef-like moderation, that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it can easily be overdone. I overheard one drinker at Cask Night describing an overly-herbed beer, as he dumped it, as tasting like shampoo.
• 'Un-brightness' is another. Several ales at Cask Night were so cloudy, that it seemed as if the brewers were giving the finger to the tradition of bright British-style cask ales.
• Finally, American cask ales tend to be very high in alcohol, or, at the very least, higher than was common to British cask-conditioned ales in the mid to late 20th century (i.e., 4% abv or less).

Might these four practices —'cask it all', cloudiness, high alcohol, and flavoring— be considered as identifying hallmarks of a nascent U.S. cask ale-style? For better or for worse, that's a question worthy of further discussion.

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Elevating cask ale

What is 'cask-conditioned' ale —often referred to as 'real ale'? CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale in the U.K.) has this handy definition:

a natural product brewed using traditional ingredients and left to mature in the cask (container) from which it is served in the pub through a process called secondary fermentation. It is this process which makes real ale unique amongst beers and develops the wonderful tastes and aromas which processed beers can never provide.

Most pubs and brewpubs in the U.S. serving cask-conditioned real ales keep their casks in refrigerated units under the bar counter or in a cold room, out-of-sight from most of their customers. The beer is pulled to the bar spigot —without extraneous carbon dioxide or nitrogen gas— via a handpump known as a 'beer engine.'

There's, of course, nothing wrong with a beer engine, but there's no magic connected with its use either. It does nothing to preserve or protect the beer. In fact, it's not a powered engine at all, but a simple conveyance: a hand-operated piston pump that pulls beer from one location to another. When a 'sparkler' is attached to the spigot, the beer engine helps create a pretty head on the beer. It does so, however, at the expense of the carbonation (already scant) in the beer.


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Elevating casks: a gravity-pour system

Sitting at the bar among 'standard' CO2 taps, the lever of a beer engine can appear to the cask-uninitiated to be just another tap, if a tad unusual. But at The Great Dane Brewpub —at its downtown Madison, Wisconsin, location, within sight of the state's Capitol dome— even a casual glance reveals its elevated casks to be something apart.

Four firkins (10.8 gallon casks) of Black Watch Scotch Ale sit behind and above the bar, in full view of customers.

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  No lifting of full casks over one's head (at 114 pounds, give or take). A winch and pulley system is used to raise and lower the firkins.
  
  
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  A tap has been hammered into the keystone of the firkin. The bartender simply gives the tap a quarter-turn and the beer flows out. This is called a gravity tap.

  Notice that only beer from that one cask is being served. The other casks are coming into condition, that is: the cask has been vented to bring the level of carbonation to a proper equilibrium and to give the solids in the beer (yeast, protein break, hops) time to settle below the tap so that the beer will be 'bright' and unmurky when served. A shower of beer out of the shive bung might be dramatic but is poor cellarmanship: wasteful and injurious to the quality of the beer.

  Not 'arrowed' is an ash mallet which is used to hammer in the taps. It can be seen resting, waiting, between the 2nd and 3rd casks.

  
  
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  A copper drip bucket sits under the tap. No muss, no fuss! By the way, there could have been casks of other beers set in place on the shelf. Cask-conditioned real ale is a method of serving a beer, not necessarily of any particular beer style. Great Dane serves Black Watch only as real ale, not 'standard' draft.
  
  
  
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  Part of the appeal of cask-conditioned real ale is that no extraneous gas —be it CO2 or nitrogen— is added to the beer. It is served as it was when it fermented.

  When a cask is vented, air is allowed to enter the top shive bung of the cask so that beer can be poured from the tap in the keystone. If a cask is emptied within 24 hours, that is not a problem; longer than that and the beer may become sour from airborne contaminants and go flat, lose its carbonation.

  The arrow points to the cask end of a device called a cask breather: a diaphragm valve that provides a blanket of protective carbon dioxide over a cask ale but at zero additional pressure. One end is connected to a tank of carbon dioxide; the other to the tut in the top shive bung. When beer is pulled or poured from a cask, the valve opens allowing an identical volume of CO2 to flow into the cask —at barometric pressure, thus, at 0 psi— and sit atop the remaining beer. The beer gains no additional pressure.

  
  
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  A pernicious, if common, misconception is that cask-conditioned real ale is served at room temperature. This is so not true. Doing so would be quite un-refreshing. Real ale is served at what is known as 'cellar' temperature: 50-54 °F. Not as cold as draft service, this temperature allows the fuller flavors of the cask ale to be expressed. But it is definitely not warm!

  The yellow arrow points to a coolant line. It runs to twisted copper saddles which straddle each cask underneath their black insulated jackets. The coolant keeps the beer inside the firkins a cool cellar temperature.

  
  
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  The firkin sits on spring-loaded trestle known as a 'auto-tilt.' When the cask is full, it depresses the spring and sits nearly horizontally. As it is drained, the spring releases accordingly, allowing the cask to tilt at an ever greater angle. A publican wouldn't want to serve the final dregs from a cask, but there is a substantial amount of beer which is still bright and clear sitting beneath the level of the keystone and tap which she would want to serve.

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How was the beer?

Oh, and the Black Watch Scotch Ale itself? Dark russet in color, with flavors of dark fruit (almost Concord grape), bourbon, and caramel malt. 6.2% alcohol-by-volume (abv).

After all that, I'll mention that Great Dane does also offer a cask ale pulled via beer engine!

Fobbing at the Tut:
A series of occasional posts on good cask cellarmanship.

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