Yours for Good Fermentables ™

Friday, February 05, 2010

The Education of a Cask Ale Brewer

The topic of this month's The Session: Beer Blogging Friday is Cask-Conditioned Ale. In addition to inviting beer bloggers to contribute, I reached out to non-blogging beer folk (and, yes, they are many).

The following is an essay from Steve Jones.

I started 1993 in flux. A couple of years previously, after 3 years in the laboratory pursuing a PhD (Biochemistry), I came to the realization that I had grown to hate research. By way of a catalyst/escape route my friend Peter's band (Adorable) secured a record deal and were about to embark on a nationwide tour, and Peter asked if I'd care to come along and sell the merchandise. At that time the choice was simple and the answer was yes, so, one evening, I quietly put my paperwork in order, left the lab and never returned.

Fast forward to 1993. I had experienced a lot traveling with Adorable as their guitar tech across the U.K., Europe and The States as well as working for a couple of other bands but, as I neared my thirties, I decided that maybe I should get a "real" job. Adorable were taking forever writing and recording their second album and I was kicking around Coventry, unemployed.

I scanned the local paper's employment section and an advertisement jumped off the page! The Firkin Brewery pub chain was opening a brewpub in Coventry at what was then The Hen & Chickens (now to be The Fowl & Firkin) and was seeking a brewer. I had no experience of brewing but I reasoned that I had a knowledge of fermentation technology from my studies and that I had certainly enjoyed my fair share of Sam Smiths at my local so ... what the heck, why not? I mailed out my curriculum vitae and waited.

Turns out that I didn't have to wait long. Within a couple of weeks I was at a round table interview with David Rawstorne, head brewer of the Holt,Plant & Deakin Brewery. It was not a pleasant experience. Rawstorne was abrasive and, in response to my declaration that my scientific background and experience of fermentation technology would benefit me in the position, responded that (I'm paraphrasing here) that science crap wouldn't help me in the real world!

I left somewhat disheartened and was therefore surprised that I was called for a second interview the following week, this time with Rawstorne and the area manager for the pub chain. Although this was a much more formal interview it was also a considerably more enjoyable experience. Rawstorne was positively genial. and I left feeling that I had done reasonably well for myself. I interviewed on Wednesday, received a job offer on Friday, and started on Monday.

My first two weeks were spent at the Holt,Plant & Deakin Brewery in Wolverhampton with Rawstone and brewer Dave Roberts. During this time I wrote down pretty much everything that was said to me as I followed these veteran brewers about their daily business. I watched every aspect of the brew day keenly and spent much time on the more mundane (though nonetheless important) tasks such as cleaning tanks and removing shives from casks and cleaning them for filling until I was finally racking casks of Holts Entire Butt Bitter.

Following this brief training period I was dispatched to my own brewery (capacity 5 imperial barrels) in Coventry. The first day involved cleaning .... lots of it. The brewery had been installed more than a month previously and had been gathering dust since then.

The second day was brew day. Rawstorne joined me in the morning and after a quick inspection of the brew kit we mashed in. The day was long. This was my first brew day ever so I was extremely nervous and was slow and methodical in everything that I did. Still, under Rawstorne's excellent guidance, I got through it and the first brew day was done!

At the end of the day Dave slapped me on the back, wished me good luck and informed me that he'd stop by next week! I couldn't believe it! Here I was, one day of brewing experience under my belt, and I was now responsible for several thousand pounds worth of equipment and the task of supplying 3 different cask ales to each of 3 Firkin pubs. Steep ... Learning ... Curve!

The first solo brew didn't go quite so well. I had incorrectly judged my hot liquor temperature or liquor:mash ratio and as a result hadn't attained very good conversion in the mash. What should have been a 1.050 ale came in at 1.044, way out of spec. for the product (we had a leeway of +/- 1.001 for original gravity) but hey, on the positive side, I'd just brewed my first seasonal beer!

A week later, I racked the brew into kilderkins, and crossed my fingers. One week after that it was being served at the pubs and proved a great success, selling out in a timely fashion. Needless to say I made sure that I didn't make the same mistake again and subsequent brews all came in on spec.

Admittedly, for a long time, I was nervous in my job. I wasn't really a brewer. I was someone who worked in a brewery, brewing beer to set recipes. Over time I gained confidence in my own abilities and, as I learned more about my craft, began to develop my own style and recipes.

It is with great pride that I recall the first time my pub was featured in CAMRA's "Good Beer Guide" and also the time that the Coventry And North Warwickshire Branch of CAMRA presented me with an award "for brewing consistently fine ales and also brewing the first festive beer to sell out at Coventry Beer Festival 1996". I felt truly blessed that I had stumbled into the world of brewing!

During my time at the brewery I studied for a Diploma in Brewing from The Institute Of Brewing & Distilling in London.

In 1997 I moved to a larger brewery, the 10bl system at The Phantom & Firkin in Loughborough, where I remained until the company was bought by Punch Taverns/Bass and closed down in 1999. During my time with the Firkin brewery I brewed many different cask ales, variations of some of which I still brew today (Old Habit, Dark Horse, Blonde Ale).

We brewed only cask ale, (I had never even touched a keg until I started working for Oliver Brewery), to very strict standards which I think has served me well in what is still something of a niche market in the U.S. At the firkin brewery quality and consistency were, of course, of the utmost importance. All casks were labeled with the fill date, gyle number and fill number. The brewery was not allowed to ship any cask that was more than 14 days old. The pub was not allowed to sell any cask more than 28 days old and casks were to be sold within 3 days of first pour, regardless of cask size.

In keeping with CAMRA's archaic (in my opinion) guidelines for eligibility into the Good Beer Guide, pubs did not use cask breathers. I performed regular finings trials on the beers that I produced using Imhoff cones for sediment measurement to ensure that my fining regime resulted in optimal clarity. Anything less than perfect clarity was not tolerated and was considered unsaleable and, in the rare instance that this problem arose, it would require re-fining in trade and, if that did not rectify the problem, then the beer would be returned to the brewery.

Each month we also submitted a sample of each product type to the laboratory at Burton-upon-Trent for analysis. Samples were analyzed to ensure that the original and final gravity, alcohol content, and colour were within acceptable limits, and that the beer was free of microbiological contamination.

In order to ensure proper handling and dispense of our products each brewer was also required to perform quarterly cellar audits of the pubs that he/she supplied, a time consuming process as I, for example, supplied thirteen pubs within a 50 mile radius of the brewery.

The standards to which we held our beer in the U.K. are very different to the approach of many craft breweries towards cask ale in the U.S. Clarity of the product is often not considered an issue by either the brewer, bar, or the customer, with many brewers not fining their casks (or not properly fining their casks), or the bar that serves the beer not venting and tapping the product in a timely fashion with the cask not being allowed an adequate period of time for the yeast to settle out.

Likewise the customer seems to accept being served a cloudy pint, sometimes thick with yeast, as the norm, a situation that I have not fully adjusted to when I am myself the customer, and to this day I will choose my cask ale carefully to avoid such beer.

As the host brewer for the Chesapeake Real Ale Festival I have handled many casks from many breweries and have dealt with cask ales of all conceivable qualities from the sublime to the ridiculous. At last year's festival, I had the unfortunate experience of trying to tap a cask that was so incredibly over conditioned that it blew the tap out of my hand! A beer shower at 3am is not a pleasant experience, especially when the beer has been "dry hopped" with hop pellets that cover me in green sludge!

Firkin with a transparent 'head'

It is reassuring, though, that the market for cask ales is increasing, that bars such as ChurchKey in D.C. can maintain an impressive turnover of casks from 5 beer engines and that , most importantly, the beer is well handled. The increasing number of venues for cask conditioned beer will clearly convince more brewers that cask ale is a viable product and with that will increase the awareness of proper techniques of production and handling of what is, after all, beer in its purest, freshest form, a true testament to the brewer's art!

Steve Jones has been the brewer and the cellarmaster for the Pratt Street Alehouse of Baltimore, Maryland (formerly known as the Wharf Rat Brewpub), since 2000. He blogs about it here. More about Steve (and Mild Ale) here.

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The Session: Beer Blogging Friday is a monthly event for the beer blogging community begun by Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer, and co-moderated with Jay Brooks at the Brookston Beer Bulletin.
On the first Friday of each month, a predetermined blogger hosts The Session, chooses a specific, beer-related, topic, invites all bloggers to write on it, and posts a roundup of all the responses received.

More here.

How I became a firkin man

I am a third generation home brewer. I was hooked on beer design and culture from before I can even remember. Real Ale begins this tale

I recall as a little boy, my dad, the biochemist, buying beer kits from Boots Pharmacy on one of our regular trips to visit family in England. He would fill a green trash can in the back corner of our basement. I remember how clean and careful he was and the brew was pretty good: real ale-unfiltered, primed and bottled in champagne bottles

When I was 15, my father’s uncle introduced me to my first all grain homebrewed ESB in his meticulously kept, proper English garden. I do not think there was a drinking age..? And dad seemed to be enjoying himself anyway.

I have had the opportunity to travel and meet people from very different backgrounds, cultures, languages and have beers with them. I've collected beer cans on many of my trips abroad, often hauling home great cardboard boxes full of cans, and even taking empty suitcases to bring back beer paraphernalia. Imagine the security problems and extra costs involved in that now!

Gardening is another passion that my father passed to me. My garden has increased in size and function every year for the past ten years. I now have the homegrown ingredients to use in my home brewing and homemade spice creations. This includes established Cascade, Centennial and Northern Brewer hops. The spice list itslef is endless. I hand pick, peel, prepare, and dry anything and everything.

In the early 80s, I was introduced to Mr. Hugh Sisson, again through my father. He was a large influence on my developing beerhood. It turned out that for years my father had been bringing fellow researchers from all over the world to Sisson's Brewpub. They would toss back a few pints of the local real ale and discuss beer with the man who really started it all in Maryland for microbreweries.

Most of my work history has involved fresh produce. I started in the Jessup Produce market working 12 hour days making sure the fresh veggies were delivered to local Baltimore restaurants. A move from wholesale to retail put me in charge of a large produce, salad, and floral section at a local food chain. I am not scared to say I can make a hell of a floral arrangement. This passion for everything fresh, clean and aesthetically pleasing to the public has been incorporated into my home brewing and casking techniques.

Six years ago, I had just graduated from UMBC with a BS in Environmental Science and had been working part-time at Clipper City for over a year. I was still very involved in home brewing and the real ale concept (unfiltered beer, dry hopped and kreusened). With photo help from Tom Cizauskas, I created a protocol for cleaning and filling casks, a “Real ale program.” Five years later this program is like a fobbing cask, bringing lots of excitement and experimentation to the Heavy Seas portfolio. Fans are so excited with real ale that Clipper City Brewing Company now owns over 150 casks –and each one my 'baby'.

And, I want each of my babies to make a lasting impression on the server and drinker, whether in New York City or a bar in Ellicott City. Maryland.

Everyone should have the opportunity to try cask conditioned ale. It is our obligation, as distributors, brewers, and fans of real ale, to educate the retailer and to generate enthusiasm amongst craft beer drinkers for this purest form of beer. This should include information about how to serve a firkin professionally, with all the pomp and circumstance each one deserves.

Creating and producing real ale is just a part of the attraction for me. It is also being part of something grand, and believing in yourself and the product.

Meeting great people, while drinking a cask conditioned Loose Cannon that has been dry hopped with local Cascade hops: that clinches the deal.

Stephen Marsh is the Cellarmaster for the Clipper City Brewing Company of Baltimore, Maryland.

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The Session: Beer Blogging Friday is a monthly event for the beer blogging community begun by Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer, and co-moderated with Jay Brooks at the Brookston Beer Bulletin.
On the first Friday of each month, a predetermined blogger hosts The Session, chooses a specific, beer-related, topic, invites all bloggers to write on it, and posts a roundup of all the responses received.

More here.

But does it matter?

While several brewers are now producing "authentic" English style cask ales that rival the quality achieved by brewers in Britain with hundreds of years of experience with the style, many are choosing to go their own way.

Either ignoring or ignorant of the "conventional" wisdom that beers served this way are traditionally delicate, nuanced, subtle, and drinkable, we're seeing some quite extreme products being pushed across American bars.

I've had ungespunget beer in Bamberg, and deliberately unfiltered beers in bottles by Harpoon, Switchback, and Mad River Brewing. In many ways, these are closer to the idea of cask ale than an inky black imperial stout in a firkin.

But does it matter? Tasty beer is tasty beer, right?

It only matters if a superbly balanced, delicately flavored, drinkable ale loses its place on a bar because the customers don't recognize it as the real thing.

Steve Parkes (c).

Already a degreed brewmaster when he arrived in the United States from the UK in 1988, Parkes opened Maryland's first post-Prohibition microbrewery. He has since consulted and brewed for several award-winning US breweries. He is the owner of and lead instructor for the American Brewers Guild brewing school.

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

The Session: Beer Blogging Friday is a monthly event for the beer blogging community begun by Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer, and co-moderated with Jay Brooks at the Brookston Beer Bulletin.
On the first Friday of each month, a predetermined blogger hosts The Session, chooses a specific, beer-related, topic, invites all bloggers to write on it, and posts a roundup of all the responses received.

More here.

It's Alive: "Learn how to 'read' the beer."

The cask of ale lay on its side on the top of the bar at Sean Bolans Irish Pub. It seemed to dare me to swing the mallet. Begging me to let the delicious contents of its cylindrical walls out. I held the venting spile in my hand, positioned to breach the top bung on the cask. Soon all would be begging me for the first pint. I was on top of the beer world!!

The 3lb wooden mallet was very light as it danced in my hand. I raised my arm and pointed it towards the heavens in preparation for its next mission. .It quickly made its earthly descent toward it target, perfectly aligned, then “whack” the spile penetrated the bung perfectly and the “hiss” of gas escaping slowly told me all was well. Cask ale for sale!

That was the way it played out in my head, but the truth is not quite as elegant.

The first time I prepared to serve a firkin of ale at my pub in South Baltimore [Sean Bolan's Historic Irish Pub], I had no idea of what I was doing. I thought I would just follow the few bits of advice that were given to me from some of my more experienced “beer” friends.

Use a venting spile and hit it hard they told me. What the hell was a venting spile? When the ale settles down a little, use a soft spile. What the hell was a soft spile? When the ale is ready, use the hard spile. What the hell was a hard spile, and why isn’t the ale ready when it comes out of the cask?

These were all questions for which the answers could not be taught over a pint. They would need to be learned organically through trial, error, and experience, and I had just started to be taught.

My education began on a Thursday morning around 1 am. I would serve my first firkin later that day at 7pm as I would every Thursday for the next five years.

When I swung the mallet towards the spile, I glanced it, and it did not fully penetrate the cask. The result was a geyser of beer that spewed all over the ceiling and pub. For the next several minutes I tried in vain to control the flow and waste of beer. I finally was able to get my hands on the bag of supplies I had and pull out a spile and shove it into the hole in the bung whence the beer was still flowing. For the next 3 hours I watched in amazement as beer pushed its way through the soft spile and formed a living foam that dripped over the entire bar. The beer never stopped hissing, never stopped foaming. Nobody told me that the beer was alive. Fortunately no one witnessed my lame attempt at preparing a cask to be served.

I would eventually learn how to “read” the beer. Just as parent learns to interpret the cries of a child, I learned how to interpret the signs of my beer. I could breach the cask and tell within an hour when the beer would fully be ready to be served, how long it would keep and what type of spigot to use just by watching the foam. Much of the knowledge came from asking the brewers and distributors about the characteristics of the beer and applying this knowledge nightly to all beers. I also learned a lot by drinking as much of the beer as I could. Nothing like first hand experience. (Breaching the keystone has its own stories to be told at a later time.)

Ken Krucenski(r) at Sean Bolan's.

The lesson here is that cask ale is a living thing that needs be understood in addition to being enjoyed. The next time you drink a pint of cask ale, know that a brewer labored hard to make it, know that your cellarman spent time preparing it for you, not only for profit's sake, but also for the ale's sake.

Not all beer is alive, but seek out those that are, and try them, try them all! If you don’t know what a spile is, look it up on the internet, and if you go to my old Pub, now called Mugsy’s, you can still see the beer stains on the ceiling.

Find the only corner of the bar top, and look up.

Ken Krucenski was the owner of Sean Bolan's Historic Irish Pub in the Federal Hill district of Baltimore, Maryland. Only open from March of 2000 until October of 2006, it developed a good beer reputation much greater than its intimate size. It was renowned for its beer breakfasts.

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The Session: Beer Blogging Friday is a monthly event for the beer blogging community begun by Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer, and co-moderated with Jay Brooks at the Brookston Beer Bulletin.
On the first Friday of each month, a predetermined blogger hosts The Session, chooses a specific, beer-related, topic, invites all bloggers to write on it, and posts a roundup of all the responses received.

More here.

Put that perfect pint on the bar.

The increase in interest for Cask Ale that we have seen in the US over the past few years is tremendous. Obviously from a business standpoint I am happy but it is far outweighed by the fact that I can personally enjoy cask ale in more locations.

You can imagine when I first starting selling cask ale supplies 13 years ago I definitely was not doing it for the money! Even today that is still not my driving force. My belief that cask ale is the ultimate tipple is what motivates me to help people put that perfect pint on the bar.

As with any industry that experiences rapid growth it has to be handled carefully, remember 13 years ago when people were jumping on the microbrewery bandwagon who had no passion for beer but only saw it as a business opportunity. Beer deserves better than that. Cask ale certainly does.

The most disturbing phone call I receive is from a bar owner who calls on a Wednesday wants goods overnighted because they are serving a cask on Friday! Obviously that have no idea how cask ale needs to be handled.

I spend a lot of time explaining to them that the beer is leaving the brewery before it is finished and it is their responsibility to care for it in a manner that shows it at its best. I usually manage to convince them to wait until the following week.

We are all fortunate that there are many places that have cellarmen who are passionate about their cask ale, and it shows in the clarity and condition of the beer they serve.

Years ago I remember a bar owner who told me that he used to roll the cask before he put it on as his customers expected it to be cloudy! You can imagine the argument that ensued.

So, to everyone that is involved with cask ale, let's remember that our goal should be to present the product as it is meant to be: clear, conditioned correctly, and at the right temperature. To all the people in the US that are already doing that, I commend and thank you.

Paul Pendyck (r) opened UK Brewing Supplies 13 years ago. He "imports everything you need for the dispense of cask ale, firkins, pins, Angram beer engines, bungs, taps etc." He is the co-organizer of the Lititz Cask Beer Festival.

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

The Session: Beer Blogging Friday is a monthly event for the beer blogging community begun by Stan Hieronymus at Appellation Beer, and co-moderated with Jay Brooks at the Brookston Beer Bulletin.
On the first Friday of each month, a predetermined blogger hosts The Session, chooses a specific, beer-related, topic, invites all bloggers to write on it, and posts a roundup of all the responses received.

More here.