cask ale

Reads 4706 • Replies 76 • Started Saturday, June 17, 2017 7:19:53 AM CT

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Message BlackHaddock P beers 15453 º places 1053 º 06:51 Sun 6/18/2017 I love good, well kept ’Cask Ales’: getting harder to find even in the Shires these days. While CAMRA did a great job saving ’Real Ale’ we now seem to have a new wave of landlords and cellar staff who don’t know how to look after it correctly. I, like others have mentioned, use only a few ’cask’ pubs because of the condition some publicans think is OK. KeyKeg and Keg products are more difficult to ’balls up’, so have the advantage of being more consistant in quality which is why they are selling better than cask, especially in the warmer months. <*))))))><
Message chriso P beers 7540 º places 736 º 08:03 Sun 6/18/2017 Originally posted by BlackHaddock I, like others have mentioned, use only a few ’cask’ pubs because of the condition some publicans think is OK. I agree. That said, I’d still put it closer to "some", than "the vast majority", as some commentators seem to suggest. Admittedly, I don’t tend to visit many "a.n. other" type pubs, as Colin describes them, unless I’m scouting out a new town. Even then I’d be more likely to give the most interesting beer available a go rather than resort to something blander than bland like Guinness. If the beer is in poor condition I’ll know next time. And, if you don’t try, you can’t know. If I hadn’t done that I’d have been drinking a lot of Guinness in our ten pub or so trawl round Congleton last weekend. As it turned out I had a good number of decent, mainly local (if not the most exciting) beers served in perfectly decent shape in pleasant, mainly independently owned venues. Sure, there were a couple of duds but, in general, I was happy enough with the hit rate even if there weren’t too many ticks. Personally, I find that sort of jaunt more enjoyable than sticking to the craft beer bars, which are mainly restricted to the big cities in any event. And, to be honest, they’re not generally the sort of places where I’d be drinking by choice but for the beer range anyway.
Message Theydon_Bois P admin beers 40515 º places 1239 º 08:16 Sun 6/18/2017 I guess the other thing to expand upon when I say a.n.otherpub Chris, is that I am largely referring to big cities with a plethora of pubs, namely London. The sort of venue that is over the road from a meeting where you venture with colleagues and you don’t shout out ... "OK - Craft Beer Co is 23 minutes walk away or 2 stops and a change on the tube ... who fancies going there !?!". If I were in the likes of Congleton for a night I’d certainly do some prior research and hit on local CAMRA suggestions etc as a starting point ... but as you say, and if you have the time, you’ll always uncover a gem or something half decent from time to time that lays under the radar!

Message chriso P beers 7540 º places 736 º 09:11 Sun 6/18/2017 Originally posted by Theydon_Bois If I were in the likes of Congleton for a night I’d certainly do some prior research and hit on local CAMRA suggestions etc as a starting point ... but as you say, and if you have the time, you’ll always uncover a gem or something half decent from time to time that lays under the radar! Congleton was a bit odd. We visited all but three - we ran out of time - pubs & bars in the town centre (one of which was really more of a hotel anyway) and there wasn’t a single bigger brewery tied house or Punch type pubco pub amongst them - a bottle shop/micropub, a restaurant (but with some OK beer), a nice cask + craft keg/bottle bar (open until 1 am but with no circuit drinkig type rowdiness), the Spoons (breakfast of course), a Joule’s pub, a Titanic pub, brewery tap pubs for two of the local brewers (Beartown & Mannings), the brewery taproom for the other (Cheshire Brewhouse) plus a few OK free houses. No tickfest of course and you’re not going to get really cutting edge stuff in a town like that but, all in all, a pleasant surprise.
Message Theydon_Bois P admin beers 40515 º places 1239 º 09:35 Sun 6/18/2017 I have very little drinking experience in the rail/road route that is Stoke - Congleton - Macclesfield - Stockport. Recall stopping for a pint in Congleton whilst passing in the car (before RB exisited let alone my ratings on here) circa 98/99 and it being a Beartown beer, somewhere in the main street. Possibly a tied house to Beartown? Memory fades ....
Message The_Osprey beers 10591 º places 178 º 10:10 Sun 6/18/2017 Originally posted by hopbomber Personally I don’t drink cask anymore because the quality is so poor. What brewer would want to put their best beer into cask ? too few brewers take the risk. The suggestion that most cask is flawed is, as chriso said, far from my experience in my opinion the bigger problem is breweries putting everything in keg, even if this ruins the experience of the beer for the consumer - this mostly applies to stouts for me It is far more common for me to be disappointed that a beer is too cold and fizzy than it is in poor nick *anticipates criticism from the #beercannotbetoocoldandfizzy crowd Why spend loads of money on malts and barrels to make a beer taste good only to then serve it in a way that means nobody can taste it? Might as well not bother. Eventually I’ll start rage rating these beers the score they deserve rather than "trying to imagine what the beer would be like from a bottle", which I often have to do with keg stouts And, yes, I know that I could just shut up about it and buy bottles instead, but it’s too expensive and I’m already holding 300 bottles - there’s no space and my girlfriend will kill me in my sleep
Message FatPhil P beers 26061 º places 995 º 12:58 Sun 6/18/2017 Originally posted by Leighton Originally posted by FatPhil Every time I visit the UK I wallow in barrels of beautiful uplifting cask ale. Most of my "wow" moments have come from cask beers. KeyKeg, as yet, hasn’t come close. However, the aspects that I like, love even, are aspects that others actually consider to be negatives. There’s room in the world for both tastes. You mean like, "Wow, I can’t believe it’s not bollocksed!" Your prejudices are showing. They ain’t so fresh either. It’s hard to tell - are you deliberately sour?

Message hopbomber beers 88 º places 40 º 14:18 Sun 6/18/2017 Originally posted by The_Osprey Originally posted by hopbomber Personally I don’t drink cask anymore because the quality is so poor. What brewer would want to put their best beer into cask ? too few brewers take the risk. The suggestion that most cask is flawed is, as chriso said, far from my experience in my opinion the bigger problem is breweries putting everything in keg, even if this ruins the experience of the beer for the consumer - this mostly applies to stouts for me It is far more common for me to be disappointed that a beer is too cold and fizzy than it is in poor nick *anticipates criticism from the #beercannotbetoocoldandfizzy crowd Why spend loads of money on malts and barrels to make a beer taste good only to then serve it in a way that means nobody can taste it? Might as well not bother. Eventually I’ll start rage rating these beers the score they deserve rather than "trying to imagine what the beer would be like from a bottle", which I often have to do with keg stouts And, yes, I know that I could just shut up about it and buy bottles instead, but it’s too expensive and I’m already holding 300 bottles - there’s no space and my girlfriend will kill me in my sleep You make some interesting points. However, I think you’re missing the bigger picture. Your statement that why would a brewer spend so much money on malts etc... And not cask Is because of the inability of places to keep it properly and the low prices cask buyers expect most cask only producers cheap out because if you bought the best malts hops and yeast you’d be looking at making a loss on cask ; and nobody wants that. I have no objections to cask but too often it falls short stale hops, cheap malts and some dodgy yeast re-pitch. If you’ve spent a fortune on white labs yeast, the freshest hops and premium uk malt you want your beer to be served at its best keykeg (to an extent) is your safety net : cask isn’t.
Message chriso P beers 7540 º places 736 º 19:00 Sun 6/18/2017 Originally posted by hopbomber If you’ve spent a fortune on white labs yeast, the freshest hops and premium uk malt you want your beer to be served at its best keykeg (to an extent) is your safety net : cask isn’t. Could I pose a simple question? Is key keg beer usually so cold and/or highly carbonated because the brewers think it should be that way or because bars think it should be served/have to serve it that way? If you’re in the camp that thinks key keg is often too cold and too fizzy, then it’s very far from at its best.
Message WingmanWillis P admin beers 1563 º places 1908 º 07:30 Mon 6/19/2017 As I travel around the UK regularly it’s fairly rare to send a cask beer back for being in poor condition. Pubs do make the mistake of having high numbers of cask beer that doesn’t sell but soon learn the errors of their ways or how under. I enjoy keg beers too. Condition is generally good. Not too cold. Cloudwater had a view that keg beers are better to quality control in their blog. That’s their view and it’s their brand they protect. Seems to me you can debate cask v keg forever. Both can be kept well or badly and I think that 5% and above suits keg better than cask with some notable exceptions (ie Jaipur). Just read What’s Brewing or London Drinker for ongoing debate!