All About Beer Magazine

Recognizing Tricks of the Trade

As mentioned above, some breweries and pubs will pass off brewery-conditioned and filtered bright beer as cask-conditioned, but how can you really tell if it’s legit? There’s no foolproof method, but here are some things to look for:

• If you’re at a festival or bar and the cask is rolled in, tapped, and the beer is completely bright as soon as it’s served, it’s bright beer. Bank on it.

• If you know a pub or festival cellarman, ask him or her to check the cask when it is empty or drained. A cask-conditioned beer will have plenty of sediment; a beer that was racked bright will not.

• Evaluate the condition visually and by mouthfeel. Natural carbonation normally yields a softer mouthfeel and a creamier head.

Cask-conditioned beers are typically priced higher than standard draft beers. This is certainly fair if the beer is a rare import, but also because of the extra care required to serve the beer properly. That said, some bars and brewpubs serve their cask beers with an enormous head, often two inches or larger. Unlike the U.K., the U.S. has no legal measures for a standard “pint” of beer, so even if your cask beer was served in an imperial measure glass, the two to three inches of foam will often result in a glass that’s barely three-quarters full. If you feel you’ve paid a premium price and not received a fair serving, politely ask for a top-up. If one is not given and foamy pours are standard practice, don’t raise a fuss; just don’t order their cask beer anymore!

Festivals offer a unique opportunity to sample multiple beers at the same setting, and most are a great experience and value. Yet if the organizers have not arranged for the casks to be secured and properly cellared ahead of time, they’re not doing “real ale” a real service. Remember, not every brewer or organizer cares whether cask ale is supposed to be clear or not, and most attendees don’t know enough about it to care one way or the other. If you enjoy them, great, but realize that they are not doing authentic cask-conditioning.

I’ve been organizing cask beer festivals since 1996, many of which have also included judged competitions, so I’ve generally been pretty anal when it comes to cellaring. Normally that means we secure casks six to seven days before the festival and do our conditioning three to five days prior. Realistically, this is not always possible, so organizers will do the best the can under the circumstances. If you’re at an event and you notice casks are being moved around gingerly, you can be quite certain these folks care about what they’re doing.

Standard flaws that may be passed off as “features”:

• Beer is cloudy. Most often in American practice, it’s because the beer is still “working,” i.e., it hasn’t had enough time to properly condition and drop bright.

• Beer has lots of “floaters” because it was dry-hopped. This is quite possibly true, but it’s still a sign that the beer hasn’t had enough time to drop bright.

• Beer is flat and warm. Hey, don’t fall for the myth that this “is the way it’s supposed to be.”

• Beer has obvious aroma and flavor faults (acetic, buttery, oxidized). There are many reasons for them, but none that should ever be passed off as a “feature.” The cask may have been mishandled in transit, been in stock or on dispense for too long, exposed to temperature extremes, infected during racking at the brewery, etc. Off-flavors are not acceptable, period.

Taking One for the Team

At closing time, a good pub will always pump out beer that’s still in the lines. That’s because, even if the lines are cooled, the beer will lose condition. If the beer lines aren’t cooled and insulated, it’s even worse―the beer will get warm and flat. If you go to a pub early in the day and you haven’t seen any cask beer poured yet, be forewarned: The first pint or two may have been “line beer” left over from the previous evening.

In my U.K. travels, I learned quite early to monitor what was being served. If I saw the bartender pour a pint of Bitter A, that’s what I’d order, because I knew mine wasn’t the first pint of the day. Of course, sometimes you don’t have any choice. When traveling with friends, we always alternate who gets the first pint in any pub because we’ve all been similarly burned. The “taking one for the team” strategy means you’ll get burned less often.

Back to the Future

Eight years ago I examined the current state of real ale in America in these pages, and my research revealed that successful strategies for brewing and selling it were following divergent paths. While many of us were holding firm to the classic practices in British brewing and cellaring, others eschewed them as old-fashioned and impractical in the light of very real business concerns. We were witnessing a redefinition of cask beer which supposedly better suited American tastes and the limitations in the complex infrastructure needed to make it work.

Back then I was willing to concede that the ends ultimately justified the means. If brewpubs and bars were educating the public and teaching a new appreciation of complex flavors and aromas, then what could be wrong with that? After all, it’s really difficult to convince people that beer doesn’t always have to be ice cold, fizzy and crystal clear to be delicious.

But I think we’ve moved beyond the need for gimmicks. A new generation has grown up in a world where there’s always been craft beer and an abundance of beer styles. It doesn’t have to be coddled with sweetened , orange-garnished , or low-hopped “training beers,” so why do we still need to “trick up” cask beer to make it appealing?

As one who really loves cask-conditioned beer, I’m thrilled to see more breweries and bar owners committing the time and effort needed to master the process and get it right. What the craft beer world needs even more, however, is a discerning group of consumers who will reward them for doing so.