I've got to be honest with you, this desk job is taking it's toll. Instead of lugging cases of beer up and down stairs endlessly, I'm sat down most of the day, on the phone, buying beer, selling beer, and making beer-related plans. And frankly, I've put on a bit of weight. Not a lot, but enough to make me think 'hmm, if you want those hideous shirts still to fit you at GBBF, then you'd better do something about it, chunky'. While it may be bad PR for beer to say that it makes you fat, it makes you fat. Anything worth consuming will make you fat if you consume enough of it. I'm not going to go on a bloody detox, but I am going to exercise regularly and try to drink a bit less.
Twenty minutes on the cross-trainer at full resistance is enough to make me breathless, sweaty and leave a pleasant blank hole in my mind where all the stresses and strains of the day were just a few minutes ago. But of course, nature abbhors a vacuum, and thoughts tend to float in. This evening's thought was:
"If cask and keg are better suited to different styles of beer, do any brewers vary the recipe of their beer to suit the mode of dispense?"
I'm aware of brewers making their beers stronger for bottle, but what of cask vs keg? Or are cask and keg seen as interchangeable?
Answers in the box below, please and thank you.
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Interchangeable around here. Spoke to a bar manager on Saturday who was telling me about trying to convince one of his regular suppliers to do more cask. "It's just a matter of pointing the hose in a different direction."
ReplyDeleteNo different in my case. I just drop them bright for keg, that's it.
ReplyDeleteWe spunded Cannonball in the conditioning tank prior to key-kegging and we didnt use finings either so slightly different. More preparation for packaging rather than different recipe though I guess?
ReplyDeleteInterchangeable, 7C's IPA cask & keg from same gyle, same with Diablo IPA. Only difference is extra time in tank to drop yeast count & let clear naturally. I agree with Rich, more prep & time involved for kegging this also explains why price is higher than cask, this might help Tandleman on his question of beer keg pricing.
ReplyDeleteI think I understand that bit James but I can't know for sure how much extra. What would you say in % terms?
ReplyDeleteTandleman - Kegged beer obviously ties up tank space for longer, the cost of the CO2 & other consumables, kegs are more difficult to clean & kegging is much more labour intensive than racking cask beer. Also kegs are more expensive than casks & more desirable to thieves, so container price & risk has to be factored in too. So we add a premium on for tying up tank space, small premium for CO2 & other consumables, wear & tear on filling heads & replaceable keg spears (washers & springs) plus labour cost of kegging & cleaning divided by amount of kegs. Also the pub has to buy in consumables like CO2 & keg couplers. I'm not giving away our pricing but you can see how it adds up at the font...
ReplyDeleteThanks James. Much as I thought. I can see where the premium comes from.
ReplyDeleteBeer Nut - that was my hunch to be honest.
ReplyDeleteDave - do you feel that one method showcases your beers better than the other, or is that like being asked to chose a favourite child?
Rich - spunding is almost as great a word as its German antonym, ungespundet
James - so it's no different to serving it in a different shaped glass?
There's nothing like a bit of exercise to get the brain ticking over! I've had some of my best thoughts while running (that's where FABPOW come from!). The only trouble is that I tend to also forget them before I'm done with the run...
ReplyDelete"Ungespundet" - the German for flat ;-) (Gott strafe England)
ReplyDeleteMany of the established brewers now seem to brew keg/smooth to a different %ABV from their cask offerings - Robinson's certainly do. No idea whether the recipe is significantly different.
ReplyDeleteJames - there must be a hell of an upside to keg to offset all those disadvantages. (Slightly tongue-in-cheek, but only slightly - you're not exactly selling keg!)
ReplyDeleteZak, child, nail, head.
ReplyDeleteI think it comes down to preference. Some people like cold and fizzy, some don't. There is a lady down our local that drinks my beer but not without putting a large slug of black current cordial in it. I'd rather she didn't, but at least she drinks my beer. I'm sure she would like it more if it was a kegged version. I keep thinking about offering them some keg.
Of course, I back James' comments 100%
Zak, obviously the main differences being in the dynamic of the beer in the glass, the temperature, the CO2 lifting volatiles from the beer & altering the mouthfeel, it's all about handing choice to the drinker. I think lately people have become entrenched in thinking its cask vs keg, it's not a war, cask & keg are all facets of the same face, 'BEER'. If we widen the formats our beer takes the more new beer drinkers we will inevitably reach, & that's the idea the more beer lovers the better! (Sorry for blatently using your blog as a stage for my thoughts Zak.)
ReplyDeleteJames - fair points all, although I'm curious as to how much extra aroma you get with keg given the lower temperature. And fire away with your thoughts - mi soap box es tu soap box.
ReplyDeleteI've tried a few Keg beer and so far not Impressed . A good Bottle beer is nicer than a good keg . Cask is nicer if not too warm ..
ReplyDeleteI think we’ve yet to be given any good reason to think that keg, as a method of carbonation, suits any style of beer better than real ale.
ReplyDeleteThere’s no reason I’m aware of that beer served on cask can’t be just as carbonated as a beer served on keg. In Germany, for example, lots of beers are served on cask (admittedly by gravity, not the normal hand-pump system we have in the UK) at levels of carbonation at least approaching that of keg.
So when we compare a pint of, say, Punk IPA on keg and another on cask as its normally served in the UK, we’re not comparing two different methods of carbonation, but two levels of carbonation.
If we want to know whether Punk IPA suits keg better than cask, we need to get a pint of it on keg and a pint of it on cask with the same carbonation level, and see which is best.
My guess is that there wouldn’t be a significant difference, but until we compare them with like-for-like carbonation levels, all we’ll ever know is which beers suit a higher carbonation level, which doesn’t per se have any bearing on whether keg is better than cask for the beer in question.
There are loads of benefits to kegged beer such as longer life, greater convenience for pubs, greater consistency etc. These are not to be sniffed at – I would much rather a bar served a good kegged beer than kept a cask beer which couldn’t be maintained in great condition (whether due to lack of a skilled cellerman or lack of turnover of cask ale). However, whether it’s better taste-wise for certain beer styles strikes me at the moment as something we just don’t know with any certainty.
I say this, by the way, as someone who is not a CAMRA member, loves to drink good kegged beer all the time and finds the CAMRA attitude vis. craft beer to be reactionary. So I just want to emphasise, I’m not bashing kegged beer, nor even saying that it isn’t better for certain beer styles than cask, just that, to my knowledge, the relevant comparisons haven’t been done, or at least haven’t been widely talked about.
P.S. Sorry to add an extra note to an already over-lengthy post, but to anticipate a possible objection to what I’ve said: It might turn out that carbonating beers to the desired level on cask will be inconvenient in some way either for brewers, cellarpeople, bar staff or whatever, but this will only mean that kegged beer will be more convenient for the beer in question, not that the beer in the glass will taste better.
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