Is cask beer this simple?

After seeing a post from @Hazelwood Brewery in the 'what are you drinking' thread some days ago:

Hazelwood Brewery said:

That’s right, it’s carbonated through secondary fermentation. The beer is in a King Keg and the beer dispensed through a tap using fairly low pressure from the natural carbonation. This is it on the day it came out of the fermenter into this King Keg with a little sugar.

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I'm inspired to give this a go, but, after doing quite a bit of reading up on this, I'm still unsure if it's simply a case of bottle conditioning but on a much larger scale?

Is there more to it that I'm missing or is it literally a case of racking the beer from the primary into a pressure barrel and adding some sugar?

Is there a noticeable difference between doing it this way Vs bottle conditioning or kegging?

Will there not be oxygen ingress as soon as it's poured?

Sorry if this is covered elsewhere, I did have a browse but couldn't find anything specific.

I used to use kegs, you need to leave in the fermenter for a minimum 2 weeks or until it is clear then prime your keg and put the beer in close it and leave for at least a day

I used to use Boots plastic pressure barrels. I'd rack the green beer from the fermenter into them with a bit of priming sugar: much less, proportionally, than is used with a bottled batch, and start drinking it as soon as it was carbonated and bright. It's entirely different to bottling. If I did a few bottles and kegged the rest the beers would have quite different characteristics. I preferred the kegged beer.

I do my London pride clone this way. Prime my pressure barrel and a week later it’s spot on. It lasts for months, the first couple of pints are a little lively but then pours perfectly.

Druss said:

After seeing a post from @Hazelwood Brewery in the 'what are you drinking' thread some days ago:



I'm inspired to give this a go, but, after doing quite a bit of reading up on this, I'm still unsure if it's simply a case of bottle conditioning but on a much larger scale?

Is there more to it that I'm missing or is it literally a case of racking the beer from the primary into a pressure barrel and adding some sugar?

Is there a noticeable difference between doing it this way Vs bottle conditioning or kegging?

Will there not be oxygen ingress as soon as it's poured?

Sorry if this is covered elsewhere, I did have a browse but couldn't find anything specific.

Click to expand...

It is simple, and you don't have to spend a fortune setting a cask system up, I first used a cube as secondary fermenter and a gravity pour. Rule of thumb is half the sugar you would use for bottling. The bubbles are finer and no obvious carbonation which suits my taste buds.
We had some good discussions on AHB in the past about cubes as casks.
https://aussiehomebrewer.com/threads/cask-and-hand-pump.78151/

Yes. Beer is as simple as you want it to be.

Says the bloke who mashes overnight, doesn't chill, ferments in the mash kettle and bottles on day 6 or 7.
...and I am looking to improve that process (takes too long)

Good beer can be simple. Its very easy to make it complicated.

Looks like the sort of thread I should have my say in?

Druss said:

Is there a noticeable difference between doing it this way Vs bottle conditioning or kegging?

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Massive difference! Although I have come across some who have a "lighter touch" on the priming sugar and churn out perfectly acceptable "cask style" bottled beer. The emphasis is on that "lighter touch"; probably means half the priming sugar most think is a lighter touch. For kegs I usually use 12-14gms of sugar in 20 litres.

Druss said:

Will there not be oxygen ingress as soon as it's poured?

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Even CAMRA have stopped pushing this "oxygen" twaddle. Concentrate on getting the carbonation well down to start with. Plastic "pressure barrels" are okay because use too much pressure and they burst! But they can still hold a bit too much pressure for "cask-style" beer. Regulating CO2 pressure manually is most likely doomed to failure: Everyone will be too heavy-handed with the CO2, those that do try to be careful are rewarded with air being sucked back into the beer container (which causes it to go off in a few days). It is impossible to set an ordinary regulator to a low enough pressure, even secondary regulators. People set up contraptions with mylar balloons to catch fermentation CO2 at atmospheric pressure, but I'm a proponent of LPG regulators (fitted as secondaries), especially the Spanish made "Clesse" 50-150mbar regulators which aren't lumbered with "POL" adapters (they have easy to connect up BSP threaded ports). They also have a handy adjuster: I reckon about 60-80mbar (around about a bit less than 1PSI) is about right.

LPG regulators are very reliable ... they manage explosive gases normally! (And cheap ... thousands of campers and caravaners depend on them).

And I back all this up with the ubiquitous "Treatise" document linked in my signature below.

MashBag said:

Yes. Beer is as simple as you want it to be.

Says the bloke who mashes overnight, doesn't chill, ferments in the mash kettle and bottles on day 6 or 7.
...and I am looking to improve that process (takes too long)

Good beer can be simple. Its very easy to make it complicated.

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Do you bother sparging?
We had a member here who said he was going to try fermenting the whole mash. He never did report how it ended up, but I can imagine! A rare fellow fro Peterborough, I recall. I wonder what happened to him.

Off across the Great Ditch this very afternoon to visit my Nephew in Bath and pick up his kegs etc, that he's not using for the moment. Looking forward to reserving bottles for lager and strong ales.
The reason I gave up on the Boots' kegs (which I never had the slightest trouble with) is that I wasn't used to the water here and was getting some odd results, which made me think (wrongly) that I had a persistent infection. That, and not being able to get the gas for the valves they were all fitted with. I might press them back into service if our lad wants his kegs back at some stage.

Thanks for the replies guys, I'm definitely sold on the idea, I bought a 2 gallon Bigger Jugs pressure barrel on Amazon this morning so I'll be giving it a go with my next brew in a couple of weeks.

Just need to find space for it now...

An Ankoù said:

Do you bother sparging?

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Tried it. Didn't win a prize, gave up.

Question.

What taps are best, to use on top of corny's, low pressure naturally primed not co2.

I recently got a Fermenter King to save me bottling as I hated bottling from the beginning of brewing. The carbonation is purely from fermentation and it serves up pints just like you'd get on cask. There's the option to add CO2 but I haven't needed to yet.

...unlike cask it doesn't draw any air in so I've had a very low ABV beer in there under anaerobic conditions for 2 months, the carbonation just gradually drops off

Druss said:

After seeing a post from @Hazelwood Brewery in the 'what are you drinking' thread some days ago:



I'm inspired to give this a go, but, after doing quite a bit of reading up on this, I'm still unsure if it's simply a case of bottle conditioning but on a much larger scale?

Is there more to it that I'm missing or is it literally a case of racking the beer from the primary into a pressure barrel and adding some sugar?

Is there a noticeable difference between doing it this way Vs bottle conditioning or kegging?

Will there not be oxygen ingress as soon as it's poured?

Sorry if this is covered elsewhere, I did have a browse but couldn't find anything specific.

Click to expand...

I think you probably have the answers you’re looking for but I’ll chip in anyway.

What I’m going isn’t quite the same as bottle conditioning because bottle conditioned beers have higher carbonation which to my mind is a completely inferior product (still nice but cask is so much better).

It is just racking from the fermenter into a pressure barrel and adding sugar but the amount of sugar will produce different beers from almost flat to well carbonated, you want somewhere in between and to your own taste.

Absolutely cask, bottle and keg are different and produce different beers. Keg tends to be pretty basic and the beer is nice but lacks soul. Bottled is a bit better maybe but not much, generally because it’s over-carbonated. Cask beer is soft in the mouth, has a rich long-lasting creamy head, and the flavour is perfectly rounded - I’m feeling emotional at the thought of it!

You get no oxygen in the beer if you get the amount of priming sugar right because CO2 will continue to be produced slowly until the sugar has been fully depleted. As long as you don’t pour too many pints in one sitting you should be okay. You could alternatively feed low-pressure CO2 into the head space as you pour.

I see in a later post you’re going to give it a try. Don’t be impatient, save at least some to last 4 weeks - this is when I think it reaches the conditioning sweet spot. Your’s may vary a little because of the lower volume but you’ll know.

Hazelwood Brewery said:

I see in a later post you’re going to give it a try. Don’t be impatient, save at least some to last 4 weeks - this is when I think it reaches the conditioning sweet spot. Your’s may vary a little because of the lower volume but you’ll know.

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I'm planning on doing two back to back 30 litre brews over the coming fortnight, I've just found a good deal on the very same barrel so got another two on the way (why didn't I shop around before I bought the first one? Doh!) so I'm planning to allocate one batch just for the three casks.

I'm usually pretty good at leaving the beer to its own devices for a while so I reckon a four week wait won't be an issue.

Druss said:

I'm planning on doing two back to back 30 litre brews over the coming fortnight, I've just found a good deal on the very same barrel so got another two on the way (why didn't I shop around before I bought the first one? Doh!) so I'm planning to allocate one batch just for the three casks.

I'm usually pretty good at leaving the beer to its own devices for a while so I reckon a four week wait won't be an issue.

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I’ve just poured a glass, I had to after talking about it! Here’s a couple of pictures to whet your appetite. After a sip you can see a hole in that creamy head where I supped it up. I’ve heard people say that forced carbonation is just as good and that CO2 is just CO2 wherever it comes from. They’re right on that point but they’re completely ignoring the process of secondary fermentation which builds these desirable characteristics.

I've done it once with a 40litre steel cask (Firkin). I brewed the beer as normal as I would for kegging. The beer was lightly carbonated as I put positive pressure on it in the fermenter during cold crash which made it a bit of a PITA to fill the cask due to foaming from the light level of forced carbonation. I purged the cask with co2 (dont think this is a usual step, but it was a hop forward beer so wanted to do what I could to minimise oxidation), and didn't add any priming sugar. The cask wasn't going to be served through a hand pull, just poured from the cask tap so I didn't bother priming because cask beer comes out of a cask tap flat as a pancake usually so seemed little point in secondary fermentation. Usually it's going through the hand pull sparkler that agitates it a bit to form a head. However I was surprised to find there was a bit of a head that formed during the pour and hung around for long enough and it was a thoroughly decent pint. And was gone in a day and a half so didn't suffer from any noticeable deterioration or oxidation. Turned out very nice indeed...dare I say probably better than usual from keg...would have been even better through a handful. Though I've recently has Thornbridge Jaipur from cask and its better than from keg so seem these modern beer styles work just fine on cask.

It is possible to emulate a cask beer from a bottle, the best commercial beer I have had from a bottle with carbonation as low as a cask ale is a Kiwi Pale Ale from McCashins Brewery. It is just a matter of the sugar addition and temperature at the point of bottling.
Practically zero carbonation.

Hazelwood Brewery said:

I think you probably have the answers you’re looking for but I’ll chip in anyway.

What I’m going isn’t quite the same as bottle conditioning because bottle conditioned beers have higher carbonation which to my mind is a completely inferior product (still nice but cask is so much better).

It is just racking from the fermenter into a pressure barrel and adding sugar but the amount of sugar will produce different beers from almost flat to well carbonated, you want somewhere in between and to your own taste.

Absolutely cask, bottle and keg are different and produce different beers. Keg tends to be pretty basic and the beer is nice but lacks soul. Bottled is a bit better maybe but not much, generally because it’s over-carbonated. Cask beer is soft in the mouth, has a rich long-lasting creamy head, and the flavour is perfectly rounded - I’m feeling emotional at the thought of it!

You get no oxygen in the beer if you get the amount of priming sugar right because CO2 will continue to be produced slowly until the sugar has been fully depleted. As long as you don’t pour too many pints in one sitting you should be okay. You could alternatively feed low-pressure CO2 into the head space as you pour.

I see in a later post you’re going to give it a try. Don’t be impatient, save at least some to last 4 weeks - this is when I think it reaches the conditioning sweet spot. Your’s may vary a little because of the lower volume but you’ll know.

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So how much priming sugar do you usually use then mate in a five gallon brew in a king keg

foxy said:

It is possible to emulate a cask beer from a bottle, the best commercial beer I have had from a bottle with carbonation as low as a cask ale is a Kiwi Pale Ale from McCashins Brewery. It is just a matter of the sugar addition and temperature at the point of bottling.
Practically zero carbonation.

Click to expand...

I think that depends on your own personal definition or expectations of what cask ale is. Some of the Bass drinking old timers down my local will expect flat beer, so when they order they'll ask for a flat Bass and the server will remove the sparkler off the handpull and and you get a totally flat beer with zero head...and filled to the brim, which is probably what they're really after! In some pubs they'll even fill a metal jug and put a damp tea towel over it and st it aside, so when you ask for a flat beer they pour it out of the jug so it's flat and warm. Is alot better than it sounds trust me.

But most people will just expect the classic pint pulled through a sparkler with half an inch of foamy head and light carbonation.

I dont see why you cant replicate either of these from a bottled ale...if you want the former, just pour it out 5 minutes or so before you want to drink it and leave it out to off gas and warm up a bit. If the latter then pour straight from the fridge and enjoy.

Though to me bottled ales never ever taste as good as they do from a pub. Timothy Taylors from a bottle at home is just not even the same drink as a pint from my local. Not sure if that is a psychological thing about the pub environment or something to do with the science of how the beer is packaged and prepared for that packaging. There is definitely an art in cellaring. My local does a banging pint of Timothy Taylors, but the pub a mile down the road in the next village is nowhere near as good, so must be down to how they keep the beer in the cellar.

A mate of mine used to work for Molson Coors and he always said that drinking beer is as much about the 'event' which is why you get the specialised glasses...in phycological testing people swear the same beer tastes better from a nice glass than from a bog standard glass, which is why you get the specific glass for the beer in pubs these days and there is more money spent on glass design than on the beer itself.

Tommo 2 said:

So how much priming sugar do you usually use then mate in a five gallon brew in a king keg

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I use about 1.5g/l