New Fresh Ale category claimed

[Jim Brewster]

New beer category ‘fresh ale’ is introduced

A new beer category, named ‘fresh ale’ has been created by Otter Brewery to bridge the gap between craft beer, cask ale and lager.

‘Fresh ales’ are beers that are initially brewed as cask ales, but instead of being filled into casks they are gently carbonated before being put into kegs.

The Devonshire-based brewery’s first beer being launched as a ‘fresh ale’ is named Amber Fresh and paves the way for “a new form of ale for pubs, designed to be fresh in name and fresh by nature”.

According to Otter Brewery: “Drinkers are looking for beer to be slightly cooler than traditional cask ale, flavoursome and gently carbonated” and the new beer category is, “brewed in exactly the same way as our cask beers…then gently carbonated and racked into a keg…this means the beer will stay in great condition for longer, remaining fresh to drink for weeks, rather than days”.

Otter Brewery insisted that even though US hops play a large role in the delivery of craft beers..all too often craft beers are ‘over-hopped’ to the point where the beer becomes a challenge to drink (arguably a good discussion point), rather than a beer that slips down with ease and invites the next large swig”.

The ‘fresh ale’ beer Amber Fresh still uses the US hop Willamette but is, according to the brewer, “very drinkable and broadly appealing”.

The concept for the fresh ale category echoes CAMRA’s recent plans for its Drink Cask Fresh campaign – formerly titled Drink Fresh Beer that it revealed plans for during last year’s Cask Seminar, hosted by Cask Marque.

During the seminar, beer writer and author Pete Brown who is now heading up the CAMRA campaign, revealed how “more people are drinking cask, but drinking more promiscuously in a bigger repertoire where cask plays a smaller role” and observed that “there is no such thing as a cask drinker” urging people to “think about the market as beer drinkers who drink cask, rather than cask drinkers”.

Brown also highlighted how “the number of women drinking cask has more than doubled” and yet there are many things that the cask category is doing incorrectly to appeal to its audience and added that “freshness of beer is important but, currently, not at all linked to cask” before he pointed out that those who profess to be fans of cask ale actually know very little about it.

CAMRA and SIBA have both been contacted for comments regarding the new category to ascertain as to whether they think it will be of positive benefit to the brewing sector and assist macro lager or beer fans in migrating to cask or if it could potentially cannibalise the cask category, but each have stayed silent.

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2023/05/new-beer-category-fresh-ale-is-introduced/

Lower carbonated kegs basically

 

[Sadfield]

A poll on how many forum members already do this, would be interesting. I'd wager many of us have been doing this for years. And many craft brewers using key kegs.

Poll added - Admin.

 

[MickDundee]

I carb all my English style ales as close to 2PSI as my Kegland in-line secondary regulator will let me, then serve them through my Pint365 hand pull.

 

[The Baron]

Yep I do it I keg my beers and hardly carb ( just enough to fill the top of the corny with CO2)so that it is kept fresh then transfer to a Bag for the hand pull.
So 19ltrs in the keg then fill a 7.5ltr bag so that the hand pull is fresh and hardly carbed, when I have drunk this I can then re-fill the 7.5 bag with fresh beer. This keeps the beer for handpull fresh.I obviously use the CO2 to transfer from corny to bag but at the lowest amount that is possible

 

[Clint]

This will stir the hipsters into a veritable frenzy!
Get down the shops quick as skinny jeans,flip flops,plaid shirts and beard wax will sell out.

 

[Erik The Anglophile]

I prime my kegs with 70g white cane sugar and keep them at 10-12c at enough pressure to maintain ~2vol.
Lower the glass to "splash" in the beer for a few seconds at the last bit of the pint to get a little head and knock out some fizzyness.
Sounds what basically all homebrewers making British ales and seeking to mimic cask pours are already doing...

 

[clib]

Carlsberg Marston's is launching Wainwright Gold, Wainwright Amber and Hobgoblin IPA in the fresh ale format, which is set to challenge cask ale for hand pump space, as they have decided fresh ale should be served from kegs via hand pumps, which has put the cat amongst the Camra racing pigeons.

I can see both sides of the debate here, putting kegs on hand pumps is a major confusion and threat to cask ale. At the same time, ale itself is under threat, cask is not viable in many pubs and bars, and I wouldn't want to be faced with a choice of Madri, Fosters or Guinness on a regular basis.

I see the value of fresh ale, as an alternative to cask ale, but I think it should be served from keg taps.

https://www.thedrinksbusiness.com/2...sh-ale-dispense-for-wainwright-and-hobgoblin/

 

[marshbrewer]

It's a con. It's the clearest case of passing off I have ever seen.

It keg - brewery conditioned, filtered, stored in a sealed non vented keg, served by external CO2 - that is then put through a beer engine to try and fool people it's cask.

It's keg. Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with keg, and that isn't my point. It's the act of serving it through a beer engine in order to try and pass it off as something it isn't that pisses me off.

As @clib says, serve it through a tap. Stop ripping people off.

It almost seems to me that Carlsberg are deliberately trying to kill a cask off. Twats.

 

[Rodcx500z]

Should be called home brew style cheeky feckers

 

[Sadfield]

I'm not sure I see it as a threat to cask. If you are a pub already successfully doing cask, balancing stock with demand, then this is of no benefit to you. If anything it puts a similar product into places that can't do cask, and potentially broadens the market by introducing lager and craft beer drinkers to a cask like product. I like that it at least emphasises the point that freshness is important, and acknowledges that beer from a keg, regardless of dispense will never be Cask Ale.

Obviously it'll need a sparkler.

 

[marshbrewer]

Does it acknowledge that though? Does it have a sign on the beer engine that says "This is keg, not cask. This isn't real ale"? No, it has a non-descript "brewery conditioned" label (at the moment, while they see how much they can get away with) which doesn't really inform the unaware about anything. Not everyone is a beer geek like us and will have read the press release. Am I OK to slap a Ferrari badge on a kit car I am selling if I put a small label that says "tribute edition" or some such nonsense on it?

It's a gigantic con. It's been tried before, and a then healthy CAMRA called it out and it was stopped (with the assistance of trading standards if I remember correctly).

As for threatening cask, if they get away with this, it will start to push cask out in all pubs that aren't run by decent publicans. So that's all the chain pubs for a start. That could well kill off volume production of cask permanently.

 

[clib]

If it replaces cask on pub hand pumps then it must be seen as a threat to cask. The intention doesn't seem honourable to me. I would hate Camra's insistence on cask conditioning to leave us with zero ale in many pubs and bars, but I think there needs to be clarity. And for English drinkers, hand pumps have always meant cask. At the very least, hand pumps should be easily distinguishable, with a very different design, as the Otter Fresh Ale pump handles appear to be. But the honest thing to do is to put keg beers on keg taps, surely.

 

[Sadfield]

As for threatening cask, if they get away with this, it will start to push cask out in all pubs that aren't run by decent publicans.

My point though, these pubs likely don't have cask or if they do it's **** anyway, which has for a long time been the thing that drives people away from cask ale.

Hand pulled beer is far less popular than beer from a tap. So putting it on hand pull would be counterproductive for sales, no?

It's a year since this thread started. Have Otter stopped producing cask?

 

[marshbrewer]

My point is the large chains that presently do cask, will see this as an opportunity to kill it off - less staff training, less waste, public get conned - win win (for them). This will cause a huge reduction in demand for cask, which will mean it won't be produced in volume. This will mean it won't appear in catalogues for the tied houses, and so on, and so on.

Sure, niche producers will continue to make it, but it will gradually be squeezed out.

Finally, if serving from a hand pull is counterproductive, why are they doing it? Real ale requires a pump for dispensing due to the lack of top pressure. This keg ale does not.

 

[clib]

There are both risks and opportunities with it I think.

 

[Sadfield]

My point is the large chains that presently do cask, will see this as an opportunity to kill it off

They could've done that at any point in the last 30 years. They don't need an opportunity.

"In 2021, cask accounted for only 4.3% of overall beer production and 15% of draught sales"

 

[Sadfield]

Perhaps no cask is better than bad cask.
https://www.petebrown.net/2022/09/28/cask-ales-biggest-problem-is-solvable/

 

[clib]

I've never worked in the pub trade but I'm wondering if cask breathers are a better solution. Fresh ale apparently has a 14 day shelf life according to CMBC, which isn't much different to cask if you use cask breathers, I think? Maybe Camra needs to accept that the type of cask they insist on is not viable in many places, and a mote durable version is a necessary and good thing. Ale could perhaps be more than 15% of on trade sales if old school cask wasn't the only option in most places.

 

[marshbrewer]

Perhaps no cask is better than bad cask.
https://www.petebrown.net/2022/09/28/cask-ales-biggest-problem-is-solvable/

I would rather see no cask than rubbish cask. That's a different argument: it doesn't mean I want to see keg passed off as cask. It might be counterintuitive, but if cask was only sold where it was well kept (which I reality means where it sells in volume) people's experience of it might well improve leading to an increase in sales.

They could've done that at any point in the last 30 years. They don't need an opportunity.

"In 2021, cask accounted for only 4.3% of overall beer production and 15% of draught sales"

I'm pretty sure no publican, however lazy, is going to risk sales dropping off by 15%. However, if there was a way to dupe the public......

Just as bad cask damages the image of cask, bland keg passed off as cask will do the same. Other than the (fraudulent) theatre of the hand pull, why does this type of keg need to be served by beer engine? Why can it not stand on its own merits?

And if they aren't trying to pass it off as cask, why is it listed in the cask section of the trade catalogues?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I've never worked in the pub trade but I'm wondering if cask breathers are a better solution. Fresh ale apparently has a 14 day shelf life according to CMBC, which isn't much different to cask if you use cask breathers, I think? Maybe Camra needs to accept that the type of cask they insist on is not viable in many places, and a mote durable version is a necessary and good thing. Ale could perhaps be more than 15% of on trade sales if old school cask wasn't the only option in most places.

CAMRA stopped opposing cask breathers in 2018 :
https://camra.org.uk/press_release/...ture-as-its-members-call-for-positive-change/