When does a CASK beer become a KEG beer?

[Maysie]

Crikey, no wonder I was confused about the definition!
Thanks for the views/opinions expressed. It seems like it is a bit grey and actually is not really that important anyway.

brewtim - if you have nothing worth saying, then just say nothing. If I wanted an answer off of google I would have used it. The reason I posted the question on here is to see what others thought - which is one of the purposes of a forum like this.

 

[RokDok]

Good afternoon.
Interesting debate. I was just going to put my flak jacket on but I think one of those 'Hurt Locker' bomb disposal outfits might be more appropriate.
Firstly what I share with all of you is an appreciation of good beer.
This is where I have to duck for cover.
I've been a CAMRA member for 30 years, every quarter I deliver 100 of the local free pamphlets "The Dongle' to 10 rural pubs in West Dorset and I volunteer to work behind the bar at the local beer festival- which is brilliant.
I'm reminded of that great Monty Python sketch in the life of Brian between the National Freedom Front for Judea and the National Judea Freedom Front or something similar where they moan about 'What have the Romans ever done for us ? '
Well, this year CAMRA organised a petition to stop the ever increasing tax on beer in Pubs - the so called 'Tax Escalator'- there were 100.000 plus signatures and over a thousand members turned up at the Houses of Parliament and the Tax Escalator was subsequently scrapped.
Everyone on this forum who goes and buys a pint in a pub is benefitting from that.
It's an absolute disgrace that pubs of historical and architectural significance have had their interiors ripped out or worse still been destroyed to benefit a few greedy developers. CAMRA have worked to try to get some of these pubs 'listed' so that they can't simply be destroyed forever for short term profit : See Britains Best Heritage Pubs for more info.
I'm old enough to remember the awful, awful days of the 1970's where the big breweries wanted keg- by that I mean pasteurised tasteless, CO2 delivered gassy awful beer in every pub that they owned to increase their profits. I remember Watneys Red Barrel , Starlight Bitter Whitbread Trophy, Tartan Bitter, Mckewens No 1 etc etc masquerading as beer.
It might have been OK for you guys in the North/Midland/London, but here down South it was dreadful. Believe me , please.
CAMRA/cask/keg etc has absolutely nothing to do with brewing your own beer. If we brew it ourselves we know what is in our beer, and we serve it to our taste. Full Stop.
The Commercial world is different.
I believe that it is important , for commercial beers to have a gold standard for the way the beer is produced , the way it is kept and the way it is served.
That is defined by the cask mark definition in the first post.
It absolutely stops the multinationals taking the pass, cask breather becomes gassed up with CO2, 'Craft' means it's OK to pasteurise or gamma irradiated the beer to kill off the yeast and the flavours and we are back to square one.
Look at the meaningless gobbledygook with food- ' Farm fresh' = battery farmed, Sunny Delight orange drink, = tartrazine with sugar being put in the chill cabinet, Loads of salt , sugar and MSG taste good etc.etc.
Sorry for the diatribe, I'm just back from our local, which does serve its beer with a CO2 'blanket'.
The beer is poorer as a result but the company isn't, and I can at least have a decent pint when I get back home.
Looking forward to seeing you guys again at the Spring Thing.
Cheers.
RokDok

 

[Slid]

Well that was heartfelt, RokDok, and may thanks for that.
I really liked reading what you had to say. Back in the 1970's breweries stared to move away from the the woosen barrels - made by men called "Coopers" towards Aluminium Pressure Vessels - the Kegs.
Because a wooden barel can allow the release of pent up pressure and an APV cannot, the breweries moved towards pasteurisartion of beer. This kills the yeast and so the CO2 needed for a Beer (as opposed to an Ale) now needs to be introduced later in the cycle. A brewery has access to CO2 in great quantities and should have no difficulty in re-introduction at the point of delivery.
Unforunately, neither Ale nor it's hoppy son Beer, is actually ready to drink within the timescales dictated.

Pushing proper beer through used to be called "top pressure" and I never perceived any problem.

 

[brewtim]

Crikey, no wonder I was confused about the definition!
Thanks for the views/opinions expressed. It seems like it is a bit grey and actually is not really that important anyway.

brewtim - if you have nothing worth saying, then just say nothing. If I wanted an answer off of google I would have used it. The reason I posted the question on here is to see what others thought - which is one of the purposes of a forum like this.

You have my apologies if my post upset you, most of the time I hope I have something useful to say, occasionally, usually aided by 1 or 3 homebrew ESB's, my more sarcastic side can emerge which never really works in forums (or text).

:whistle:

:

 

[morethanworts]

Good afternoon.
Interesting debate. I was just going to put my flak jacket on but I think one of those 'Hurt Locker' bomb disposal outfits might be more appropriate.
Firstly what I share with all of you is an appreciation of good beer.
This is where I have to duck for cover.
I've been a CAMRA member for 30 years, every quarter I deliver 100 of the local free pamphlets "The Dongle' to 10 rural pubs in West Dorset and I volunteer to work behind the bar at the local beer festival- which is brilliant.
I'm reminded of that great Monty Python sketch in the life of Brian between the National Freedom Front for Judea and the National Judea Freedom Front or something similar where they moan about 'What have the Romans ever done for us ? '
Well, this year CAMRA organised a petition to stop the ever increasing tax on beer in Pubs - the so called 'Tax Escalator'- there were 100.000 plus signatures and over a thousand members turned up at the Houses of Parliament and the Tax Escalator was subsequently scrapped.
Everyone on this forum who goes and buys a pint in a pub is benefitting from that.
It's an absolute disgrace that pubs of historical and architectural significance have had their interiors ripped out or worse still been destroyed to benefit a few greedy developers. CAMRA have worked to try to get some of these pubs 'listed' so that they can't simply be destroyed forever for short term profit : See Britains Best Heritage Pubs for more info.
I'm old enough to remember the awful, awful days of the 1970's where the big breweries wanted keg- by that I mean pasteurised tasteless, CO2 delivered gassy awful beer in every pub that they owned to increase their profits. I remember Watneys Red Barrel , Starlight Bitter Whitbread Trophy, Tartan Bitter, Mckewens No 1 etc etc masquerading as beer.
It might have been OK for you guys in the North/Midland/London, but here down South it was dreadful. Believe me , please.
CAMRA/cask/keg etc has absolutely nothing to do with brewing your own beer. If we brew it ourselves we know what is in our beer, and we serve it to our taste. Full Stop.
The Commercial world is different.
I believe that it is important , for commercial beers to have a gold standard for the way the beer is produced , the way it is kept and the way it is served.
That is defined by the cask mark definition in the first post.
It absolutely stops the multinationals taking the pass, cask breather becomes gassed up with CO2, 'Craft' means it's OK to pasteurise or gamma irradiated the beer to kill off the yeast and the flavours and we are back to square one.
Look at the meaningless gobbledygook with food- ' Farm fresh' = battery farmed, Sunny Delight orange drink, = tartrazine with sugar being put in the chill cabinet, Loads of salt , sugar and MSG taste good etc.etc.
Sorry for the diatribe, I'm just back from our local, which does serve its beer with a CO2 'blanket'.
The beer is poorer as a result but the company isn't, and I can at least have a decent pint when I get back home.
Looking forward to seeing you guys again at the Spring Thing.
Cheers.
RokDok

A good repost to the prevailing view, and great to hear a balancing, heartfelt view. RokDok. :thumb: My post-pub-posts are rarely so articulate. :lol:

On one hand, it does seem ridiculous if CAMRA can't accept an injected blanket of low-pressure CO2 over a fantastic, live beer, when it means that the small pubs that they would presumably wish to protect, with a slow turnover, will have good ale going off faster than they can sell it.

On the other, abandoning the gold standard that CAMRA maintains, easily definable and understandable that it is, will lend leeway to those who wish to exploit it.

Really tricky decision for them.

 

[bobsbeer]

Some good points being stated, but the debate about CAMRA is somewhat off the point of the original post. It has been stated earlier, but worth repeating, that we are home brewers on the whole. And therefore not subject to CAMRA rules. Like em or hate em. They are irrelevant. We make beer for the love of beer, commercial breweries make beer for the love of money. We often claim we make a pint of beer for xx pence, and try to compare it to the price in a pub. But as with all hobbies the real price never gets calculated. Again it's irrelevant. All of us who make beer have one goal. To make and server good beer. How we do that is up to each individual, be it shiney all singing, all dancing, automated equipment or a kit. The result is hopefully a good beer, able to stand on it's own and be admired for it's taste. We can serve it with CO2, N, or a mix, or even add helium if we wanted too. We can put it in a polypin, a wooden cask, a plastic looking cask, a sankey keg or a cornie. We can gas the hell out of it, or add no gas. The choice is ours. And we are the judge and jury of the result. No one is going to tell you, you can't do that, it's against the rules. There are no rules in homebrew beer. The result is all that matters.

CAMRA on the other hand are tirelessly trying to keep the 'love of money' lot on the straight and narrow. So that on the few occasions I venture into a pub, the pint I'm served is nearly as good as mine. Be it in a cask or a keg.

 

[Maysie]

A very interesting debate and lots of good opinions! I really have learnt a lot and am really glad that I asked the question now.

brewtim - absolutely no offence taken, I just felt that I was being chastised for asking the original question.
I am a total novice when it comes to brewing and have much to learn for the more experienced members on here, which is why I want to understand much more about the subject. I am sure this wont be the last question that I ask that seems daft to those that have already earned their brewing stripes! :thumb:

 

[RokDok]

Some good points being stated, but the debate about CAMRA is somewhat off the point of the original post. It has been stated earlier, but worth repeating, that we are home brewers on the whole. And therefore not subject to CAMRA rules. Like em or hate em. They are irrelevant. We make beer for the love of beer, commercial breweries make beer for the love of money. We often claim we make a pint of beer for xx pence, and try to compare it to the price in a pub. But as with all hobbies the real price never gets calculated. Again it's irrelevant. All of us who make beer have one goal. To make and server good beer. How we do that is up to each individual, be it shiney all singing, all dancing, automated equipment or a kit. The result is hopefully a good beer, able to stand on it's own and be admired for it's taste. We can serve it with CO2, N, or a mix, or even add helium if we wanted too. We can put it in a polypin, a wooden cask, a plastic looking cask, a sankey keg or a cornie. We can gas the hell out of it, or add no gas. The choice is ours. And we are the judge and jury of the result. No one is going to tell you, you can't do that, it's against the rules. There are no rules in homebrew beer. The result is all that matters.

CAMRA on the other hand are tirelessly trying to keep the 'love of money' lot on the straight and narrow. So that on the few occasions I venture into a pub, the pint I'm served is nearly as good as mine. Be it in a cask or a keg.

You've made the point more concisely than me BB, and I do take the points above about the blanket.
RD

 

[RokDok]

A very interesting debate and lots of good opinions! I really have learnt a lot and am really glad that I asked the question now.

brewtim - absolutely no offence taken, I just felt that I was being chastised for asking the original question.
I am a total novice when it comes to brewing and have much to learn for the more experienced members on here, which is why I want to understand much more about the subject. I am sure this wont be the last question that I ask that seems daft to those that have already earned their brewing stripes! :thumb:

Maysie, this was a great question !

RD

 

[Maysie]

Thanks RD :

It does seem to have sparked quite a good debate, which is great to see. Also very useful for me personally to hear the opinions of others and draw my own conclusions from it.
I had no idea what a 'can of worms' I had opened!!
:electric:

 

[morethanworts]

If you like this sort of debate, I think this recent thread may interest you too, if you didn't see it.

 

[RokDok]

If you like this sort of debate, I think this recent thread may interest you too, if you didn't see it.

Great debate, Thanks for the links to the 'I am a craft brewer' video. Didn't need to tickle the back of my throat very much at all.
RD

 

[dave0w]

Imo it's all b***ocks , a bowl of cornflakes is still cornflakes even if it's on a plate and not in a bowl .

No that would be a plate of cornflakes. :thumb:

 

[Darcey]

It gets more confusing when you consider some of the big nationals filter their beer 'live' beer then reprime with casking yeast to meet real ale standard when really its just a filtered carbonated beer with sediment rather than 'cask' beer.

If it tastes good I don't really mind.

D

 

[darkonnis]

For me, cask comes in a cask and keg, comes in a keg.

You could break it down further and what say that "priming" is the defining factor and I'd probably lean more toward that being the decider.

Beer, Real Ale, Craft are probably the more important definitions at the moment.
Beer - the blanket label for anything slightly malty, carbonated in whatever form be it ale or lager.
Real Ale - see CAMRA's regs, though cask aspirators make perfect sense to me, I think they need to offer the cask marque for pubs doing cask through "older" means and a separate label for ones using an aspirator.

A mate of mine runs a bar, it is heaving tuesdays and the weekend, he doesn't open the rest of the week because he literally gets no trade. I've asked him why he does no ale at all and the answer is because he can't shift a cask (pin or firkin) on a tuesday, and he'd be lucky to shift one on a weekend. There is demand but not perhaps 72 pints of demand for any ONE product. An aspirator would help, but again, this whole snobbery bulls*** means he wouldn't be able to get the marque, and thus making it a pointless venture.

Craft - This, to my mind is what we as homebrewers fall under the category of. Hand made, using skill, time and effort with a good mix of unknown. This, is the way it should be.

Commercially, craft beer is a little bit novelty in some respects but for the most part, the beer thats coming out of this area is pretty awesome. What would be good is if the defining points of a beer had to be listed (say on a breweries website), is it fined? Is it liquored back? Filtered? etc etc.

 

[Maysie]

If you like this sort of debate, I think this recent thread may interest you too, if you didn't see it.

Thanks for the link, I hadn't seen that debate which seemed to run on quite a parallel line and has drawn a very similar set of opinions it seems.

When I initially looked into the cask vs keg question, essentially I was trying to learn about the whole brewing process so that I started off in the right direction from day one. I was worried that by storing my beer in an 'inappropriate' way it would ruin the taste and spoil what was (I hope) a 'craft' item. I know this may or may not matter in my circumstances, as the acid test if whether I liked it or not, but I have a desire to make the beer as 'real' as it can be.
I now understand that these terms are primarily aimed at the more commercial end of the market and have very little worth as a small home-brewer as how you brew/store your own brews is to your taste and to suit your circumstances. We are not trying to meet certain pigeon-holed terms which seem to be there to protect general consumers from crap beer that may otherwise be traded as something more special that it really is.

I have answered the question I was originally trying to resolve and inadvertently sparked off a very interesting debate along the way, which has been very interesting - although I am now suffering from information overload! Clearly lots more to learn yet.... when my head stops hurting.

 

[oz11]

For me, cask comes in a cask and keg, comes in a keg.


Real Ale - see CAMRA's regs, though cask aspirators make perfect sense to me, I think they need to offer the cask marque for pubs doing cask through "older" means and a separate label for ones using an aspirator.

Just a minor point, it sounds like you are suggesting CAMRA give out Cask Marque Accreditation. They are separate entities and not connected.

See here for the Cask Marque directors.

 

[graysalchemy]

Say no more Oz11, what does the Marketing director of Carlsberg, the exMD and MD of Mitchell and Butler, and the ex-Customer Services Director, Punch Taverns know about cask ale. :lol: :lol:

 

[oz11]

 

[darkonnis]

For me, cask comes in a cask and keg, comes in a keg.


Real Ale - see CAMRA's regs, though cask aspirators make perfect sense to me, I think they need to offer the cask marque for pubs doing cask through "older" means and a separate label for ones using an aspirator.

Just a minor point, it sounds like you are suggesting CAMRA give out Cask Marque Accreditation. They are separate entities and not connected.

See here for the Cask Marque directors.

Haha, fair enough! thats me stood corrected then. I'll change that to: I reckon CAMRA should accept aspirators. But then I'm not a member of CAMRA, so what it has to do with em is debatable at best