Where to buy cask beer?

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AJA

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Hi, for an upcoming event I'm looking to buy 2 casks of ale (and around 100 cans). Is it best that I contact breweries directly for this, or do I have to go through a distributor?
License etc, is sorted, just need to work out where best to buy the beer!
 
I'm 15 minute drive from Bermondsey. Plus there's plenty in SE London generally.
If they are allowed to sell direct I'll contact them then. Thanks :)
 
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I'm looking to buy 2 casks of ale (and around 100 cans). Is it best that I contact breweries directly for this, or do I have to go through a distributor?
License etc, is sorted, just need to work out where best to buy the beer!

@chopps may know the answer.
 
Most small breweries will also have licensing for direct sale to the public. They'll know when you talk to them,
Some will be just trade and no licence for sales to the public.
Basically if they're selling bottles or cans direct then there's nothing to stop them selling in cask or keg either, other than making sure they label it correctly for retail.
 
Hi, for an upcoming event I'm looking to buy 2 casks of ale (and around 100 cans). Is it best that I contact breweries directly for this, or do I have to go through a distributor?
No, we don't have the stupid rules of our colonial cousins - if they can sell 1 bottle to you direct, then they can sell you a cask. And since Covid just about every brewery is licensed for direct sales to the public, and given how quite things are at the moment, they will probably rip your arm off for direct sales, the only thing to watch out for is that they don't try and fob you off with something that's out of date.

Certainly in the normal run of things, you'd be expecting free delivery within a local area (say 30 minutes drive), and with effectively 3 casks worth I'd be expecting or at least asking for 5-10% off the single cask price. But in your case it's probably of more mutual value to try and wangle free/discounted hire of dispense equipment - a lot of breweries have some handpulls/founts which they often try to ask a...generous... amount of cash for hire to non-trade customers but again you have the volume to offer them at a dead time of year so they may be particularly keen to seal the deal.

Do shop around a bit, they are desperate for business at the moment.
 
Should have said 2 20 litres from Wantsum would be £108 delivered. (10% off first order and free delivery)
 
Myself and a group of friends regularly buy casks directly from independent breweries, if they are local they will deliver. Just be aware that they may only deliver on certain days of the week in your area and will want a refundable deposit of £50 per cask. When I buy beer from breweries in different parts of the country renting sole use group accommodation I pay by card over the phone and send a cheque (remember those?) to cover the deposit. When the brewery gets the casks back they destroy the cheque. You will need some blocks of wood to improvise a stillage (usually settles in 24 hours) and ask the brewery to supply taps and spiles. If they can a downturn is nice for the tap as the taps are designed for inline use i.e the beer comes horizontally out of the front - confuses a lot of people later in the party.
 
In terms of packaging your options are :

Firkin - 9 imperial gallon cask = 72 imperial pints (minus wastage) = 40.9 litres, a bit higher than your knee - the standard cask size these days, if you ask for a "cask" that's what you will get.

Kilderkin - 18 imperial gallon cask = 144 pints = 81.8 litres, waist-high - rarely seen these days, most older breweries will have a couple kicking around which are useful for saving a trip to the cellar for standard beers at festivals, and about as much as you want to handle on your own in a cellar.

Barrel - don't ask for "a barrel"!!! It has a specific meaning in beer, as a measure of volume of 36 gallons - a handful of family breweries still use casks of that size but these days they are mostly used as tables front of house.

Traditionally a pin is a half-firkin cask in wood/metal, so 36 pints or 20.46 litres. The containers cost about the same as a firkin as fewer are made, so don't expect any discount on the deposit! That led to the idea of a polypin, which is essentially the same as what a homebrewer would call a pressure barrel, a plastic cask of 4.5 gallons.

To complicate things further, some breweries are now referring to 20-litre bag-in-boxes (like wineboxes) as "polypins" as they have some plastic in them and are about the same size as an actual pin. I'm old-school enough to cringe at that usage, but it seems to be quite common these days. Bag in box is a great solution for small parties though, as it doesn't need any dispense equipment.

Kegs are all sized in litres following Continental practice, although some macro breweries will quote eg 11 gallons, which is 50.01 litres. 50 litres is the standard size for returnable steel kegs (sometimes called "Sankeys" after the standard keg fitting), stuff like Carling is often found in 100 litre kegs, the more specialist stuff is found in 30 litres. You pay a premium for beer in keg over cask, typically a 30l keg will cost about the same as the same beer in 9g (ie 40.9 litres) cask.

Newer breweries will use one-way plastic kegs (Keykeg is the most common) which allows them to send beer to bars that are too far away for them to pick up the empties. But they pay ~£15 for the keg, which gets added to the price you pay. And to complicate things further, they have non-Sankey fittings.

Some of the macro breweries still have some 10-gallon kegs left which are now only used for a handful of brands. I think that was a Scottish thing originally, they're pretty rare nowadays.

US imports come in US sizes, usually a sixtel (19.55 litres - named as it's a sixth of a US barrel which is 32 US gallons) or a quarter (29.34 litres) so near enough to 20l and 30l but you hardly ever see those in the UK.

For comparison the classic homebrew Cornelius keg is 5 US gallons = 18.93 litres.

Obviously beer in kegs is filtered and force-carbonated. For casks you have two choices. Obviously CAMRA would love all casks to contain yeast and priming sugar to allow them to carbonate naturally in the cask. But you have to leave it at least 24h (often more depending on the yeast) for the yeast to settle out before serving. Which is fine if you are a pub with a cellar, or have access to the venue a few days before to install the cask. But is out of the question if you aren't allowed into the venue until the day of the event.

For most events that don't have CAMRA purists present, your best bet is brite beer, that has been racked after fermentation to get rid of the yeast so you don't have to worry about disturbing the yeast - you can transport it on the day, throw it around, and then serve it immediately. The only catch is that it has a relatively short shelf life in cask - fine for an event on a specific day, not so good for pubs - as you only have the CO2 left over from fermentation. That in turn means breweries tend not to keep it in stock, so they may need 2-3 weeks notice to do it in cask. This is also where the difference between the senses of "polypin" become important - yeast is fine in a pressure barrel, but a complete PITA in bag-in-box as a gnat's fart will disturb the bag and hence the yeast. But as I say, bag-in-box (with brite beer) is a pretty good option for smaller events.

Pricing is all over the shop at the moment due to the price increases in ingredients versus breweries desperate for sales. In the provinces you're looking at pubs buying direct paying maybe £75+VAT for a firkin (or 30l keg) of trad brown beer, up to £95+VAT for something full of fancy hops. The Southeast generally seems to be maybe £10 more, London may be more still, I don't know. On the other hand you may find someone who brewed with last year's malt in December and is desperate to turn it into cash flow (or a big brewery that is selling at silly prices to kill off the competition).

As has been mentioned, small breweries generally have a weekly delivery schedule that is often published on their "wholesale" page. Local pubs get priority as the core supporters of the brewery so cask-led breweries will often do a main "local" (up to 30 minutes or so away) delivery on Wednesday (so that it could in theory settle and be sold at the weekend) and a smaller one on Friday (for those last-minute orders for the weekend), whereas keg ones tend to do it the other way round. Then on the other days they have a schedule of longer-distance runs of 60-90 minutes away. At least that's my experience, I guess it will be a bit different in London. So as long as you give them a week's notice they can fit you in to the schedule, less than that then they will grumble a bit (but not too much in the current environment, unless you're a long way away...).
 
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In the provinces you're looking at pubs buying direct paying maybe £75+VAT for a firkin (or 30l keg) of trad brown beer, up to £95+VAT for something full of fancy hops. The Southeast generally seems to be maybe £10 more, London may be more still, I don't know
It's changing fast, I'm tracking a few breweries responses to their increasing costs and that £75 firkin is becoming around £100 in the past few days. I guess as the 2023 bills have started to arrive for malt and utilities...
Still some breweries pushing it out at £65 ish but I fear for their future existence at that level.

Lots of chat on Twitter and FB groups about this currently too.
 
Thanks all

So I've opened an EeBria trade account and they have confirmed that they can supply. Downsides are that their beer isn't bright, and they don't supply taps like direct from the brewer, so this looks like the second best option rather than going direct. Upside is that we can order cans from countless breweries rather than be limited by one. I can stand beer inside near the bar, but we will need to move it 30 metres on the morning without sloshing.
Looks like £95-£100/firkin ex vat is the going rate for most, up to £120 for the premium hype brands.
 
It's changing fast
Tell me about it - it seems breweries didn't want to kick pubs when they're down in January, but now that it's February and they're using up their stocks of malt they can't put off the evil day much longer, I've had two price rises since posting that. And there's been some high-profile public ones like Black Sheep announcing a 19.9% increase across the board.

But no doubt the usual suspects will be blathering on about brewers and pubs "profiteering" at the expense of consumers...
 
Thanks all

So I've opened an EeBria trade account and they have confirmed that they can supply. Downsides are that their beer isn't bright, and they don't supply taps like direct from the brewer, so this looks like the second best option rather than going direct. Upside is that we can order cans from countless breweries rather than be limited by one.
The biggest downside of EeBria is the pricing, yes you get a choice which is great if you're a pub that relies on the ticker types, but if you're somewhere like SE London then you really don't need to pay the EeBria price premium when you've in the local delivery area of so many good breweries. Especially since Covid a lot of them are a lot more geared to delivering small quantities direct to punters.

But buying beer is all about volume (hence Spoons prices), if you're buying more than £3-400-worth then you should definitely be able to wangle either discounts or eg free use of dispense equipment that is normally charged for.

I can stand beer inside near the bar, but we will need to move it 30 metres on the morning without sloshing.
That's doable, as long as you don't clonk it and it's had a decent time to settle first. *Much* easier to do it with two people rather than one, and do it as the first thing you do on site to give it as long as possible to settle again.
 
The key with getting discounts is having someone who's good at getting them! I'm absolutely shocking at it and don't think I've ever had a discount in my life 🤣

Whereas the Mrs can get a discount on anything, if not for free!

I quite regularly get brite beer local in 5L bags or mini kegs and it's good stuff, relatively cheap for the level of quality. A few mini kegs would be almost as good as a cask imo, though not the same theatre as hammering in a tap
 
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