How do you look after cask beer?

In this blog post, our Ops Director Toby waxes lyrical about his love for cask ale, sharing his journey, background, and thoughts and feelings on how to present it at its very finest.

The first thing I noticed about Sheffield was the rain.  To be fair, I did move here during the 2007 floods, so there was a lot of it.  The second thing was the hills, lots of them. Everywhere, and which for my first few days seemed more like rivers, which is not how hills would behave where I grew up.

The next thing though was the cask beer, wherever I went for a drink.  I wasn’t used to this, for me ale was mostly flavourless national brands, or (shudder) creamflow and I had no time for it – it was a pain to look after and not worth the effort.  But not here.  In Sheffield the beer was generally local, excellent and revered in a way that was completely new to me, despite 10 years’ experience of working in bars.

Everyone I met drank the stuff, and the mainstream brands I used to ignore were absent – why would you need them with well-kept Pale Rider and Moonshine made within a few miles?  I even got taken to the Devonshire Cat, and discovered the unknown delights of Belgian beer, starting with Westmalle Dubbel and then working my way through the shelves of the Dram Shop in Crookes.   

So why did this matter?  Well I’d moved to Sheffield, not knowing a soul, to set up a new bar.  I went to work for True North (then called Forum Café Bars) to revamp the Halcyon on Division Street into something new.  After just a few days here I decided that beer had to be part of what we did, and not just any beer – good, local beer.  The plans for the bar changed, Sheffield was obviously a very down to earth, real place with no time for pretensions and I loved that.  In went sofas, vintage tables, rugs, guitar music and most importantly beer.  That was the Old House, and it made me fall in love with Sheffield and its beer.

The only problem was I had no idea really what cask beer was or how to look after it, so I needed to learn.  Alex Liddle, then manager of the Forum, now boss at True North, was the person that showed me.  Organised, meticulous and patient, Alex showed me how to treat the beer, what happened to it over time, and the importance of patience and not disturbing it.  Alex also happened to be from Kent, so we opened the place with Spitfire and Bishops Finger, all freshly vented and soft pegged on crisp new tilters.

It took about 2 hours of the opening night to realise my mistake.  People would drink these beers, but mainly just so they could tell me how much better the local beer was and how I needed to get in some “proper stuff”.  The next morning I rang the 2 places that were mentioned the most, the sadly departed Kelham Island and Abbeydale Brewery.  We quickly went from 2 cask lines to 4 and sold more of the stuff than I thought possible.  People would come in, relax, chat to us and casually work their way through the range, it felt like a second home. 

We stretched out into lots of guest breweries, always independent, always interesting, but Moonshine never left the bar.  It couldn’t, or I’d spend all night getting told to put it back on.

I was to spend the next 8 years setting up venues across Sheffield – bars, pubs and restaurants.  Diverse places like the Wick at Both Ends and the Broadfield, all with a different clientele, but always cask beer came with me, and always, always Moonshine was on the bar.

Over the years some great Sheffield breweries came, such as Triple Point, St. Mars of the Desert and Loxley, and many have sadly gone – including Kelham Island (although some of its beers remain), Sheffield Brew Co. and Exit 33 – brewing is not an easy way to make money.

So how do you look after cask beer then?  If you ask 100 landlords or managers, you’ll get 100 different answers. Some based on science, some on craft, and sadly, some not completely right.  You can taste the results in the beer, almost like you’re consuming the craft and effort put into it.  It’s what separates real ale for me and makes it a uniquely British art form. Here’s my take on how I feel it works best:

Freshness

The first thing for me is freshness.  Oxygen is the enemy of fresh.  It’ll bind on to those delicate flavour compounds and flatten out all the interesting notes – producing a cardboard flavour.  Whether it’s wine, beer, or food, keep the oxygen away. Beer should always be treated in a way to prevent air ingress.  Soft peg while serving, hard peg or closed valve as soon as you’re not. It matters.

Venting

This is the process of opening up the cask, if the beer is already lively (lots of CO2 present) then you might get wet doing this.  First, tap a hard peg into the shive (in the side of the cask), then take a mallet and with one strike, put the tap through the keystone in the top of the cask.  Make sure it’s airtight, then put the cask in place to settle.  Over the next few days you’ll need to regularly check it, bleeding off excess pressure (from CO2), and always with some blue roll on standby in case it gets too lively.  Then leave it well alone til you need it.

Conditioning

First up, what conditioning is.  It’s the process of yeast fermenting available sugars, kicking out CO2, flavour compounds, and yes, a little more alcohol.  This CO2 gives cask beer the sparkle that lifts it and produces a blanket that sits on top of the liquid to keep the oxygen away (oxygen creeps in to the cask when you pull a pint through).  Opinions vary but personally I want my beer to be 2 weeks old (from being put in cask) before tapping, and spend 2 weeks in cellar gently maturing and building up it’s carbonation.  All without being disturbed, so all the yeast can slowly bunch up and sink out, leaving clear beer.

Sparkler

Ah, one of the great national divides. Generally speaking, Northerners use sparklers, Southerners don’t.  Some say it’s a matter of opinion, I say the Northerners are right, but I’m from Lancashire so I would say that.  Sparklers force the beer through tiny holes which aerate it, giving a smooth and creamy mouthfeel.

Cleaning

Cleanliness is essential. Bacteria will make beer taste poor, and beer lines need cleaning regularly.  All your cellar dispense kit should be sterilised, and rinsed in running water weekly.  You can either clean the lines weekly, or between casks, but always if you’re changing the beer you have on.

Vertical serve vs. horizontal serve

Another controversial one, some people swear by the traditional method of laying the cask on a tilter and over time the spring lifts the beer to help empty it out.  I prefer and recommend vertical serve, where the cask stands upright and you draw through a float on top of the beer.  Vertical serve gives fresher beer for me, so wins out, it also has less wastage and in an emergency, will settle out to be bright quicker.

And what about beer clarity? This is a massive topic, and one that requires its whole own post – watch this space, and all will become… clear!

The bottom line is looking after cask ale is both art and science, cask beer is a living, breathing thing after all.  At the brewery we have an in house lab and plenty of equipment to give us precise and accurate analysis, but we still rely more on the human palate and a lot of training more than anything else. 

So that’s it. I’m sure every single cellar manager in the country will be waiting to tell me where I’m wrong – maybe we can talk about it over a pint of Moonshine.

Enjoy your pint, someone has put a lot of effort into it.

Toby