Doing Cask Beer Right… of Britain Accolade So Perhaps Vari- Ety Matters More Than Some Think

● BEER DISPENSE Photo: Jennifer Boase Photo: plantings, losing ground to newer hy- brid feed barleys which have a higher agronomic out-turn with no signifi cant quality risks associated with the crop. Prices are now a lot more compara- ble with spring varieties so brewers will most likely have to rewind half a century to when spring barley was predominant. There is a school of thought which says that the barley variety makes no difference to the finished beer provided its protein content is controlled. Yet some brewers swear by Golden Promise and others by Maris Otter – and pay a consider- able premium to get supplies. The brand owner of Maris Otter went to some trouble to produce malts under identical conditions from Otter and its competitors. It submitted the samples for testing by Campden BRI. The mash porridge, the wort and the finished beer were all tasted by an expert panel. Differences were found with a number of well respected barley varieties being judged harsh and astringent in comparison to Ot- ter. This malt has been on the market for 50 years and has been the malt of choice for an impressive number of winners of CAMRA’s Champion Beer Doing cask beer right… of Britain accolade so perhaps variety matters more than some think. … a guide from the old country Control of protein is paramount Whatever your view on barley varieties, control of protein is paramount for cask beer. The wort kettle should allow a vigorous rolling boil to encourage by Roger Putman yeast to remove ‘green’ fl avours and formation of the trub and kettle fi nings build up carbon dioxide. Isinglass fi n- (carrageenan containing seaweed Following on from last ings settles the yeast into the belly of derivatives which aid coagulation of the cask and the slightly fi zzy (around proteins) are added at between 10 month’s ‘Cask over the 1.1vols or 2g/L CO2) bright beer is and 50ppm. Some brewers insist on water’ we take a look in pumped to the bar for sale. a coup de feu for the last few minutes In the UK, cask beer has most of the boil, putting in as much steam detail at cask beer in the recently been brewed mainly from as the boilerhouse can muster. Hot UK. For all those wanting to winter-sown barleys with a nitrogen break should consist of large fl ocs in content below 1.6%. Other elements bright wort and cold break should be learn, consider this as Cask of the malt specifi cation would be a heavy fi ne sediment in bright wort. Ale 101. soluble nitrogen ratio (SNR) around Then all the brewer has to do is ensure 38%, cold water extract (CWE) at 18 that this addition is optimal as should and diastatic power (DP) in the region be the later additions of auxiliary and ask beer is not chill-proofed by of 50. Winter barley needed less top isinglass fi nings. Cbrewery conditioning nor is it fi l- dressing of nitrogenous fertiliser, had This check is achieved by setting tered or pasteurised so there are both a plumper corn and the lower nitrogen up a series of sample jars with your haze and infection risks unless the meant there was more carbohydrate normal addition of kettle fi nings, rules of good brewing and pub practice available for extraction. The author can with 10, 20 and 50% less as well as are rigorously followed. remember many seasons when the 10, 20 and 50% more. The rate can To recap, you package the beer into weather prevented these specifi cations be tweaked in line with the results a cask straight after primary fermen- being reached and cask beer still went which should be checked every couple tation with enough sugar to promote a to trade without any undue increase of months and certainly when your secondary fermentation in the con- in returns. Today winter-sown malting malt supplier is introducing the new tainer which encourages the remaining varieties in the UK are only 25% of the season’s malt or the barley variety

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The heyday of UK cask

A mountain of wooden casks at Bass in Burton, filling wooden hogsheads at Cape Hill in the 1960s and more recently 20 metal hogsheads at Holts Roebuck pub at Urmston near Manchester (Photo was taken in 2001) changes. A sight screen made from and complete the fill thus allowing at a pair of fluorescent tubes behind least 15 minutes between the two ad- an opaque glass panel with a couple ditions. of lengths of black tape stretched across is a useful item to check clar- Use of isinglass ity anywhere in the process. Similar Isinglass is a collagen preparation tests can be conducted with auxiliary made from the swim bladders of vari- finings. These are added to the beer ous warm water fish. These are sun before the isinglass and comprise dried and those which do not end up as acidified polysaccharides, silicates Chinese fish maw soup can be treated or alginates. They are used at around with dilute acid (once tartaric but now finings would be injected into the cask 0.25 to 1 pints per barrel (0.9 to usually phosphoric) which teases the just before dispatch but now additions 3.5mL/L) and increase the negative long triple helix collagen molecules are made to the cask at packaging en- charge which improves the electro- apart. Isinglass has an overall positive suring the auxiliary addition has been static interaction between proteins electrostatic charge which attracts well mixed in beforehand. If manual and isinglass finings. Beers fine more yeast cells but local amino acid com- additions to the cask are made before quickly because of the larger floc size. ponents can attach to small protein the beer is introduced it is essential Most smaller brewers add the auxilia- particles as well. that the cask is not hot off the washer. ry as the fermentation is crash cooled In the presence of auxiliary finings, Isinglass is a fish protein and in after top cropping and this does settle as well as general enmeshing of these 2003, there was an international move NMPs (non-microbiological particles) compounds, the size of the particles to force users to state the fact on as they come into suspension during increases to encourage rapid settle- labels to warn allergy sufferers. At the cooling. A concurrent drop in yeast ment. Isinglass must be stored below time, twelve common food allergens count means less isinglass needs to 13oC to prolong its shelf life and is were identified including nuts, milk, be added to the cask. Without a rack- added at three or four pints per barrel eggs, and cereals containing gluten. To ing tank, another procedure would be (11 to 14mL/L). Concentrated pastes maintain clean labels some jurisdic- to add the auxiliary with the first beer are available for local make-up if liquid tions stopped using isinglass altogeth- into the cask. Part-fill the whole batch supplies cannot be assured at the cor- er as it also played a part in clarifying of casks and then add the isinglass rect temperature. Once upon a time, brewery-conditioned beer prior to filtration. Due to the importance of Checking clarity cask beer to the UK industry and the fact that exhaustive tests trying to

1L Imhoff cones are useful for daily checking of break samples, a finings test against a sight screen or else looking through at the filament of a special bulb www.ibd.org.uk Brewer and Distiller International August 2016 z 2 l BEER DISPENSE

pints per barrel (0.35 to 0.7L/hL) which would raise the beer present gravity by 0.5-1.0o. This lengthy period in FV also settles the yeast to a count of 1.0- 1.5x106 cells per mL and so long as the beer weirs over an upstand in the base of the vessel it is possible to package directly into cask. Larger breweries with accelerated fermentation periods will centrifuge the beer to remove all the yeast and then bypass a quantity of green beer to ensure the correct yeast count is obtained into racking tank Dried fish bladders awaiting chopping and cutting with dilute acid to make isinglass beer finings where the contents should be roused to fine beers with sausage skins (animal tion of late and dry hops is different prevent any settling. collagen) were never successful, a and continue to add both! derogation for isinglass was obtained. Brewing water does need to be Cask washing Evidence was presented showing that treated to reduce bicarbonate levels Cask washing is another key haz- the particular molecular weight of to below 50ppm and calcium levels ard point in the production of cask- protein involved showed no evidence should be high enough to get a wort conditioned beer. Returned casks are of anyone, anywhere, suffering an al- pH of 5.2 and a beer pH of around 4.0. emptied of residual beer (or ullage) lergic reaction and very little isinglass Isinglass finings will work more ef- and perhaps dry hops; the old labels, indeed is present in a customer’s fectively if the beer pH is at that point. shives and keystones removed and the glass. Isinglass is clearly a processing Yeast should not be harbouring any outside of the cask sprayed to clean aid and not an ingredient of beer. unwanted infection, regular replace- it. Many smaller brewers use a single ment cultures are advised and acid spray ball above a reservoir of hot Late or dry hops? washing can be employed as a pallia- caustic detergent with a pump and a Hops are your choice. Far more brew- tive measure. timer. It is best to put the new keystone ers choose to add late hops to the A lot of smaller brewers find it in before this operation unless there kettle or whirlpool rather than adding convenient to have a seven-day FV is a suitable screen. The cask is then dry hops to the cask to obtain a hoppy residence period. ‘My beer is blessed rinsed and sprayed with peracetic acid aroma in the glass. The old days saw a by the Sabbath’ is an oft-quoted old at another unit. More sophisticated rather arbitrary number of ‘fingers full’ saw which reduces the costs of week- machines may have three stations stuffed into the cask which was very end working. If the wort is pitched at feeding the final rinse back to a first messy; a half ounce ‘type 100’ com- 18oC, the fermentation will be com- prewash spray ball. Casks still need pressed pellet gave more assurance plete in three days, leaving plenty of to be moved from one spray ball to the but still operators had to keep count time for the dropping yeast to condition next. to eight if the rate was 4oz per barrel. away some of the green beer flavours. The three-head Commando Cask The more usual addition would be one This means there needs only to be suf- Force machine (two-and four-station to two ounces. A small hop filter fits ficient fermentable residue in the cask devices are also available) offers less into the tap in the cellar to ensure no to carbonate the beer. As a result many hard work. This ingenious device uses hops go forward to the beer pump. brewers rely on the sugar remaining a seesaw on which three wash sta- Returning casks containing waste hops after primary fermentation and do not tions are set. On one side is a water present challenges to cask washing, add any priming sugars. reservoir and on the other hot caustic another reason to late hop! Some UK Traditional priming rates of 1150oPG is kept at 75°C. The open top of the brewers swear that the palate percep- sucrose would have been one to two tanks are covered by a perforated screen. With the seesaw sloping down The naming of parts towards the water tank, rinse water is fed to the sprayballs and the casks drain with the flow cascading back down the beam into the tank. Then the beam tilts, caustic is introduced and recovered. Finally it tilts back over the water reservoir before a final cold rinse direct from the mains. The whole process takes around four minutes. Larger machines like those from Lehui Microdat use a walking beam to move between stations and there are other machines using cameras to locate shives and keystones before clamping and removal by auger. A glass-ended cask is invaluable for inspecting the throw of the spray and The cask apertures, the cellar consumables and a Race ventilator which allows outlet of conditioning CO2 and inlet of air during dispense replacing blocked up nozzles on any

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Washing the casks (82L) and 9g firkins (41L). Folk believe these latter two sizes are old English terms but in fact they derive from the old Dutch for a hundredweight and a fourth! Sadly, few brewers provide 4.5 gallon pins. The excuse seems to be that unless a deposit is charged on the container, these are highly prized by the home brewing fraternity, although none of them could tell me how these nano-brewers get hold of them! A walking beam washer by Lehui Microdat Cleaning the outside Wood or plastic closures? Cask closures can be wood or plastic. Wooden shives and keystones are slightly compressed during turning and will swell once they are wetted with beer and give a good seal. Care has to be taken with storage before use to avoid the swelling taking place before you want it to! Plastic is pliable and will seal satisfactorily provided the face of the aperture has not been A three station washer by Grange Engineering damaged by careless removal of an earlier seal. Beer in cask before despatch to trade should be kept at cellar temperature. If too hot in summer there will be problems in the pub cellar with excess condition and the converse is true in colder weather when the deliv- ered beer could be flat. Brewers need to keep reference samples in case of any trade complaints. Two casks from each batch should be taken, one is A Cask Force Commodore tilting beam cask assessed immediately for clarity etc in washer order to release the beer for sale, the Sea, it seems to me pointless to put other can be rolled four or five times expensive and infection-prone wooden to mimic its journey to the pub and containers in the cellar, but there are set up un-broached until the end of its publicans who swear by them and a declared shelf life. I do know a brewer few brewers still provide them. The who sends these samples out on a brewery shop at Hogs Back in Surrey delivery wagon to his most distant drop sells beer from wooden casks to local and sets them up on return – saves customers who also swear by it. rolling them around I suppose! Stainless-steel is prevalent these I remember an exercise at Bass days although there are still some in Burton on Trent when I proved that Locally fabricated caustic washer, rinsing epoxy-lined aluminium alloy casks beer was brighter in Penzance which nozzles and peracetic acid rinse around. Plastic is becoming more was 300 miles away than it was back cask washing device. popular now that manufacturers have in the brewery. Apparently the journey It is possible for pieces of wood to found a way of blowing them in one and the rolling helped to dewater the remain in the cask after washing and piece whereas earlier welded versions sediment in some way meaning it was these present an infection risk, so have caused fatalities when excess air more compacted and more likely to an inspection is necessary and while pressure has been applied to remove stay put – a point for brewers with a you are peering inside, take a sniff to ullage from returned containers. The local tap where there will be minimal make sure that petrol had not been the biggest problem is the lighter weight agitation. Glass-ended casks are again last occupant! Sniffing was essential of plastic – so care must be taken invaluable for checking sediment when casks were made of wood and during pegging and tapping and use levels; these should be wooden with a the only cleaning agent was gallons the heaviest mallet you can find for the full glass head, metal casks with only and gallons of boiling hot water. The latter. small windows (because of differential odd brewer still uses wood – mainly As Britain remains the biggest expansion of metal and glass) do not for show on the bar. As the beer is market for casks, imperial measures let sufficient light in to allow you to see not in the cask long enough to be- persist with 54 gallon (245 litres) hogs- what is going on. come infused with the woody flavours heads (now rare and very heavy to han- Before we move on to the pub of ten years beside the Hebridean dle), 36g barrels (164L), 18g kilderkins itself, I should point out that it is possi- www.ibd.org.uk Brewer and Distiller International August 2016 z 4 l BEER DISPENSE

Filling the casks CO2 content at rack. Pubs can get a couple more pints out of each cask and Marstons say there is no discernable difference from traditionally prepared and cellared cask beer.

Over into the pub In the pub, ordering the correct cask size for your projected sales over the week is paramount. As soon as dispense starts, cellar air is drawn inside. This will not be sterile and the oxygen will affect beer flavour either directly Casks already on pallets are filled direct from or via yeast metabolism. As the level in the FV at Bath Ales the cask drops, the surface area to the Filling casks at Wolverhampton Nitrogen was applied in the pub to volume remaining increases dramati- push the beer to a Flojet gas pump cally. If sale is slow, this surface de- and there was no soft or hard pegging. velops taints and as it reaches the tap, With less protein around, the flocs of the deterioration will be very apparent isinglass were found to be smaller and in the glass. Ideally, a cask size should the head retention was not a good as be chosen which will empty completely usual. in 48 hours or 72 at the very most. The whole set up was very suscep- Unless you can find a brewer offering tible to poor cellar practices and the pins, the next smallest size, a firkin trial was wound up. Other UK brewers (nine gallons) of each brand on sale tried similar approaches to what they must be sold within three days. It is perceived as an expensive and labour better to withhold slower-selling prod- intensive section of their brands ucts until the busier weekend trad- portfolio. In 2010 Marstons patented ing or if possible mix container sizes its Fast Cask technique, which involves rather than risk substandard beer. a specially prepared yeast, explaining It is possible to get around the Adding the isinglass from a jug at Lancaster Brewery that fast clarifying cask beer would al- problem of drawing contaminating low it into outlets without proper cellar air into the cask by fitting a demand ble to cheat. It all depends on whether facilities. A two-stage process sees valve (aka aspirator or cask breather) you define cask beer as containing yeast cells immobilised with alginate which introduces a volume of inert

yeast rather than it actually needing and then encapsulated in a permeable nitrogen or CO2 at ambient pressure conditioning in the pub cellar as to alginate matrix. With a particle size of to match the beer volume leaving.

whether you can sleep at night! It is around 1mm, they settle to the bottom People have tried putting a 1psi CO2 possible to use a stock of brewery- in 20 seconds and no finings is needed. feed into the vent aperture but this

conditioned beer. It is chillproofed and Director of Brewing Emma Gilleland risks over-carbonating the beer as CO2 then filtered. A single-pass powder told us the beer is centrifuged but not reducing valves are not too accurate at filtration is unlikely to provide proper chillproofed, filtered, carbonated or this end of the range and furthermore, microbiological stability and sterile pasteurised. The yeast maintains the for safety reasons, Technical Services filtration is a better bet than pasteurisation. If the beer is diluted from high gravity, it should be carbonated to 1.1 volumes or else the small amount of yeast you are going to add will have too much work to do. As there are only yeast cells to remove, the addition of isinglass can be much reduced. All this was tried by Bass at its Car- diff brewery in 1990. The idea behind it was to utilise a spare stock of 18 gallon straight-sided kegs. The spear was chopped off short and the new ‘casks’ could be washed and filled automatically on an adapted keg line thus saving a lot of labour in the process. Reseeding yeast had to be oxygenated to get it to work and needed readily assimilated sucrose to be added. The

CO2 content was adjusted to 1.1vol at the carbonators before pasteurisation and filling took place under nitrogen. Professionally-designed pump clips and pump handles are all part of the brand message

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pressure settings should never be In the cellar tampered with. Some commentators seem to sug- gest that the use of a demand valve is somehow an excuse for being unable to get your cask stock control correct. They worry that casks will be on sale for weeks and go beyond the best before date with the development of aged flavours. As a dedicated cask drinker I would prefer to be assured of the quality of the last few pints out, if I happen to get one of them, than worry about Barrels at Bathams, note the two end casks the logistics capabilities of the licen- are stooped forward for maximum yield see! Nobody wants to complain as you next beer on sale must be clear to often hear ‘everyone else is drinking it’ whoever is going to change casks on or ‘you are the only one to complain’ or a busy Friday night. After delivery the if the beer is hazy ‘it’s cask, it’s meant casks should be positioned on the There are various stances you can employ to to look like that!’ Unfortunately, the stillage and left for twenty four hours tap a cask even in your best clothes! Brit often prefers to grin and bear it, while they reach cellar tempera- then not reorder, go on to something ture and the sediment drops into else or else walk away and no one is the belly. Both shive and keystone any the wiser that proper procedures apertures should be clean and rinsed are not being followed. if necessary before driving into the beer. Casks are then inspected for The beer cellar condition by knocking the plastic tut The beer cellar is absolutely key to through the shive while having a soft successful cask beer dispense. It peg handy. This bamboo or porous should be easy to keep clean, free soft wood peg or spile allows the ac- of any aromas and not used to store cumulated carbon dioxide complete anything other than beer. Tools and with unwanted green beer aromas to A stillage for smaller casks and taps should be kept clean, allowed escape. If the beer is lively the soft two auto-tilt stations on the to dry naturally and stored on racks. peg will allow continuing evolution of bottom layer. Different springs A cooling system should keep the gas as the beer conditions. It should are fixed depending on the size temperature at 12oC. A classic stillage be replaced at least daily to avoid of cask to be dispensed for casks would have been a raised the pores blocking. Beery residues been tapped), the tap can be driven plinth and scotches (triangular pieces should be mopped up as they will into the keystone bung at pegging time of timber) are used to wedge the casks encourage infection. Once the cask if the tap stock allows. Otherwise the in a horizontal position. Smaller casks has quietened down, a hard peg is cask can be tapped closer to the time can now be stored on racks, some inserted to maintain the condition. of sale, there are no hard and fast with mechanical handling hoists and Some breweries used to advocate rules. Plastic straight-through taps fitted with springs so that the back of venting the beer through the tap and can be damaged on tapping if a thread the cask is tilted automatically as the pegging the beer after the pressure has protecting nut is not attached first. volume inside it decreases. Without been lowered. This was probably a good Once the cask has quietened down, a these auto-tilting mechanisms, casks idea during hot weather before the hard peg which is impervious to gas need to be stooped forward when they advent of cellar cooling but today this flow can be put in to allow a build up are no less than two thirds full to allow means that any green beer aromas are of pressure in the cask to carbonate a maximum volume to be drawn from not vented early and the cellar man- the beer. Experience will tell the cel- them. About 12o from the horizontal ager may be reluctant to dispose of the lar manager if too much condition is should be sufficient and will leave a waste volumes the method produces. building up as this will lead to over- sediment of around 1.5 litres in an 18 The manual hard spile needs to foaming if sale is attempted and risks gallon cask. Stooping too early can in- be removed at the start of a serving bubbles rising from the sediment and crease the amount of sediment (which session and replaced firmly to prevent clouding the beer. Lack of condition should be held in the belly of the cask) undue loss of carbonation overnight. and slowness to clarify will force the accumulating around the tap. You can buy controlled vent pegs with a beer to be held for longer before sale. side valve which is manually snifted or Beer must be inspected at the cellar Venting and tapping go the whole hog and use an automatic tap and not put on sale if flavour, con- On delivery the best-before dates spile like the Race ventilator where dition or clarity are in any way suspect. should be checked to ensure ad- an outlet valve will allow the cask to equate shelf life remains (you will ‘work’ and a separate inlet will allow Vertical dispense get no credit from the brewer if you air in once dispense is underway. The It is possible to set the cask in a verti- find a problem after that date) and Race ventilator stays in the cask until cal position for dispense through the then some type of record kept of it is empty. keystone aperture. This saves on cellar when the beer was prepared for sale Having dipped the cask to make space and it is possible to serve clear and when it went on dispense. The sure it is full (again no credit if it has beer from the top layers before the www.ibd.org.uk Brewer and Distiller International August 2016 z 6 l BEER DISPENSE

Vertical dispense long cleaning trough and a very long thin brush. Another gripe involves the ease of sampling; you never see a tap in a whisky cask, distillers use a val- inche to draw a sample from the top hole. You can easily make your own by passing a piece of plastic tubing into the extractor hole, putting your thumb over the end and withdrawing the sample. An alternative to the extractor, although it still needs local cleaning, is the Cask Widge. Made of plastic, this device is pushed into the keystone The Cask Widge kit for a single cask aperture. The beer can be conditioned Four casks in conditioning mode before the using a control venting valve and an float lines and beer connections are affixed inserted soft peg. When the beer is ready for sale a flexible tube finish- ing with a float is fed through the hole and sealed in the housing. Users should make sure that the correct tube length is used for the cask size being dispensed. The main drawback of this device comes when the cask is The end of an extractor tube showing holes around 4mm from the end almost empty; the float can settle into loose sediment thus necessitating a line clean before another cask can be put on sale. A couple of final cautions while we are still in the cellar. Clean the lines at least once a week, while some cellar managers will clean as soon as one cask is finished this will delay getting another beer on sale considerably. Never be tempted to collect residues, A demonstration of how the float sits on the filter them and add them back to the beer surface using an early cask widge by the cask; it was this widespread and poorly Reunion Cellar Company, it used a two-port Double-headed extractors to serve two beer venting system, one to let gas out and the engines from English Worthside. Note also two conducted practice which probably led other to let air in plastic one piece casks from Global Polymer to the formation of CAMRA in the first place! Finally make sure that once a entire cask has dropped bright. Some is gently removed when the cask is put cask is empty that the peg is driven pubs will use a long-stem extractor on sale. right into the shive and a cork put in which finishes with a screw-on plastic Detractors say trying to serve beer the keystone. Casks easily dry out in ferrule which is drilled around 4mm too early will yield green flavours hot summer months a long way from from the end to keep the beer flow in the glass, the unit can easily be home which makes washing a lot more away from the sediment. It can be knocked and has to be cleaned by the difficult. clamped at any position. To maximise cellar manager. With its lengthy tube, yield, a wedge is placed below the there are risks that this operation will Keeping it cool into the glass keystone to force the sediment to drop not be carried out rigorously even if The beer is cellared at 12oC, the ideal away from the bottom of the tube. This the cellar has a specially made metre drinking temperature is 12o but unless your bar is kept at 12o the beer Keeping it cool on the bar will warm up. Traditionally, there was a short run from the cellar directly below the bar and sales were brisk. Today, with pubs open all day, a mid-afternoon pint can be unacceptably warm. Half-pint beer engines needed large bore piping. So to reduce wastage and allow longer runs and smaller cylinders, beer tubing is now narrower; once 5/8” i.d. tube held a pint in every three metres, today 3/8” o.d. tube needs 16m to hold a pint. So An immersion cooling coil complete with peg lines can be much longer but positive vent and a saddle to go over the top of the cask displacement gas pumps are needed

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to push the beer towards the bar. It is no solution to run the cask pipes on the outside of the lager tubes within a single python since at times of low trading the pint will be unacceptably cold. A dedicated ale python is ideal, the coolant tube is fed from a water reservoir kept between 7-9oC and is also connected to jackets around the beer engine cylinders. On-going control now only involves keeping the cellar cooling at 12oC, making sure the ale python is turned on, the reservoir is topped up and that cool water is actually flowing around Water jacketed cylinder assembly the system. can be positioned right at the bottom Nothing is simpler than sitting of the glass being filled. The flow of Connection to a cask behind the bar and dispens- beer under pressure through orifices cooling jacket via 3/8” ing directly from a tap into a glass or in the sparkler will increase the speed push-fit connectors jug. However keeping the cask cool allowing gas breakout to create a head becomes even more of a challenge. on the beer. The use of a wet piece of sacking is not Regional preferences do persist The Angram beer engine above and below adequate and does not look very pro- but are probably more associated with the bar fessional. It is possible to keep casks getting a full pint of liquid rather than known brands, local and exotic, fara- at cellar temperature using a saddle aesthetics or any perceived difference way beers with a mix of style, colour of cooling tubes shaped to rest on the in flavour. UK regional brewer Greene and %ABV. Sell flights of samplers and top surface of the cask and covering King even had a pump which could let unfamiliar customers ‘try before it with an insulating jacket. Water is switch between thick head and little you buy’. Have a prominent blackboard circulated from an ice bank cooler. An head at the touch of a button and also or table talkers showing the main alternative would be to insert a cooling placed the swan neck to the side of the characteristics of each beer on sale. immersion coil through the shive hole, handle and raised it up so that the cus- Promote your range on social media, the seal allows circulation of coolant tomer could better view the pint being try regular beer and food matching as well as peg venting of the contents. pulled. Some folk say the sparkler events and ‘meet the brewer’ sessions. Again an insulating jacket is essential. removes bitterness from the beer and You may not push back the tide of entrained nitrogen from the air softens international lager brands but the pub The beer engine the palate so some customers will ask sector is at least more interesting than The beer engine on the bar is always a for the sparkler to be removed. Then it was. good sign that a pub has cask-condi- replacement needs to be guaranteed Do you know why is it called a clip cork? tioned beer although the unscrupulous and in a bar where the staff are not have been known to activate a micro- even allowed to handle the slice for a switch as the tap handle is moved and G&T, how are they going to do that? No introduce beer from a keg into the one would expect to go to a restau- glass! There are cylinderless units on rant and be refused a rare steak just the market which are damped to feel because the owner thinks it is better to like the real thing and rely on the cel- have it well done! That controversy is lar gas pump to maintain the flow. In a set to continue. classic pump the downward movement You cannot buy cask beer in a of the tap handle operates a quadrant supermarket. Cask beer is enjoying lever which will pull a cylinder spindle a renaissance in the UK. With more and its piston upwards pushing beer outlets willing to stock it, this helps to towards the bar and at the same time reinvigorate the pub trade as well. Yet allowing beer to flow in below. Return- it is important to do everything right in ing the handle to the vertical position a competitive market. Train your staff, opens a non-return valve and the beer always have someone on duty who below the piston passes through wait- knows about beer in general and the ing for the next pull. casks on sale in particular. Be pre- These simple devices have been pared to accept higher wastage than …because the cork came from the brewery used since the seventeenth century on a keg lager and do not try to sell secured in a clip with the first UK patent dating from anything in the bottom of a cask which 1785. Modern developments offer a you would not drink yourself. Acknowledgements quarter-pint cylinder rather than a Do not overextend the range of The author wishes to record his thanks half and the cylinder can be water cask beers on sale and keep rigorously to David Griggs, Mike Parker, Charles cooled from the ale python supply. The to the absolute maximum of 72 hours Nicholds, Stuart Noble, Emma Gille- tap is now finished with a swan neck on sale rule. Stock a balanced mix over land and John Cojeen for sharing their (complete with a sparkler) so that it the range with familiar and less well expertise.

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