BYO Magazine has an article in their May/June 2010 issue about enjoying cask conditioned beers at home. The author, Terry Foster, discusses a few ways that you can have a cask setup to serve ‘real ale’.
Mike and I discussed brewing a beer to be served in a cask for a party or some other special occasion. From the article, the first option is buying a stainless steel cask with all the accessories like a faucet, bungs, and shives.
I was happy to read that you could modify a Corny keg to serve beer as if it were a cask. With a few add-ons like some plastic tubing and a female ball or pin-lock fitting.
I was surprised to read that a little bit of priming sugar is used in the cask to carbonate it for serving. I guess I thought it carbonated off of the end of the primary fermentation.
It would be interesting to give this kind of setup a try. Brew up an ESB, let it start a secondary fermentation in the Corny keg, and serve it at cellar temps (50 – 55°F).
I have had cask conditioned ale at pubs and fests, but never at home. Anyone tried this with their own brews?
Ali
I live in the UK, where we have something called pressure barrels. Basically these are plastic casks with taps, which allow for cask conditioning of your beer. There are some options to force carbonate as well.
Aaron
Everybody who bottle conditions their homebrew is doing the exact same thing as cask conditioning, just in smaller servings. Everything else associated with casked beer is a serving preference, not a method.
That article was pretty interesting, although it turned me off CAMRA pretty hard; I always figured they were “for” quality, naturally produced beer and instead it sounds like they’re for a big list of things completely unrelated to it – “as long as it has low carbonation, it’s okay!” – etc.
JIm
Naturally carbonated bottled beer is considered real ale, but it is not “the exact same thing”. Casks are vented of excess co2. They can also be served over the course of several days, with the presence of air. They will evolve over those couple of days and change. Open a bottle, and your done.