Cask Beer 101

Now that we have successfully tapped our first keg of draft beer at Anvil my thoughts have shifted to the next addition we will make to the Anvil beer program, cask ale. It is my hope that in the next 6 months we can find the money to buy ourselves a cask engine which will allow us to pour cask conditioned ale all the time. Before I launch into an equipment nerd break down of the cool workings of a beer engine however, let’s cover the abc’s of cask ale to find out why this type of beer is so special and rare.

The word cask means container or vessel. It comes from the Spanish word for tree bark. Wood casks have been an important part of brewing for hundreds of years. In fact, the stainless steel kegs we think of when we think of draft beer were first introduced to the market in the 1970’s. Cask beers AKA real ales are unpasteurized, unfiltered beers, usually ales, which are poured from a cask without the help of nitrogen or CO2. Cask conditioning is the oldest means of beer preservation. In the simplest terms, cask beer is beer that has had a bunch of whole leaf hops add directly to the cask after the brewing process is complete. The hops aid preservation and add flavor. The brew is not force carbonated so it comes from the cask flatter and creamier then a normal draft beer. Almost any beer can be casked, so it is exciting to think of the untapped potential for this approach to brewing. Currently, casked ale is very common in Europe and is gaining in popularity as the micro beer movement is continuing to surge forward. Cask conditioned beers are also great for limited cellaring. I am looking forward to picking up some more Real Ale seasonal cask and keeping them for aging and special off-season tapping. I am already cellaring a few kegs right now; “Which ones?!” you ask. Sorry you’ll just have to wait and see.

You can get beer out of a cask two ways, an engine or a gravity tap. The simplest way is to use the gravity tap method – place the cask on the bar, use a hammer to drive in the tap, open the bung hole and pour away. You can’t really get any simpler than this. By slightly lifting the back of the cask, our old friend gravity helps push the beer out. The only problem with this method is that you have to drink the whole cask in one day because you are not refrigerating it. While it is true that the hops will help preserve the beer once it is tapped it is now open to outside air which is full of airborne anti-beer demons. Moreover, the light natural carbonation was in the beer will be lost within the first day. Because we don’t have a beer engine at Anvil, we gravity tap our cask beers, but we only bring them in for special events so that we know we will move through it – until we go ahead and opt for that new cask engine.

If you want to have cask on all the time you need to put in a refrigerated cask engine. The engine uses a pumping handle to draw the beer from the cask as opposed to forced air such as CO2 or nitrogen. The advantage of the engine is that you can set up a remote system where the cask is kept cold and the beer is drawn out to the bar. When we get around to selling cask beer full time at Anvil, we will set it up so that the cask lives in the cooler and the engine is mounted on the back bar.

In celebration of draft beer’s arrival at Anvil, American Craft Beer Week and all the support Real Ale Brewing has given us we will be gravity tapping a cask of Real Ale Full Moon Pale Rye on Friday May 15^th at 5pm. There is only about 120 pints in a cask so supplies are limited so be here early. If you have never had a cask ale before this is great chance to try one out. We will be selling the Real Ale Cask for a special price of $4.00 a pint. While we will always be your spot for great cocktails, we hope you will stop by to see the city’s most quality focused tap system at work and check our new draft system as well as the Real Ale Full Moon Pale Rye Cask.