simulate cask conditioning?

Hey all...had a few cask conditioned ales today, and was wondering how to simulate this in my homebrews. Any ideas?

Carbonate the beer to a relatively low volume and serve it a little cooler than room temp. If you have a keg, use a hand pump to dispense the beer. I love a good cask ale!

what about some of the wood flavor? wood chips?

Sorry, forgot about that. Boil a little water, pour it over the wood chips and let them sit for 15min. When the mixture has cooled down, throw all of it (water and chips) into the secondary fermenter and transfer the beer onto the chips. Let the beer age for at least a week or two, then bottle/keg. The more time the beer sits on the chips the bolder the oak flavor. However nothing in brewing is absolute, so you might want to taste some beer after 5 days or so, and see how it's coming along. Once the flavor is where you want it proceed to bottling/kegging.

sounds simple enough...thanks!

another quick question...I've had a double chocolate stout sitting in secondary for about a week now, would it be too late to add the wood chips?

No, toss them in there, you should be fine. I've done several real ales in my corny with a makeshift hand pump.
Tip: Real ales are served young. So if you're keg conditioning, tap at 2 weeks rather than 3.

Enjoy,
Wild

Cask conditioned does not mean conditioned in an Oak cask.

It is the same as bottled conditioned.

It means the beer is carbonated in the cask (keg) and left to finish conditioning before serving.

Just add to your keg with the priming agent and let carbonate naturally.

The only difference with Pub cask ales are that they should be served out within a week because they are hand drawn and are open to the air.

For home brewers this isn't normally viable due to your extended serving time. Put under C02 and use minimal PSI to serve.

thanks for the advice...I noticed an oaky/toasty flavor to the brews...something I hadnt tasted from other beer I've had, and figured that was due to the oak imparting some of its flavors on the beer. Am I wrong? This is what I want to simulate in my beer.

musikguru6 said:

thanks for the advice...I noticed an oaky/toasty flavor to the brews...something I hadnt tasted from other beer I've had, and figured that was due to the oak imparting some of its flavors on the beer. Am I wrong? This is what I want to simulate in my beer.

Click to expand...

For oaky/toasty flavor use oaky/toasty chips
Really it's just that easy. Add sanitized oak or even flavored oak chips (i.e. Jack Daniel's Oak Chips) to your secondary container.

Wild

adding oak chips is not the same as conditioning in an oak barrel.

more info here, https://www.homebrewtalk.com/showthread.php?t=39273

Orfy is the leading authority on this subject here at HBT. Listen to his comments and advice.

You can read more about true cask conditioning here:
http://www.camra.org.uk/

Yup.

It's been no where near any Oak.
Either you have tasted an oak flavoured beer, you are imagining the flavour or you are mistaking another flavour.
Oak has nothing to do with cask conditioning unless you are Brewtopia.