Anybody brew cask ales?

[japhroaig]

This thread shows handmade beer engines. https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f35/fellow-homebrewers-meet-my-new-beer-engine-10529/
The keg usually empties so quick that I never bothered with a breather.

...checking the status of my Amazon account.... Yup, all parts ordered with Next Day delivery. Gentlemen, I'm building my own beer engine

 

[commonlaw]

...checking the status of my Amazon account.... Yup, all parts ordered with Next Day delivery. Gentlemen, I'm building my own beer engine

you will love it. nothing better than drawing a pint of home made cask ale. Someday I'd love to upgrade from the rocket pump to a real beer engine, but it gets the job done. My cask ales tend to go so much faster than beers on a regular tap... I had to start brewing 10 gal batches.

 

[japhroaig]

Not to derail, bit any idea of you can replace the faucet with something more authentic?

 

[commonlaw]

you probably just have to get a beer engine. Here's someone who got one:

https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f11/beer-engine-arrived-155571/

 

[dozer217]

Didn't BYO just do a whole article on how to fill, carb, condition and serve these? He has some ideas on using existing corney's etc as well. It's the issue with Breakfast Beers on the cover.

 

[japhroaig]

Well, the Old Peculiar clone is now in kegs carbing. I figure it will take a week or so of mucking around with the pump before I'm ready to actually use it, so that should put me a couple days away from this brew being ready. One keg is gonna be served conventionally, and the other through the Rocket pump.

 

[david_42]

Some of my beers are close, but as much as I like the impact a beer engine has on the pour, I cannot bear the idea of having to toss out 95% of a batch because it has oxidized. I keep mine in cornies and use just enough CO2 to pour.

 

[71satelite]

Riddle me this as an outside the box kind of idea... If I were to brew a standard batch of 5 gl and I wanted to do a partial bottle partial cask what would be recomded? I found some smaller casks on line for a reasonable price. Transfering a small amount like 1 liter and keeping it chilled would be a nice mix, and it would disapear pretty quick so no oxidizing of the brew in the cask. The question is when? Would you split these after the primary (3-5 days) and would there be any addtional things you would need to do to the cask portion to make it cask worthy? What would the procedure for the casl portion be? Thanks fellas, just thinking out loud!

 

[japhroaig]

If it were me, I'd split it off your primary ~5 days after pitching. Ideally you would know what your FG should be and could work backwards on how carbonated you wanted it to be, and split it off when a reading gave you that much residual sugar. But if it were me, I'd split it off after 5 days

Let it ferment in a closed cask for another seven days or so, and enjoy probably just by pouring it out if there is only a liter or two. Just serve it at 50F and don't worry about the haze and cloudiness.

 

[Pumpkinman906]

One of my close friends owned and operated Emerald Isle BrewWorks in Rhode Island in the 90's. They were one of the first breweries in the country to deal exclusively in Cask-Conditioned ales. They had the honor of being visited and honored by the late-great Michael Jackson with excellent reviews. You can still find info about them online. We always have cask conditioned something on tap served with one of our 5 genuine English Beer Engines. There's nothing better than a freshly tapped cask Pale Ale.....So yeah, we do cask...and it is special....

 

[71satelite]

Fellas, I talked with my home brew mentor today about the feasibility of cask ale at the home. He said in stead of using sugar to up the carbination use malt for the cask. Other than that it should pretty much be bussiness as usual for the small at home scale stuff. I am dying to try this now!!!!

 

[dummkauf]

Could someone enlighten me as to what the difference is between naturally fermented beer in a cask is vs. a naturally fermented beer in a bottle is. I can only see 2, maybe 3 differences:
1.) Ones in a cask, others in a bottle
2.) You get beer out of 1 with a beer engine, other you use a bottle opener.
3.) Lightly carbonated(no reason I can't do this with a regular keg or bottle)

I understand it's a style of beer, but I'm not understanding the advantages of having it in an actual cask as opposed to a bottle?

 

[mullenite]

Could someone enlighten me as to what the difference is between naturally fermented beer in a cask is vs. a naturally fermented beer in a bottle is. I can only see 2, maybe 3 differences:
1.) Ones in a cask, others in a bottle
2.) You get beer out of 1 with a beer engine, other you use a bottle opener.
3.) Lightly carbonated(no reason I can't do this with a regular keg or bottle)

I understand it's a style of beer, but I'm not understanding the advantages of having it in an actual cask as opposed to a bottle?

There are intangibles that you can't really describe well. Cask beer has a particular mouthfeel and creaminess to it that low carb'd bottled beer does not have.

 

[mullenite]

Fellas, I talked with my home brew mentor today about the feasibility of cask ale at the home. He said in stead of using sugar to up the carbination use malt for the cask. Other than that it should pretty much be bussiness as usual for the small at home scale stuff. I am dying to try this now!!!!

Yeah, if you hit final gravity before racking in to the cask then you can add some wort back in to it to carbonate. The link below is a good calculator for figuring out how much wort you need to add in.

http://www.deadyeast.com/spiesegabe.php

 

[japhroaig]

Cask pump build in progress. I'm not a carpenter, but at least it is gonna be functional.

 

[pcollins]

@dummkauf: Technically there is no difference. The same beer put in a bottle and put in a cask will "technically" be the same. However, there are as mullenite said, intangible differences between the two. The same as there are differences between bottled beer and kegged beer even though they are the same product.

Discuss...

 

[japhroaig]

And the beer engine is installed with a pint of Otis Stout sitting next to it. I was just at one of the only pubs in Oregon that does this sorta thing correctly, and that little rocket pump is just right.

 

[14thstreet]

Very nice...let me know how that Peculier turns out, a side by side tasting of regular keg versus the "engine" would be nice, too! Old Pec is the beer I keep putting off making for something else

 

[japhroaig]

It looks like keeping the kegs from oxidizing really isn't that hard at all. You can pump a few pints out of a corny keg without opening the release valve, then when you are finished for the night lay a gentle layer of CO2 in the keg to keep it from going bad really fast. If you put more than a pound or two of psi then beer will come on straight up the engine (causing you to have at least another half pint of course :rockin.

The ol' peculiar tastes great out of the pump. I made it too strong though, even after a bit of aging it still has that 'young trippel taste', as my wife describes it (and yes she was also proud that she knew and could taste that flavor right off the bat). I'm gonna have to cellar it longer than I had anticipated, but that really isn't much of a problem since I'm picking up two cornies of Ninkasi in two hours.

 

[commonlaw]

Besides the intangibles that come from carbonating to the low level in a much larger vessel than a bottle, you also get some slight oxidation characteristics if you let some air in. At first I was just keeping a blanket of co2 on my cask beers at all times with a propane regulator sitting inline, but I'm trying to play around with drawing a few pints, let some air in, give it a little time, then add the co2 blanket. a little bit of oxidation can add another dimension of flavor to the beer. But even just lightly carbing in a keg versus a bottle changes it somehow.

nice looking boxes to house the rocket... I really need to re-do mine using some proper tools.