Anybody brew cask ales?

[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.