British Ale Temps

[rodwha]

I'm a member of a British brew forum also and they find it unimaginable that we'd drink our beer cold.

I think for us on this side it's more of just how we've grown up, but it's also hot down south here, and I enjoy a cold beer despite the style.

I do realize that too cold and it numbs the taste buds a bit, and now that I've become a non BMC drinker I don't need for it to be ice cold.

But the idea of drinking cask ale at ~65* and with very low carbonation seemed quite odd to me. But then I had a cask ale at a local brewpub last night. I can't say it was 65* (maybe 60* or so), but it was rather pleasant, and didn't seem too warm as I finished my meal before finishing off the beer.

It also seemed a little more carbonated than I thought it should be. I thought cask ales were generally about 1.7 volumes of carbonation?

Now that I'm making plans to build a fermentation chamber I'm considering keeping some beers in there, and maybe even looking into a proper cask to serve by gravity. Does anyone else do this?

What is the temperature point in which the taste buds begin to numb?

 

[DavidJP]

I think most pubs in the UK have a cellar and thats where the beer is pulled from. Cellar temp is usually around mid 50's. Obviously this varies but its surprising how constant the temp can be if you're dealing with either something partially underground or with heavy stone walls.

I worked in my youth in several english pubs and even in summer the cellar would be cool, remember 75 is a scorching hot summers day with danger of the roads melting or people collapsing from the heat.

Some pubs will have casks racked on platforms to be directly poured from and from my memory of those places the temp would be higher than cellar but not by much.

So I'd go with mid 50's as a acceptable serving temp for most ales.

 

[GotDrunkThenLost]

I've currently got a couple of polypins of a hobgoblin clone sitting in a friends basement that will be served by gravity, probably holding in the region of 15-16 pints each. I'd probably aim for serving in the mid 50s although I expect that it'll be trial and error for getting the time to serve correct and that will probably also be the case for you as well. Polypins aren't great for doing a test tasting so hopefully you've got a better method of storing.

 

[Queequeg]

I'm not sure its because you taste is numbed, rather that the aroma compounds are more volatile at warmer temperatures. Since aroma is key to taste the taste is affected.

I'm British and would like to say we don't drink all beers "warm", just real ale. That's because it tastes best at that temperature, the flavours become muted when served too cold. The same with carbonation, a lot of sources claim that carbonation promotes mouth feel and flavour but it can do the opposite.

We still drink american ales and lagers cold. Real ale should be served between 54-57F. So 65 is too warm, though at home I'll drink real ale at that temp without fuss. In a pub I would complain.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Mid to high 50s is about the point where I think my English beers are best.

The polypin sounds like a great plan to me. I was thinking long and hard about buying a full pin or two to serve my English beers from, but couldn't get over the issue that my wife would kill me if I were to kill a full pin worth of ale in a couple days, even if it's only ~3% ABV and even I'd be glad to do it. Seems like that may be a great workaround.

Question here is, any way to get a suitable one without overseas shipping? I can only find em for sale through UK retailers, which I suppose shouldn't shock me.

 

[Queequeg]

^^ yeah that is a problem with cask ales, drink it or lose it.

 

[GotDrunkThenLost]

In the US they seem to be called cubtainers, I'm not too convinced about them yet but I've not tried a beer yet so can't be sure. They're available from US plastics and Northern Brewer. Most batches will be straight into bottles, just when I know I've got something coming up I'll use these.

My plan is to get one settled up 2 nights before a session with a couple of mates, night before the session have a beer (if the mates are available then they can have a taste fresh as well) then see how the beer evolves over the next day or 2 (probably involving the world cup over the next month or 2).

I still reckon there'll be a lot of trial and error but I'm sure I'll have fun along the way.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Yep. I found em earlier. Cubitainer. Looks like they're pretty cheap so I'm gonna have to give it a shot. At first I was worried about pressure capacity since I didn't see it referenced on US Plastics when I found it, but after some searching it seems that the true British polypins have the same tendency to burst if overprimed that the Cubitainers do. I figure I'll try it with an inexpensive session beer. Folks also seem to bleed them a bit if they get too inflated.

 

[GotDrunkThenLost]

I've been away for a few days so left a friend babysitting them, just in case the lid needed cracking, it seems they had little change over the few days he had them in his basement. There had been distinct swelling while I had them for the week but I did have them about 70f rather than the mid 50s that would be ideal.

Now just trying to decide when to get them drunk, 3 weeks since brew day, shouldn't be too far off ready I'm hoping.

 

[rodwha]

Please let us know how it turns out!

 

[GotDrunkThenLost]

We've got the 2 polypins of hobgoblin clone settled up since Thursday night at a mates place ready for England v Italy later. Unfortunately I'm told it's already starting to stale a bit, I'm going to drink it anyway, dagnamit I've been looking forward to that.

Where I think I went wrong is to not put the spigots on straight away, I was concerned they might not be as secure as the normal lids, I think they were but I had to mess around a bit. Even without priming (which I understand isn't done for real ales (should ask my dad I guess)) I had good pressure in them, which I immediately lost causing me needing to prime at the same time. I had considered that and was ready to go with the priming solution but I assume I introduced enough air to start off the staling.

Next time I'll try with the spigots on at the time of packaging, they seemed to handle the pressure OK. This time what I did was 1 week primary then into the pins while it still looked like there was a couple of points to drop on the hydrometer. As I've got two 2.5g cubtainers I'll maybe just combine a couple of experiments (parties) by having one after 3 weeks in the cubtainer and the other a week later. That seems a reasonable control, if it's fine after 3 weeks and 4 weeks in the pins I'll know it was the messing with priming etc. Fine after 3 dodgy after 4 I'll go on the assumption that I should just leave it a max of 3 weeks in the pins before drinking.

I should also do a better job of keeping them in the low 50s after packaging, I was very inconsistent as I needed my swamp cooler for other things such as cleaning dishes and cooling other brews.

All in all, I think it'll work nicely, just need to refine the process a little.

 

[Qhrumphf]

So are you not supposed to prime in a polypin or cask? My understanding with cask ale (last time I was in the UK was in the early 90s when I was still young) was that it was still primed, just very low. My plan was to basically treat the polypins like very large bottles, calculate individual amounts of priming sugar for 1.2-1.5 volumes, and just rack into each and seal. Was also under the impression that once you'd sealed them they'd be more or less good to go until you opened them again (within reason).

Let me/us know how the 3 and 4 week ones work out. If they're bad at 4 weeks in as a fact of life, I may need to rethink priming a full batch this way for my own consumption, and instead just do one polypin and bottle the rest normally.

 

[GotDrunkThenLost]

My understanding is that the carbonation comes in from packaging a couple of points above final gravity. I'm not sure how much carbonation that would generate though, especially in the polypins that expand so the CO2 doesn't actually stay in solution anyway.

I'm not sure there was any staling on the beer, I gave it a good thorough drinking yesterday, I suspect it's because I used too much dark crystal malt. It might have been slightly past its best but not too far and we were serving too warm as well, I'd call it a success and something worth doing again for parties (I just need to get better at the actual brewing as that was only my 3rd batch). FYI what I was using was:
http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=31620&catid=816
http://www.usplastic.com/catalog/item.aspx?itemid=83868&catid=810

I guess if you want it to keep for longer after you've started drinking maybe get a spigot that doesn't have the air inlet, however I find having the pressure maintained helps pouring under gravity.

 

[GotDrunkThenLost]

Couple of useful threads on using polypins:
http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=11340
https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f13/how-high-prime-polypin-162820/

 

[Qhrumphf]

Yeah, I'd seen the Jim's Beer Kit one. Reading through the HBT thread now.

 

[Qhrumphf]

Well, I just ordered a bunch of 1 gallon Cubitainers w/ spigots to use as polypins. I hope this works well. Assuming that they ship in a reasonable length of time, I'm planning to have some proper cask beer ready for the kick off of the Premier League. COYS.

 

[rodwha]