Cask beer anyone?

In Britain they have enjoyed cask ale for a very long time and it is still going strong today albeit at a much lower rate than 30 years ago and more. Lager has taken over as the beer of choice around the world. You can still enjoy cask beer though in many pubs in most average towns in the UK and it is probably thanks to CAMRA that this is the case today.

Here in Ireland it is a different story, cask ale died out here a long time ago and has only surfaced again in the last few years. The Porterhouse brew pubs in Dublin have had their own Cask beer called TSB running for a number of years and until a few months ago, was one of only (if not the only) place in Ireland that served cask beer.

A few months ago, The Bull & Castle in the Christchurch area of Dublin started to serve Cask ale clocking up the capitals cask beer outlets to two, well that is not quite true as there are a number of Porterhouse outlets so let us say the choice of Cask ale is now two. Either one of the porterhouse pubs or whatever the Bull and Castle is serving. The main difference is that the porterhouse always has their own TSB on cask where as the Bull and castle have different guest beers on cask every week or two.

For those reading that are not familiar with the difference between a cask beer and a Kegged beer then let me give you a quick run down.
1. Cask beer contains (usually) a live beer meaning that the yeast is still in the beer where as kegged beer has usually (not always) been filtered.
2. Cask beer is usually served slightly chilled above room temperature instead of through a cooling system usually employed by a keg.
3. Cask beer is pumped in the opposite way to a keg. A keg is sealed tight and Co2 or sometimes co2 & nitrogen are pumped in to the keg to push the beer out. This pumps the beer out fresh and when it arrives in your glass it is the first time the beer has been exposed to oxygen since it was transferred to the keg. The Co2 also serves to keep the beer carbonation levels up.
Cask beer on the other hand, while also sealed does not use co2 or any other compressed gas to dispense the beer. Instead it uses a hand operated pump which pumps air (including oxygen obviously) in and push the beer out. As a result, the beer inside may have been exposed to air for a couple of days and will not stay as fresh for as long as a keg. Also since there is no pressure, there will be little carbonation.

There are no doubt other differences but these are the main ones and all that matter for this post.

I am a fan of the TSB on cask at the porterhouse so I was interested to try more cask beer.
The Bull can castle started off with Druids brew from the Carlow brewing company. This is a stout from the makers of my beloved O'Haras and is only available on cask and usually only at beer festivals so this was the first time it had appeared in Dublin. I found this grew on me more and more as I drank it. I just had to get over the initial mental messages telling me that the stout is flat.

Next up for me a few weeks later was Carlows Curim Celtic wheat beer. Never having been a fan of this in the bottle I was pleasantly surprised by this in the cask. It had a richer flavour to it, the only thing is that a wheat beer is usually highly carbonated so it lacks the mouthfeel I would associate with a wheat beer.

Then came Cask O'Haras, the stout I love oh so much from the bottle. Unfortunately I was disappointed by this because it seems the cooling system was broken so it was served far too warm and some off flavours were present. I will keep an eye out for it next time it is available to see if it is any better.

Most recently a brand new beer from Carlow was on cask called Malty Bitches and it was lovely. I had it first on Friday and I made sure I went to the porterhouse first to have their TSB so cask bitter was fresh in my mind. I have to say I thought the Malty Bitches was superb and better than the TSB. A proper blind tasting is in order but this is very difficult so will probably not be possible unless I was take put both in a bottle and take them home, or just walk down from the porterhouse with a pint of TSB and walk in to the Bull and castle to compare. Either way, both are lovely beers but the way I remember them it was the Malty Bitches that was the better of the two.

Next up there is an IPA which might be Galway hooker unless *Carlow have also done an IPA. I will find out soon and no doubt someone who has tried it will be able to comment. It went on sale last night I believe.

Anyway according to Geoff who manages the Bull and Castle, the Cask was one of the best decisions ever made as he is getting lots of phonecalls of brewers trying to get their own cask beer on sale so it shows there is a demand out there if a publican is willing to learn how to use a cask system. With luck, more pubs will start to follow suit and not only serve proper Irish beer from Irish owned and operated micro breweries but also start to sell cask.
It was also be interesting for Guinness to bring out a Cask version. It would be interesting to see what that would taste like. While I like Guinness just fine, the normal draught flavour is killed by both being served too cold and by the nitrogen/co2 mix. Bottled Guinness is better so it would be interesting to have a live cask version.

By the way, if I have any info on cask beer wrong then please let me know and remember how limited my experience of cask beer is. It is all a learning process.

*Seems it is in fact a new Carlow brewing company IPA