I feel embarrassed to be reading this thread on a British forum, there's been so much nonsense written in it. I guess it's the US influence, to counter which Jeff Alworth
wrote this :
"
In the UK, cask ale is a beleaguered product. It is considered old and fusty, and because it is so hard to do well, many people consider it an inferior product. (When it is flat and sour, the flavors all collapsed and muddy, cask ale is a sad thing indeed.) The reason I’ve been such a fanatic supporter over the years is precisely because it is so hard. It is a crazy beer that shouldn’t exist. There’s a reason Americans took one look at that and said no thanks. There are many places for it to go south, from the brewhouse to the brewery cellar to the pub cellar to the pint glass. It takes many people to deliver that perfect pint, and that means many people who can screw it up.....
cask ale is not just the most important symbol of British brewing, it’s also one of the hardest to make beers, the craftiest beers, and, when it’s made and served properly, the best beers on the planet. Nearly everyone seems to hold cask in contempt, even while they fall in love with Bavarian kellerbier (a poor man’s cask beer) and hazy IPA and rustic saison. If I were English, I’d be swanning around bragging about making the best and most difficult beer. The problem is, that’s not a very British thing to do, is it? Well, take my word for it as a braggy American, it is the hardest to make, and the most hand-crafted. "
If you can't make a great cask beer, then it's not because cask beer is rubbish, it's because you're just not a very good brewer.
As the title really. Only every done keg beer with either natural carbonation from pressure fermentings...coming straight from cask it will be flat
Cask beer should not be flat. It's full name is cask-conditioned beer - no different to what you've been doing with your naturally carbonated beer in a keg. Breweries that turn out the same beer time after time who know exactly what their FG is going to be can package at exactly the right time so that there is exactly the right amount of sugar left for the appropriate amount of carbonation. That takes skill and experience as a brewer, which you don't have, but don't think that's why a brewery makes disappointing beers. For your first time it makes sense to add sugar. And then give it time - cask beer needs time to come together aside from the time it needs to generate CO2, a lot of the good cask breweries refuse to let their casks out of the brewery for at least 2 weeks.
I have lots of thoughts about recipes, but there's three rather important questions you need to answer before even start on this :
Are you registered with the
Alcohol Wholesaler Registration Scheme (AWRS)?
Are you registered with HMRC for beer duty?
Are your premises where beer is being produced for sale to the public, registered with the local Environmental Health people?
I hate to be a party-pooper; if it was up to me, I would change the law to allow small amounts of homebrew to be sold, but that's the law of the land. That's why the best route for this kind of project is to collaborate with a local brewery and produce beer at their premises, with their HMRC/AWRS licences.
But two quick comments - it was British cask breweries who invented dry hopping in the modern sense so you shouldn't be afraid of doing it, and be very wary if they've given you a dirty cask, they can be buggers to clean to the necessary standard.
Oh, and for the record, it will almost certainly be a 9 imperial gallon (72 imperial pints, 40.9 litres) cask, otherwise known as a firkin.
) Summer sunshine is going to be quite as hot when you get up. And if it is, don't spend so long in it.
