CASK Challenge at C'Est What

[old faithful]

Some further thoughts: I recall tasting around 1980 some of the keg beers then available in England. I think by then Red Barrel has been taken off the domestic market but others were available (and still are) which gave an idea of the character.

If you put, say, the keg version of Bass next to the real ale version, as I had occasion to do in the 1980's, they seemed like quite different beers. If someone did the same in Toronto today with Fuller ESB keg and the real ale version we sometimes get, I think the same conclusion would be reached. There are some similarities between the two forms but the cask is usually better. The live yeast content and lack of heat applied to the malt and hops seem to make for a more natural, fresher taste. And the Bass and Fuller keg beers were and are better than many other keg beers: I recall that some kegs seemed to have very little taste or one which was not really beer-like. In the U.K. (I haven't had it here for some time), a keg beer like John Smith's seemed to me hardly beer-like at all, but I suspect the intention was to try to appeal to a broad market range.

But even the best keg beer is still essentially a type of bottled or canned beer, in my opinion. It is dispensed from a large container but since it is pasteurised it has characteristics similar to those of a bottled or canned beer (except a bottle-conditioned beer).

Theoretically, keg beers in England should taste great since many pasteurized bottled ales imported from England taste great. But we must bear in mind the low gravities at which beers have been sold in recent decades in England. Also, keg beer is not (I assume) dry-hopped as some real ale bitters are. For these reasons, many keg beers in the U.K. don't retain that much flavour after undergoing filtration and pasteurization. Jackson wrote that keg beers seemed sweeter in general than the cask versions. Making them sweeter may have been an attempt to restore flavour lost by the kegging process or to appeal to a wider market than cask bitter had enjoyed. It was these factors which opened the door for CAMRA to do its great work.

Had the traditional cask beers been made available in filtered but unpasteurized form for the English draught market, I wonder if cask ale would have survived to the extent it has (which is a small but enduring part of the market). On the other hand, had this occured, I think a portion of the market which went to draught lager beer would have remained in the ale camp. I think we are all agreed that a filtered draft beer which is unpasteurised preserves the essence of the ale tradition.

Gary