One of the rarest, but most uniquely pleasing styles of beer to be found in the pubs of our fair city, is the venerable cask ale. Despite a precipitous lapse in popularity during the 20th century, it’s on the comeback trail in a growing number of pubs specializing in lesser-known, high-quality local beers.
Cask ale can potentially be an ale in any style – porter, bitter, stout, India pale, and so on – but what distinguishes a cask ale from its conventional counterparts isn’t the ingredients, but the manner in which it is kegged, stored, and served.
It’s variously known as cask ale, cask-conditioned ale, and real ale (although, with apologies to Shakespeare, by any name, it still tastes sweet), but the essential quality that sets cask ale apart is that, once the brewing process is finished, cask ale is put into kegs, shipped to pubs, and served to happy customers. Sounds like a reasonable model, doesn’t it? This might make you think, “Gee, that sounds a lot like just normal beer – what’s so special about that?” Surprisingly, what’s special is found in what’s not done to it.
For the sake of shelf life, speed of service, and ease of transportation (i.e. not needing refrigeration), virtually all other beers undergo at least two additional processing steps: pasteurization, and force carbonation. Pasteurization kills whatever live yeast may have remained from the brewing process, and force carbonation greatly increases the quantity of dissolved carbon dioxide in the beer, in order to make it easier to serve quickly from bar taps. Both of these steps are really convenient for the people who sell beer, but, really, neither of them are especially desirable for the people who drink it. You’d never dream of boiling the life out of a bottle of fine wine in order to make it easier to store, or force-carbonating Champagne, but with the overwhelming majority of commercial beer, this is exactly what happens.
All that having been said, ultimately, the best reason to drink cask beer isn’t ideological – it’s the taste. Live yeasts remaining in the keg encourage the beer to continue to ferment and mature in the cask. This allows additional layers of fruity flavours, and herbal or spicy flavours to develop.
Furthermore, not only does properly matured cask beer have more flavour, but it is also served in a manner which best allows you to appreciate this extra burst of flavour. For one thing, in order to allow the yeast in the beer to remain active, it can’t be kept too cold, and will generally be served at a cellar temperature (around 10°C). Contrary to all that marketing business about the incredible awesomeness of ice-cold beer, icy isn’t actually such a great temperature for beer. Just as slightly melted ice cream tastes much sweeter and more flavourful than frozen-solid ice cream (as a result of the excess cold’s numbing of the taste buds), cool, but not cold, beers are primed for maximum enjoyment. Finally, while all that extra carbon dioxide does make it easy for bartenders to serve lots of beer quickly, and makes beer similar to soda pop with its artificial carbonation, excess carbon dioxide also suppresses the taste buds, virtually eliminating the distinctive mouthfeel of individual beers.
The combination of warmer temperatures, lower carbonation, and frequent cloudiness and sediment from (harmless) residual yeast combine to create, what can easily be, an unfamiliar beer experience for cask newcomers. If, however, you can be persuaded to give it a try, in return for your adventurousness, you’ll be richly rewarded with a beer which is guaranteed to be fresh, locally brewed, and possessing of tremendous flavour.
If this sounds like something you’d be interested in trying, you’ll find a rotating selection of cask ales in the following Toronto locations:
- Victory Cafe
- C’est What
- The Rhino
- Bar Volo
Or, alternatively, to stay abreast all the latest local cask ale news, try this Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/CASK/25959847844
Photo Credit: Flickr user sashafatcat.
