Introduction and beer question

Hi everyone, I've just discovered this group and have been skimming the topics today - seems like a very interesting mix!

Just to introduce myself, I'm a 24 year-old Scottish real ale drinker living in Harrogate, England. Living in Yorkshire I have access to a stunning array of quality ales, and my favourite brewers are Roosters (incl. Outlaw), Badger and Marstons. I have hope that a majority of you will know the beers to which I refer. At my favourite regular pubs, Roosters YPA is a staple (as is Timothy Taylor's Landlord) so I get understandably distressed when asked to visit a pub selling only Stella, Carling and Guiness. Not that I haven't been known to drink a few pints of the black stuff, but it's hard to choose that over a smooth creamy amber glass of pure love.

I'd also be interested in advice anyone has for me on keeping and drinking from a keg in the home environment. There are a large number of local breweries and I'd love to buy a keg for the house (including myself there are three beer-drinking adults here) but don't want to end up with the same kind of ale you get from a bottle (nice as that is under the right conditions) - I want my beer, for want of a better word, "oxygenised" like I see hand-pulled pints at my locals. Is it possible to achieve this, or close to this, at home? I can only imagine the setup in my head, and it involves about 15 meters of coiled pipe and some very hard work. Suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Andrew Cameron

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Andrew Cameron
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Andrew, you're posting to a general-interest beer newsgroup read 'round the world. Roosters and Badger are smaller, newer breweries and are far better known in the UK than anywhere else.

Hint: don't bother. You only get so many swallows in life. Why settle for second-best? Not that I haven't found myself forced to do the same, mind you.

From a keg or from a cask? They're two different things. For a keg, you'll need a cooler of some kind and a setup to use CO2 for dispense. For dispensing real ale from a cask, it can be as easy as setting it on some kind of stillage on a countertop and letting gravity do its thing, or putting together a setup with a handpump. Either way, if you're going to drink real ale at home, you'll have to deal with problems that your favo(u)rite pubs handle, like the strong probability that the beer will go off if it isn't consumed quickly enough. That might be a problem.

Also, you probably should have cross-posted this to uk.food+drink.real-ale. As you might expect, there are people on that newsgroup who are knowledgeable in such matters.

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dgs
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Andrew Cameron
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The Submarine Captain

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