Introduction and beer question

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.

That's true, but I was hoping that the quality of said brewers was high enough that word had reached around the globe. I might be living in a goldfish bowl, but I've been around and Yorkshire has the best real ale (for my tastes at least) in the country.

I usually find myself in such a situation when other people want to visit a club in Leeds. The mere prospect curls my toes, but I go along anyway in the hopes that they have a guest beer. If they do, it's usually kept badly, although Wetherspoons do quite a nice line of summer ales on occasion.

After doing some Google Image searching, I think I mean cask. Is this just the method for getting the beer out or is it stored in a different way from "keg"? Basically, I want pub-tasting ale, at home.

This sounds about right. I looked at handpumps though - one site was selling one for £225! I don't have that kind of cash to be experimenting with. Do you know of any cheaper places, or even the kinds of keywords I should be searching for?

That won't be a problem ;-)

I object more to crossposting than I do to introduction posts (I thought mine was justified since I actually did read the group and had a question at the same time), but I'll check out that group, thanks.

Andrew Cameron

Honestly, if that's still a question to you, I suggest that you really search out your local CAMRA branch. Get your local guide, and read What's Brewing every month - it won't take you long to understand the differenence. In short, keg is pressurised (by means of carbondioxide or mix nitrogen-carbondioxide) beer that has been filtered. Cask means living, unfiltered and unpasteurised beer, where the CO² comes from the natural carbonation by the yeast in the cask. If you find yourself in a pub, serving a cask and a kegversion of the same beer, taste them next to each other; if you aren't convinced then never to take the keg again, never go back to that pub! Joris

Andrew Cameron a écrit :

Well, you could certainly get a refurbished second-hand handpump for about £ 60 at Singleton Services :

Erm, that means you're considering emptying a nine (9 gallons, aka firkin) or an eleven (50 litres) in less than 72 hours with yer mates ? Good luck... Breweries who use pins (4,5 gallons) are a rare thing... but quite a few sell racked beer in bag-in-box systems for parties, and also consider the 5-litre mini-casks from HopBack (Summer Lightning), which give you a decent pint.

Cheers !

Laurent