Real Ale - It's in our name. So what is It?

What is Real Ale (also called Cask-Conditioned Ale)?

Real (or Cask) Ale is beer that is conditioned (carbonated and readied for serving) in the vessel that is served from – this can be a cask (in the case of cask-conditioned) or even a bottle (bottle conditioned). Although called cask or real “ale,” lagers are just as easily made into cask beers. Remember, the ONLY difference between an ale or a lager is the strain of yeast used. You can have hoppy and bitter, malty and sweet, light or dark ales or lagers.

The key to real, or cask, ale is that it is:

• Brewed from traditional ingredients, with perhaps the addition of extra hops, or other ingredients, directly into the cask,
• Matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed,
• Never filtered,
• Served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide. Cask ales are “pulled” from the cask with the hand pump or simply tapped and served directly from the cask. By contrast, keg beers are served by CO2 “pushing” the beer up out of the keg and through the tap faucet.

When cask-conditioned:

Cask-conditioned beers start out exactly the same as any keg or bottled beer. They are brewed the same exact way on brew day and things only start to become different after fermentation as begun. With regular beers, the beer finished fermenting in the fermenter and is then transferred and carbonated by forcing CO2 into the beer to get it carbonated. With cask beers, the beer is removed from the fermenter near the end of fermentation (when the fermentation is almost done) and transferred into the “cask” (basically a keg with a different design). The beer is then treated very differently from that point forward. While the keg beer is immediately ready to serve after it is force-carbonated, the cask beer must “condition” in the cask for an additional one to four weeks to allow it to naturally carbonate and complete the development of flavors. Then, the brewer must “vent” the cask and prepare it for serving. This can take up to two days, depending on the beer, before it is properly served.

Cask ales are served unfiltered, at 'cellar' temperature, approximately 50 - 55 °F. Serving beer at this temperature allows the flavors and aromas of the beer to be fully understood and appreciated. Serving beer “ice cold” at 32-33 degrees is wrong, even for regular draft beer. Serving beer in iced glasses is wrong. Ice-cold temperatures and iced glasses only serve to mask the flavor and aroma of the beer. The bottom line: the crappier the beer, the colder you will want it served in order to hide the lousy taste.