Craft keg’s summer?

Is this the summer of craft keg? Could this be the summer when craft keg hits the mainstream craft drinking culture or at least gives the impression that it does? As the sun continues to shine, could those who drink cask beer completely ideology free occasionally switch their allegiances to a colder and more carbonated beer, albeit one they perceive to have as much flavour as the cask that they normally drink (we’re talking Camden rather than Carling). 

I have personal memories of the way a long sunny spell hit cask in the mid 1990s. In my diary from 1995, an entry from early August, it reads: ‘went to CAMRA beer festival thing tonight, lots of beers off. Thought not best time for bitter.’ The next night I went again and wrote: ‘It’s bloody too hot to drink bitter but I did my best.’

I would hope that all kinds of beer profit from the warm weather, which should drive greater amounts of people to the pub (this is not about craft keg vs cask, which is a tired old argument that should be bedded down once and for all). Unlike the 1990s, I believe there is a greater awareness in the trade of the need to maintain a constant and correct temperature, but reading here and here resurrected old concerns. Meanwhile in my own experience I can point to the weekend when I did a tasting at my local of Brains’ Three C’s Son, a saison hopped with columbus, citra and centennial. This unfiltered and unpasteurised saison was served from a keg font and went down a storm (especially with the CAMRA members that turned up); when I returned on Sunday looking forward to drinking more, none was there. Cask By the Horns IPA was fine, but I would have preferred a colder, sharper, refreshing beer.

There are caveats, though. Craft keg is a minority taste, mainly available in craft beer bars and saddled with the reputation of being an expensive treat, so Carling drinkers are unlikely to switch over. Craft keg also needs to be looked after with as much dedication as cask; last year I had a beer from Mallinson’s in one of London’s craft beer bars that had all the liveliness and sprightliness of a catatonically-inclined Methodist. On the other hand, Fuller’s has developed a pretty decent craft keg lager with Frontier and in London Camden and Meantime are ubiquitous (ok that’s London, but there are opportunities for craft keg throughout the country). I’ve had good craft keg in Bristol, both at BrewDog and Zero Degrees, while I’m sure others around the country can point to similar experiences. 

So could this be the summer of craft keg? I don’t know but if enough noise is made it might be remembered as such — not everyone was a hippy in whenever the summer of love was. 

I do know that if I was writing this for the Publican’s Morning Advertiser I would be advising licensees not to go overboard with lots of cask hand pulls and look at trying at least one good craft keg font to keep the cask beer drinkers happy.

When craft keg was just a babe in the eye of the beerholder there was Milk Street

Milk Street Brewery’s beers are English beers that do not hurry themselves along to the glass with the frenetic haste of desert nomads having sighted a waterhole; they are beers that are made for what drinkers in the country pubs around Frome (which is where the brewery makes its beers) and other places in the vicinity enjoy and want — and why not? It is a business and the business I had on reaching Frome the other day was to reacquaint myself with the beers of Milk Street and then write their tasting notes. It’s a paid gig but I wouldn’t have done it without having faith in their beers, a faith that I found was well rewarded with a morning in the deserted saloon bar at the Griffin Inn, at the back of which the brewery make their beers (there used to be a porn cinema at the back of the premises at one stage and when the brewery moved in they would get old boys turning up and asking when they were showing any movies). If there is a common thread that runs through the beers, it’s that of a juicy drinkability that always surprises me, given that there are so many beers in the world, but I am not here to write about them at the moment. What I am writing about is that when craft keg was just a babe in the eye of the beerholder (circa 2002, which was when I first turned up here to write a piece on East Somerset breweries for What’s Brewing), Milk Street’s founder and brewer Rik Lyall was already mucking around with different dispensations and the result on the bartop at the Griffin is Elderfizz. 

But then back in 2002 I remember him handing me a 7% wheat beer that didn’t come via the godly highway usually lit up by a handpump — it was called Elderbeer and contained honey and elderflower and was very refreshing. Of course, writing the article, in order not to upset delicate sensibilities, I skirted over the way the beer was dispensed. On Thursday I was pleased to see that the beer is still being produced and now called Elderfizz and has been brought down to 5%. And what of the beer? The recipe is 50% wheat and 50% low colour Maris Otter and it is flavoured with elderflower aqueous extract. Primary fermentation is at 18˚c for a week, and then it is chilled to 3˚c and chill proofed for a further week after the addition of auxiliary finings. Just before kegging it's krausened with Milk Street’s 5% golden beer handily named Beer that's been fermenting for 18 hours. And now one for the techies thanks to Rik: ‘the spears in the keg have been specially adapted (like the old Ushers system) so they don't go down to the bottom. It is “real ale in a keg” unfiltered & unpasteurised.’ 

So what does it taste like? Well it is a beer for a sunlit garden with lemon, elderflower cordial, sherbet and a juicy lustrous character on the nose, while the palate features lemon curd, lemon curd on brioche perhaps; I even thought of Riesling. The finish is fast and refreshing and before you can say ‘I must plant my coriander seeds’ it’s time for another sip. At at the moment you have to go to the Griffin to drink it but expect that to change. It’s the perfect lawnmower beer providing you don’t have to mow the lawn anymore. 

Craft Keg Beer Festival — no one hurt

Yesterday and to Nottingham as part of the judging team in SIBA’s inaugural craft keg competition. Some good beers, some truly magnificent and a few indifferent chaps. Went back later to try a few more at the one night festival and favourites included Freedom Pilsner, Jaipur, Black Isle Organic Porter, West’s St Mungo, Munich Red and Hefeweizen — sniffing the Jaipur was like putting your nose in a massive hop sack, a wonderful experience that followed through on the palate. Some let downs as well — Kipling had a big biff of passion fruit on the nose, but little else, while Hambleton’s Nightmare was all butter toffee and mocha on the nose and thin roast water on the palate. Some greet the rumble of craft keg with uncontainable excitement, other fumble for their cross in the folds of their CAMRA-branded cassock, but relax it’s not going to be the new messiah, it’s just another method of dispensation and for one welcome it with wide open arms. Well done to SIBA in launching this competition as well (you can try the winners at the Canalhouse starting Thursday night), something that some of their members had been going on about for years. Now they’ve done it and it can only get better. A glass of beer is a glass of beer is a glass of beer, as Gertrude Stein once wrote before deciding that said sentence was too long and rose would be snappier.