Good Firkin Beer!

Here is my sum of experience with cask-conditioned ales: “Oh, lookie thar, they have one o’ them fancy beer engine thing-a-majigs. I hear thems pours some fancy beers. I guess I’ll order me up one.” GLUG, GLUG. “Yep, that thar was a beer fer sher. Pour me another bar keep.”

Which is to say, I am a beer savage. Or worse, an American beer savage. But today I learned what the British have known for centuries: Cask-conditioned beer is the only way to fly. And oddly enough, I learned this at the last place I ever thought I would: Rock Bottom Brewery.

For those of you counting, that’s three colons in two paragraphs. You’re welcome.

I can hear the outrage even as I drunkenly type this post: (that’s four) “Oh gawd! But Rock Bottom is a fuckin’ chain, man. How can you learn anything from a fuckin’ chain?”

The thing you may not know is that Rock Bottom gives their regional brewmasters pretty much free range reign (see note) to create whatever the hell they want to. And in Portland, we’re lucky enough to have the talented and highly outspoken Van Havig. Yes, Van Havig. And no, he doesn’t look like he’s been slaying vampires. But! He is an awesome brewer. In fact one of my favorite beers at last year’s brewer’s fest was the Rock Bottom sour. Amazing.

(Note: The preceding text was written while I was intoxicated and I was unable to finish. What follows is the sober continuation of the post, written this morning.)

In a promotion for next month’s Firkin Festival, Havig allowed journalists and area brewers to observe his process for cask-conditioning ales at his downtown base of operations.

For those of you that don’t know, cask conditioned beer is beer that has been allowed to finish the fermentation process in a special cask, known as a firkin, which is 10.8 US gallons rather than the 15.5 of an American keg. A firkin is also designed in a way that allows yeast to settle in the belly while the remaining ale is pulled over the top. In comparison, keg beers are finished in large containers where the fermentation process is completed. The beer is then filtered, put into kegs, and pushed through taps by CO2, causing the big head and highly bubbly brew loved by Americans everywhere. Cask beers, on the other hand, are drawn into a pint using a pump known as a beer engine creating a less aggressively carbonated beer. This description is hugely simplified, of course.

Havig answers the “what’s cask-conditioned ale?” question by saying it’s beer “the way God intended.” This is the simplest explanation.

As Havig gave us his tutorial yesterday, I will admit that much of the technical jargon was over my head. But my notes do refer to one “magical ingredient” which Havig described as “the sub bladders of certain tropical fish.” Apparently this ingredient, also known as isinglass, creates a collagen net that captures larger and larger particles of yeast as the beer continues ferments in the firkin. The upshot is that when the beer is drawn from the cask it’s beautifully clear.

All of the brewing information, though interesting, meant less to me as a drinker than actually putting a pint (or several) in my body. Luckily, Havig lined us up at the bar to show us why cask conditioning really matters.

Before I continue, I’ll say a word or three about my relationship with IPAs. I don’t like IPAs. Rather, I don’t like the extreme hops of many local IPAs. After a pint or two of a savagely hoppy IPA, my palate is pretty much useless. I feel like my mouth has been cleaned out with a scouring brush and every sip after the second pint is pure brutality.

So, when Havig began pulling his cask conditioned IPA through the beer engine, I was more than a little crest-fallen. He set us up with the IPA poured three ways. In the first glass a “normally” finished IPA, pushed by Co2 through the tap. The second glass had the cask-conditioned IPA, drawn through the beer engine “southern style,” meaning without the aid of a small device called a sparkler, which is placed at the end of the tap (called a goose neck) providing additional aeration to the brew. A southern style beer is less bubbly and lacks a thick head. By comparison, the glass of IPA poured “northern style,” using the sparkler, has a thick creamy head, much like Guinness—which, incidentally, is manufactured specifically to mimic a cask conditioned beer poured “northern style” through a beer engine.

I started with the standard IPA poured from the tap. Yep, that was IPA as I’ve known it: aggressive, hoppy, astringent. I moved to the southern style cask-conditioned IPA. It wasn’t the same beer. It couldn’t be. The mouth feel was much rounder and softer; the bitterness of the hops was far less defined and allowed a flowery element to develop on the palate. Moving on to the northern style IPA, the difference became astounding: here the IPA was almost velvety in the mouth, super soft, and the aeration allowed for the flavor profile to be much more full while staying just bright enough—immensely drinkable.

That’s one of the reasons that Havig likes cask conditioned beers so much. He demonstrated as much by pouring a full pint and downing it in about five gulps. “See?” he said with a wild look in his eyes, “This is how you should be able to drink beer!”

I tried it myself, and I’d have to concur. (Now you understand last night’s intoxication).

So, I’m sold on this whole cask-conditioning thing. But Havig has some caveats. The thing about cask-conditioned beer is that it takes a whole different skill set to do it right. And not all brewers have that skill set. So when you go into a pub with a beer engine (Moon and Sixpence, Lucky Lab, Horse Brass, Bar Avignon are just a few that come to mind) it’s a crapshoot as to what you’ll get in your pint. However, I’d say it’s worth a try.

If you want to go whole hog, the Oregon Brewers Guild will be presenting a whole passle of cask-conditioned ales at the Firkin Festival, March 21st, at the Green Dragon.