Another Friday posting from me, and more links from the
New York Times. This time, it's food and wine reporter Eric Asimov extolling the wonders of cask condition beers:
If mass-market kegs are the Wonder bread and Velveeta of the beer world, cask ales are like fresh-baked loaves or artisanal cheeses, with the potential to be glorious but risky all the same.
For the full article, click
here (registration required; to avoid registration, go to
bugmenot.com). For Mr. Asimov's companion piece in the
Times' blog section, click
here. This blog posting contains a few more details on the cask conditioning process, including this mind-boggling piece of information:
Brewers generally add a fining material as well, like isinglass, which helps to settle the yeast cells to the bottom of the cask and clarify the ale. While haziness is typical of hefeweizen and certain bottle-conditioned beers, cask ales ought to be clear. By the way, isinglass comes from the air bladders of fishes like sturgeon, cod and hake, and it’s interesting to speculate on how brewers and winemakers discovered its clarifying properties.
Hat-tip to
Mike for finding this a few days ago.
I wish we would see a little more of this around town. I really liked I can count on the Heorot having some JW Lee's on Cask when I go there.
ReplyDeleteIf you need a good cask beer fix in Indy, hit either Rock Bottom location, the Broad Ripple Brewpub, or BadaBoomz. They almost always have cask beers.
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