So, here in the UK, we have hand-pulled ale. We have taps too, of course, but by hand-pulled, I mean using an actual pump. A long lever is pulled, lifted back upright then pulled again, manually drawing beer from an unpressurised cask in the cellar and into a waiting glass. Kind of like the old village water pump, but conveying rather more interesting liquid.
I’m lucky enough to be pretty well travelled, but have yet to see such a thing anywhere beyond these shores.
I imagine the taste for cellar-temperature* ale that’s not fizzy doesn’t really extend beyond these shores either, so perhaps it’s as simple as that? Refrigeration and carbonation are globally accepted elements of the beer experience, and they don’t really square with such a simple beer engine as this?
Have I missed something? Do other folks have 'em?
*It’s cellar temperature. It’s not warm. British drinkers do not like warm beer. You can leave your boots on, but if you’re coming in here, you leave that story outside. House rules…
Several pubs around these parts have beer engines for brews that call for them. But the current trend is more towards weird Belgian brews than cask-conditioned ales.
Until Shepherd Neame starts exporting Bishops Finger again, British brew gets no love from me.
Yes. I’ve been to a number of pubs here in the U.S. that serve them, including one in my tiny little North Carolina town of 5,000. Most don’t serve them all the time, but will do so for the beers that call for them.
hardly. there’s been something of a minor explosion in small, local craft breweries in this country. I’m in a medium-sized suburb of Detroit, and there’s at least 7 within 10-15 minutes of my place. most serve ales of various styles, and most are busy as hell from Wednesday-Sunday in the afternoons and evenings. and they’re all pretty damn good.
yes, milder fare like Bud and Labatt will hold the mass market (and the mass market always settles on milder fare) but it’s not correct to think that’s all people drink here. The average party store I encounter has at least 2-3x as many microbrews on hand compared to the Bud, Miller, etc. they have in stock.
I mean, I like IPAs, porters, stouts, brown ales, etc. but even then on a hot summer day when I’m out watching the boat races, a nice cold Labatt is what’s called for.
Cool. I haven’t been to the US for about ten years, and it certainly seemed at the time that there was a strong movement towards craft beers. I was pleasantly surprised, given the reputation which American beer had in the UK.
Nevertheless, everything I saw then was chilled and from tapped kegs, not pumped casks.
A brewer I spoke to in Vermont said they’d tried hand-pulled stuff, and tried not routinely chilling everything to “so damn cold you can’t really taste it so it may as well be Coor’s Light” (he said with rolled eyes) but that unfortunately, most people didn’t like that and they had to serve it “wrong”.
That was just one brewery though, with one lot of clientele, and it was ten years ago.
Hence the question, really: there’s been an explosion of microbreweries here too, but there’s also a tradition of hand-pulled ales anyway, so that doesn’t indicate what the rest of the world might be up to. I was curious as to what was available elsewhere.
Yep, I visit a few places that sporadically offer a cask beer. It’s usually a dollar or two more than the other beers, and it typically goes fast. I love cask beers.
Most of the cask conditioned ale you find at small breweries in the states is still served cold and carbonated. The number actually serving cask beers with a hand pump is smaller, but you can find a few in any city with a decent beer culture. Here’s one in the wilds of Oregon that serves cask beer exclusively.
this is a place I like they don’t show it online, but the printed menu they have in pub will note whether a particular beer is hand pulled or nitrogen dispensed.
They’re not necessarily super common here, but in Chicago there must be at least a dozen or so places that have it. Some of my regular beer bars (Owen & Engine, The Map Room, Twisted Spoke, Revolution, Goose Island Clybourn [though I haven’t been back since the renovation, so I don’t know for certain, but I can’t imagine they got rid of it]) all have engines.
(Looking it up, so far as I can find a list that looks reasonably current and definitive, there’s 17 places in Chicago proper with cask ales, and another ten if you count the suburbs.)
Not down from the cellar usually, just from under the bar, but yes, in Spain I’ve seen some places which didn’t just have taps but a pump that needed to be pulled repeatedly rather than just pushing once. Not very usual, though.
