It added: “‘Fresh ale’ provides exciting new opportunities for pubs to serve ale, all while preserving the beloved handpull ritual that delivers the traditional theatre of serve that ale is famed for.”
Shoot them. Not particularly because of the beer thing, just that language and justification.
Do you want it pasteurise, ‘cos pasteurise is best.
Ernie I’d be happy if it comes up to my chest
Where did they get their marketing guy from?
CAMRA or the Royal Shakespeare Company?
Traditional hand pumps had an autoback system (I think that’s the correct term) whereby 10% of the drip tray contents were fed back as the pint was pulled. This was how the traditional head that stuck to the glass could be created without wasting a lot of beer. Now we get flat pints.
It was a northern thing and one of the worst cases of cultural vandalism when the health fascists banned it.
“the perfect pint of cask-conditioned beer must be poured by a barman skilled in the art of pulling traditional handpumps…”
You what? I’ve worked at beer festivals. You can just put the barrels above you and open the tap. All the handpump does is to pull beer up from the cellar. You just pull it down, release, repeat. Skills? Hardly.
The skill is the cellar management. Making sure you get the right amount of beer in, cleaning out the pipes etc etc. That’s what this move is replacing. So pubs can be even more about the food.
BiND – Big difference between north and south is the use of sparklers.
Except for a few breweries who ask for the thread to be machined off everyone uses the same thread. 1mm holes if you’re using a half pint engine (common in the south), 0.6-0.7mm for a quarter pint engine (common in the north). Some pubs in the south will, with much amusement and confusion, fit one if you ask nicely.
AutoVac/AutoBack (I’ve heard them called both) were mostly a waste saving measure. Knocking the condition out of the beer was a bonus. They’re also very much still in use, but thankfully rarer than they used to be.
The reason cask ale only lasts a few days is nothing to do with pasteurisation – it’s letting air touch the beer. Both oxygen and any random microbes that are floating around.
The marketing speak is because this is a solved problem.
Want to have cask ale but last as long as keg – Cask aspirator. It’s a suction demand valve with backpressure relief that allows CO2 to cover the top of the beer in the cask and form a blanket. Stops oxygen touching the beer, and the CO2 from the bottle will be sterile compared to normal air. 14 days on a cask. No problem.
One brewery went through a phase of adding top pressure to their casks, which led to fizzy beer and CAMRA having a fit. Cask aspirators specifically maintain the pressure at atmospheric.
Want to serve keg beer through a handpull. Add a ‘Check valve’ – really a suction demand valve without backpressure relief – just before the handpull and serve normally. They’re normally used when using a pump to get the beer up from the cellar, but work fine for keg too.
Want something that looks like a hand pull but is designed for keg beer – use a cylinderless engine. This looks like a handpull but has a valve and a damper instead of a cylinder to make it look and feel like you’re pulling a normal cylinder
Even with a check / demand valve, you would struggle to serve keg through a beer engine. It has too much CO2 and you end up with froth. You need to get the pressure down to about 2psi max (serving pressure for keg is around 12psi). Homebrewers who use cornie kegs, like me, have to fart around using propane secondary regulators to get a reliable low serving pressure in order to use a beer engine.
Back to the article, this is clear passing off. Carlsberg are trying to pass off shitty keg beer as real ale. You can bet your bottom dollar that the “brewery conditioned” tag will disappear soon enough. The cunts need shooting.
My reaction to my first hand pulled pint in the North
a) ha its made by Tetley – tea flavoured beer. b) why does it look like light brown Guinness?
The place i drink in often is not open all the time so wastage is a big issue. A couple of years ago they switched the lagers to a nifty solution that stops it being exposed to air. Comes in a large say 35 pint plastic bottle. Place it in a barrel shaped vessel which is connected to an air compressor. Seal it. Pressurise the barrel. When you turn on the tap, the pressure squeezes the bottle and thus the beer travels up the line. At the end of the 35 pints, you depressurise the barrel and you’re left with a compacted squished plastic bottle as BiK says, nothing touches the air. This has saved them a lot of wastage.
The solution to the hand pumped bitter was to go to half barrels. But still wastage as have to pull off 2 pints every time they open up. So i’ll ask em whether they considered the cask aspirator solution.
@Harry..
Keg has no inherent pressure, so in @Bloke.. methodology think the beer engine pulls the beer and the check valve puts very low pressure co2 back in, same for a low pressure co2 aspirator being used instead of a spile.
As co2 preserved ale, like your homebrew, stays stable until oxidised you can get a much longer life out of kegs that way.
Not sure where the 3 days open came from, most pubs would keep a barrel on for a week or so in a cold cellar, and with co2 aspiration even live beer will last months as it can’t breathe.
For your cornys the welders regulators are a bit rough, a secondary regulator to bring the pressure low like this one would help if you want a stable low pressure for your beer engine.
https://rlbs.ltd.uk/v340g-secondary-reducing-regulator-with-pass-through-wall-mount-with-1-gauge.html
@swanny – all commercial kegs are pressurised. Large breweries do this by force carbonation in bulk and transferring into keg under pressure. Smaller breweries transfer into keg then force carb in the keg. Either way, when a keg arrives at a pub, it is already carbonated and the CO2 on site is only used for dispense.
Such a wealth of knowledge. I’ve learned a lot today.
Standard set up for keg via a handpull in a pub would be CO2 on keg at the level needed to maintain carbonation at cellar temperature. G56 gas pump to overcome line resistance, flow control to control rate, check valve, hand pull.
The CO2 level on the keg would be a lot lower than the brewers normal recommendation, because it’s not having to do the dispense part, just maintain carbonation.
The check valve here is to isolate the pressure – it only opens when the hand pump is providing suction.
Only reasons to do this are 1) You screwed up when putting your pythons in and don’t have the right lines for the beers you now want to serve. 2) You’re trying to pass off keg beer as real ale.
Works with corny kegs without the gas pump, but I normally use 30/70 or 60/40 gas as it’s not going to drive the carbonation up and reduces temperature sensitivity.
A lot depends on whether you’re doing real ale, or a highly carbonated beer though. If it’s highly carbonated, you’re going to need to chill the hand pump to avoid gas breakout inside the pump. But if you’re doing a lager, why aren’t you using a tap.
Any pressure at all, even just from gravity will leak through a hand pull without a check valve. At 2 psi I’d expect it to pour out.
@Hallowed Keykegs are a great solution for that. Surprised the single use plastic mob haven’t attacked them yet.
@Swannypol The three days is what’s considered ‘optimal’. Never questioned where it came from – suspect some clever brewer came up with it decades ago as an attempt to increase sales. Either that, or it’s from before chillers being commonplace.
If you tell a landlord an aspirator will extend life to 1-2 months they think you’re having them on. If you tell them it will extend life to 14 days, maybe a month they’re pretty likely to try it.
If anyone had ever wondered what a circle jerk would be like (and wasn’t a gayist) the level of detail around hand cranking beer is as close as you will get.
As one who was weaned on Marston’s Pedigree (served by a grumpy bastard who kept an impeccable pint and whose pub was the brewery’s leading pub), and drank it from youth while all my mates were drinking lager, the wankers, I can only say fuck them all.
The cunts ruined Pedigree years ago (just like whoever now makes Draught Bass ought to be put up against a wall).
In my neck of the woods, the irredeemably white and middle class Cotswolds, Stroud Brewery and Uley Brewery are keeping the proper beer flag flying; Uley Pig’s Ear or Old Spot at 5% are both very good; Stroud’s Budding is a 4.5% pale ale for session drinking (if you like getting hammered in sessions).