One of my favorite Chicago taverns, The Map Room, gets name checked in this WSJ article. (The Map Room also serves good coffee).
To the article's point: what do I think about beer served at 50-55 degrees F? Depends on the brew. I've had good pulls in London, Brooklyn, Austin, and in Chicago, but also horrible glasses in Chicago, Austin and San Francisco. But, every beer drinker should try cask beer at least once in their life.
Mmmmm ... Warm, Flat Beer - WSJ.comTo the list of British imports that includes fish and chips and the Beatles, you can now add flat beer.
Microbrewers have tried everything from chili-pepper beer to raisin-flavored beer to lure drinkers from mass-market brews like Bud and Coors. Now they're trying their hand at a British staple, cask beer, that is only lightly carbonated and served via a retro hand pump. U.S. bars, in addition to serving American cask, are increasingly stocking English brands. This comes as more Brits are shunning these traditional ales in favor of U.S.-style beers.
For some beer geeks, casks are considered a more honest drink. They are served at between 50 and 55 degrees Fahrenheit, compared with near freezing for keg beer. Because cold numbs your taste buds, cask beer has a fuller flavor. If you're drinking a cask pale ale, for example -- cask comes in the same range of styles as regular beer -- the bitter hops flavor is even more intense than with a normal pale ale. But for those accustomed to U.S. beers like Coors or even heartier microbrews, cask ale can be too harsh.It can also be hard to swallow for bartenders. While a standard keg takes just a few seconds to tap, serving cask is far trickier. After it comes in the door, it can take several days to get the brew flowing, thanks to a series of waiting periods required to let the beer settle. To tap it, bartenders have to slam a plastic pin through a cork stopper using a rubber mallet.
On a recent afternoon at the Ginger Man in New York, manager Dave Urbanos knelt behind the bar with a black rubber mallet, cocked his arm, and with a few swift swings smashed a T-shaped line into a small hole on the top of the metal cask. But the cask had actually been rolled into place the day before to give the leftover yeast and sediment a chance to rest before the beer was tapped. About four hours before the tapping, Mr. Urbanos “vented” the beer (to release excess gas) -- because this, too, disturbed the brew, another rest was required. Once tapped, the beer came out looking like a pint of pond water, so more settling time was needed. “I'm not going to serve this to a customer for at least a few hours,” Mr. Urbanos said. Cask ales, after they are opened, last only a few days to a few weeks.Because cask is a delicate beer, brewers only sell it to select bars. Brooklyn Brewery doesn't list cask on its product sheets, and even sales representatives aren't allowed to sell it. If a bar requests Brooklyn cask, it has to talk directly with brewmaster Garrett Oliver. It also has to have an employee willing to take care of the beer, from tapping it to flushing the lines (to get rid of the live yeast) after closing. “If I offer training and they don't take me up on it, that is a total red flag,” says Mr. Oliver. On a few occasions he has had to actually pull cask ale from bars that didn't serve it properly, he says.
A few times a month, Mr. Oliver checks up on the Spotted Pig in New York, one of his clients. “It's nice having a relationship with the guy who made the beer,” says Ken Friedman, the pub's co-owner. “The only thing that's awkward is when a customer is drinking a pint and Garrett walks up to the bartender and says 'This beer tastes like wet newspaper, why are you serving it?'”
See also www.cask-ale.co.uk/us for a list of known taverns serving cask beers in your city.
