In Praise of Cask Conditioned Beer

My New Year’s Resolution? Drink more cask conditioned beer. Cask conditioned beer can affectionately be called “cask.” It’s different from bottles, cans, and beer from kegs for a variety of reasons that I won’t get into here, though I will say that a beer “on cask” should taste different from the same beer in a bottle, can, or keg.

I will not proselytize and say that you too need to drink more cask conditioned beer. I am aware, dear reader, you may be attempting dry January or damp January, or something similar and I applaud your effort if so.

What I will share is a brief story. A manager and buyer of a great beer/wine/spirits shop, a friend of the site and patreon supporter got to Churchkey in August, and finally got his hands on some cask conditioned Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. It’s like “a liquid apricot” he texted me. He thought it utterly delicious, and while he lacks experience drinking cask conditioned beer, I would tell you to be the judge for yourself. I’ll add that when I hosted a panel with Modern Lager Beer co-authors, Jack Hendler and Joe Connolly in May, both remarked that Churchkey’s cask of Sierra Pale Ale was exceptional and a unique experience.

The ubiquitous Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is a beer with significance in American beer history. A flagship and standard bearer for over 40 years, it’s literally beer history outside of what it represents within our beer culture. But whereas Sierra Pale in bottles or cans or kegs may be all over, cask conditioned pale ale is nearly unheard of. The cask conditioned pale ale that Churchkey pours is produced in Sierra Nevada’s Mills River, NC brewery. I haven’t confirmed it, but according to All About Beer’s Don Tse, there are three places in the world that serve it.

I spoke with Greg Engert, Neighborhood Restaurant Group (NRG) Partner & Beverage Director, back in August. “All of our Sierra Pale casks come from Mills River. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is an English pale ale that happens to use Cascade hops. So the translation of that… to cask is remarkable. And the more I drink it on cask, the more I think this beer was intended to be served on cask. It softens the bitterness a bit without restricting or holding back any of those great aromas and tastes and flavors.”

A few weeks ago I ordered cask ale at Bluejacket. The beer, Moonrise Kingdom, is a 3.5% ABV mild ale. It is listed on the menu at 55 degrees. Moonrise Kingdom was like a yeast delivery vehicle–as it was full of fruity notes I attribute to ester-rich English yeast, and the flavors in the beer strike me similar to ripe pear and sweet squishy persimmon. While I did get a touch of the “toasted biscuit” as advertised on the menu, Moonrise Kingdom reminded me of the beers I’ve brewed with English ale yeasts that are highly evocative of English brewing centers like London, Burton, and West Yorkshire, home of Timothy Taylor’s.

Permit me a sidebar: if you’re a brewer looking for a wonderful yeast strain from a wonderful human being, consider Jasper Yeast, run by Jasper Akerboom and Travis Tedrow, specifically the Tim T. UK Ale strain which I used to great effect in batches of Bitter and Porter.

While discussing these two places that serve quality cask conditioned beer, Churchkey and Bluejacket, I would be remiss not to mention a third option in DC proper: Shelter. While all of these are Neighborhood Restaurant Group-owned establishments, they are of course serving beers from breweries near and far. Sometimes English–take for example the Moor Beer cask of dry stout–and sometimes domestic from breweries like Connecticut’s OEC. On December 17, I had a cask of Third Sally from OEC that was certainly better than the can I had a few weeks earlier. Third Sally is a 4% ABV take on an English style bitter with Maris Otter and Crystal malts and is precisely the kind of beer that I expect to taste better from cask than from can.

Engert also thinks that some beers just taste more interesting and are more compelling dispensed from a cask. It is a beer texture, a mouthfeel, a palate fullness or the softening of a beer not to be replicated any other way. “We would put some casks on, we were just so impressed by how different the experience would be,” Engert says.

“And then notice of course because back in those days we were getting bottles of Fullers beer and others–but when we would drink cask ESB, it just tasted so much more interesting. Had more going on. The nuances of flavor were more apparent. At that time we said we need to carve out a position for these kinds of beers. I’ll gladly drink a mild or an ESB from a bottle, can, or on draft. I love those flavors, I love the styles, I love the low ABV. But when you put any of those beers on cask I think we all would agree that it’s an unparalleled experience for drinking those beers.”

And while cask certainly seems less present at bars and restaurants today than the amount of cask conditioned beer being served 10 years ago, that might not necessarily be a bad thing for cask quality.

But perhaps it’s not as easy as a yes or a no. Perhaps it’s a “yes, and” proposition. Yes, it’s bad for sales that there aren’t as many casks being served in the greater DC metro region and, it’s not entirely terrible to have less casks if the overall quality of the cask conditioned beer is better.

Engert admitted that cask is a type of beer dispense that can cost the establishment. There’s loss leaders, he says and he doesn’t just mark everything up the same amount. At the end of the day there’s certain things that will sell better and these can offset the cost of others. With cask, there’s no massive sales compared to draft or cocktails or wine. But it’s an experience you won’t get elsewhere, he tells me.

“Many people kind of got away from cask because it doesn’t generate as much revenue and it’s a lot of work,” Engert tells me, “and those are both good reasons to get away from something as far as business goes with times as they are.”

Engert recalled a time where he had to charge more for cask and serve the beer in smaller glasses. The downside was that sometimes he’d end up with a third of the cask left and had to dump it. Now, he thinks he should charge less, serve more, attempt to make the drinking experience perfect, and get through the cask, making people happy.

“We might not do five casks at Churchkey anymore but we’ll do three. We might not do five at Bluejacket but we’ll do two. We’ll do two at Shelter, et cetera. But we’re really gonna focus on these classic styles of beer that are thankfully being increasingly brewed by American brewers in addition to the imports we still can obtain and showcase just how great that is.”

It’s worth mentioning that while Churchkey used to have five casks, they now have two or three. But they are also featuring drafts poured from the Czech-made faucet Lukr, which also has the ability to change the texture of beer, although the beer coming through the faucet is draft keg beer and not cask conditioned. Is this a sign of the times? That less casks and more Czech style faucets indicates a willingness on the part of brewers to tie up more tank space with lager due to sales and production dropping?

Pellicle, the drinks magazine and podcast, recently had a wonderful article penned by Rachel Hendry, A Polyptych of a Pint, which I highly recommend you read if you haven’t. It’s a beautifully insightful and reflective piece. Like the article, the Pellicle podcast features Timothy Taylor CEO, Tim Dewey. Dewey commented on the decline of cask in the English market saying “cask ale is really struggling. A third of the market has been lost. You look at the way that some people treat it as a commodity, and price driven, et cetera, and I really don’t understand that. Because if you think about it one of the big issues facing pubs is at home drinking and the accessibility of beer and the pricing of beer through supermarkets. Well what is the one product you cannot replicate at home? It’s a proper cask ale.”

Carving out a position for these kinds of beers seems to mean a rightsizing of the cask programs at some of the places owned by NRG. While it’s unclear that the US has lost a third of the market nationally, it has had some breweries greatly reduce their cask programs. Consider Yards Brewing Company in Philadelphia. While I don’t have hard data I have the anecdata that I used to see a significant amount more Yards casks in the greater Philadelphia area. When we spoke, Engert mentioned Heavy Seas during our interview and of course I would be remiss not to mention District ChopHouse, long stalwart of cask service, which closed in March.

Obviously the simple fact that I’m seeing less Yards casks around doesn’t mean they’re making less. And I’d argue that 50 casks sold at the Yards brewery, in mint condition, is more valuable than 100 casks sold further away where the brewery has no recourse for cask beer in shoddy shape.

There are of course flurries of cask activities in town in addition to Philadelphia. The DC Brewers Guild’s Real-ly Local Ale Fest saw 10 breweries (9 DC and 1 Virginia) serving 14 cask conditioned beers in October. Not to be outdone, the city of brotherly love hosted over 50 breweries, turning Yards into a cask ale paradise in May.
The days of a firkin (a 10 gallon cask) of Maryland-brewed cask-conditioned beer at Camden Yards every Friday home game, may be gone as the brewery that made the firkin is gone from the state of Maryland. But so long as restaurants like Shelter and Churchkey continue to pour English casks, and casks of classic English styles of beer, I will be there, making good on my resolution.

Want more cask ale? Check out our map of area bars and breweries with casks, which includes the aforementioned NRG properties, along with Bethesda’s Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery, Hawk & Griffin in Vienna, Crooked Run in Sterling, and Dynasty in Ashburn!

1401 Pennsylvania Avenue Southeast, Washington, District of Columbia 20003

1337 14th Street Northwest, Washington, District of Columbia 20005

300 Tingey Street Southeast, Washington, District of Columbia 20003

8401 Colesville Road, Silver Spring, Maryland 20910

7900 Norfolk Avenue, Bethesda, Maryland 20814

435 Maple Avenue West, Vienna, Virginia 22180

22455 Davis Drive, Sterling, Virginia 20164

21140 Ashburn Crossing Drive, Ashburn, Virginia 20147