Cold And Fizzy English Ales

[maxymoo]

These days it seems like more local micro's are coming out with English style ESB's and i've been seeing them on tap at more and more 'ordinary' pubs, e.g. Holgate ESB at the Prince Alfred near melbourne uni, 3ravens Bronze ale at the Edinburgh castle in brunswick. Well of course they're served cold and fizzy like all the other beers on tap.

I'm in two minds... Last month I spent a few days in York and had my eyes and tastebuds opened by many delicious 1.60 hand-pumped pints of Timothy Taylor's Landlord, and I do feel like it doesn't do justice to the style to serve it too cold and fizzy, you can't really taste the hops properly.

But on the other hand, maybe the trade off is a necessary concession to the warmer climate of Australia--maybe a cellar-temperature low carbonation ale isn't going to be 'refreshing' enough for the coming summer months?

What do you guys think about how pub's should be serving these beers? And how do you serve your English ales at home?

 

[manticle]

I find the cold and fizzy aspect distracting and wish it was just a tad less fizz and a tad less cold so I could actually taste them.

 

[Lord Raja Goomba I]

I find that (given my beer is served or stored for drinking in the same fridge as food or my kegs with beer meant to be cold and fizzy) for home brew, I'll do two things:

1. Set fridge temp for serving fridge higher, if possible and;
2. I'll pull the bottle out of the fridge and leave it sit for 20 minutes before pouring (and again leave before drinking) or if off keg, leave out for a little while to lose fizz and increase in temp.

Maybe, the same principle applies to getting beer at a pub that serves it incorrectly. Though it sucks to order a beer and have to wait 20 minutes to drink it because it's too fizzy and cold.

Goomba

 

[WarmBeer]

Your answer:
1 - Go to chemist. Buy a 5ml syringe, aka Pocket Sparkler
2 - Order your pint 15 minutes before you actually want to drink it, gives it time to come up to temperature
3 - Use the pocket sparker to draw off ~5ml of beer, then forcibly whoosh it back into the pint
4 - Dream of the green, verdant hills of York while enjoying your pint as it was meant to be

 

[Steve@PMF82]

I to drank many a cask ale all over the UK recently.

It was a really great experience. After a while though i found myself wanting just a little more carbonation and a tad cooler as we actually got some pretty good weather, got quite warm end of summer burst.

For me at home i can find the happy medium between how cask ale is served in UK and how beer in general is served here.
Last time i had anything from a pub in Australia it was coopers pale or cascade pale or the usual suspects. I tried both the ales and both were too cold and fizzy. I let the coopers sit for a while after a couple of mouthfulls, then went for a walk, when i came back my beer was gone. I asked my mate where it was and he said one of the bar staff came over and offered to put it in the fride for me....

Anyway the joys of home brewing you can make it how you want it, for me in general that is 2 to 2.3 volumes, served at around 5 degrees and it usually sits in the glass for a while before i consume the majority of it.

 

[Jazzafish]

Complcated subject.

One would imagine that the keg would leave the brewery in spec. That is passing all of the brewerys quality control, which usually includes level of carbonation. This may differ from the traditional English cask ales due to the nature it will be served? But lets assume for the purpose of an argument that it is spot on to the brewers liking and in specification matching the Land Lord ale.

From there it goes to the pub and the brewer of the ESB is stoked to find a tap and a customer to serve his/her product. Sadly the available tap is served from a 3 way font via the tap next to VB. The font is chilled to -1*C to ice up the font, the line flows through a plate chiller at a simular temperature before the font to chill the beer, the line length extends to the basement below where the kegs sit in a coolroom chilled at the specified tempure to suit the VB. The amout of pressure required to push the beer up all that way to the tap at an acceptable flow rate is ~200 to 300Kpa.

As the coolroom will be set to an ideal temperature to match the head pressure for VB and assuming the VB sells faster than the ESB at this place, the longer the keg sits the more likely it will reach the same CO2 levels as VB.

 

[Lecterfan]

Your answer:
1 - Go to chemist. Buy a 5ml syringe, aka Pocket Sparkler
2 - Order your pint 15 minutes before you actually want to drink it, gives it time to come up to temperature
3 - Use the pocket sparker to draw off ~5ml of beer, then forcibly whoosh it back into the pint
4 - Dream of the green, verdant hills of York while enjoying your pint as it was meant to be

2.5 - drink some of the beer from the commercial pint because it will still be carbonated at a level that a beer explosion may occur from the whooshing process

5 - When brewing the beer at home carbonate to only 1 volume and store the beer at cellar temps so you can do all of the above but not wait so long to drink it!

As a brief aside, I have a SMaSH MO and challenger beer that is total shite when served at the intended temp etc, but when chilled it actually turns into a respectable sort of florally 'summer ale' type thing. But that is an ingredient, technique and palate issue.

 

[Jazzafish]

The only way to avoid the issue is for the market to demand more ESB than VB. Thus we all go to the pubs with good beer on and tell the bar tender that you are sick of cold and fizzy lagers like VB and want something like a real cask hand pumped ale. With enough inertia the tides will turn!

 

[MarkBastard]

It's interesting that Guiness and Kilkenny manage to have their beer served in their own desired way at a fair amount of pubs in Australia. Perhaps not the temperature, but they have specialist gear.

In theory there is nothing stopping this from happening with other beers.

However the beers probably aren't popular enough to make this possible.

So with that in mind I say be happy that you have access to said beer at all.

 

[Fodder]

Lived in York for a year in 07/08...got enough pubs in that town, that you could visit a different one each day and still not have seen them all after a year.

No joke, thats written on the brochure...

Although I tried my best to get around there's a few that just draw you back in. "The Golden Fleece" rings a bell, loved that place! Always had TT Landlord on tap too...

However back to topic, Icy cold and fizzy as hell seems to be the usual serving method over here. Although, the Sail & Anchor in Freo occasionally has hand pumps working and they are served slightly warmer than most other beers. About the only place I've seen hand-pumps in Auz and it appears that the S&A at least have some idea how to use/serve with them too.

 

[hsb]

I grab a glass of cold water, drink that to cool off whilst I patiently wait for my cold fizzy beer to warm up/get flatter.
I find it odd to go to NSW brewpubs that have great beers on tap but serve them in this traditional (to Oz) way.

But what do I know, they're the ones making a living/producing these beers. (the bottom line really)

+1 to beer4u noting that at least you can serve your own how you like them.

But I don't feel 'lucky' that pubs have icy cold fizzy ESB.
I have to go well out of my way/out of pocket to get to them in the first place and then don't necessarily find them served in a way to make it worth the hassle.

 

[sim]

i generally find myself asking bar dude if i can have my beer in a glass that isnt cold, theres only so much room for glasses in the fridge after all. I think this helps with both issues - the beer moves more quickly out of the freezing to 5c range, and cold beer into a warm glass liberates at least some co2, or so i believe. Also, if i go back for another il just ask to have it in the same glass, even easier.

This works year round, even in summer if i have a "cold one" the next one will inevitably be more for appreciation and il have it in the same glass a tad warmer.

It totally works for me, i just have no time for freezing beer.


sim

 

[loikar]

Your answer:
1 - Go to chemist. Buy a 5ml syringe, aka Pocket Sparkler
2 - Order your pint 15 minutes before you actually want to drink it, gives it time to come up to temperature
3 - Use the pocket sparker to draw off ~5ml of beer, then forcibly whoosh it back into the pint
4 - Dream of the green, verdant hills of York while enjoying your pint as it was meant to be

I agree with this Poast

 

[Diesel80]

Order pint, with second empty pint glass.

Poor beer between both a couple of times to force out some carbonation.

Let settle / warm up.

Drink.

Or buy 4 pints at a time. Once you get through the 1st 3, the forth should be about perfect

 

[mje1980]

Our brew club has a real ale do in november. Not a cold fizzy beer in sight!!.

 

[stephenkentucky]

we serve our Dobsons Old Trout ESB trough a Beer engine but keep the keg in a kegerator at between 8-9 degrees we give the customer the choice of ordering theirs with or without the sparkler attached most go for the sparkler but some purists prefer without either way it is delicious. the rest of the kegs live in the coldroom. It is not hard or particularly expensive to offer the option of a separate cellar temp for one beer using kegerators, I don't know why others don't seem to care about the temp they serve traditional bitters and ales at.

 

[Ives_MD]

These days it seems like more local micro's are coming out with English style ESB's and i've been seeing them on tap at more and more 'ordinary' pubs, e.g. Holgate ESB at the Prince Alfred near melbourne uni, 3ravens Bronze ale at the Edinburgh castle in brunswick. Well of course they're served cold and fizzy like all the other beers on tap.

I'm in two minds... Last month I spent a few days in York and had my eyes and tastebuds opened by many delicious 1.60 hand-pumped pints of Timothy Taylor's Landlord, and I do feel like it doesn't do justice to the style to serve it too cold and fizzy, you can't really taste the hops properly.

But on the other hand, maybe the trade off is a necessary concession to the warmer climate of Australia--maybe a cellar-temperature low carbonation ale isn't going to be 'refreshing' enough for the coming summer months?

What do you guys think about how pub's should be serving these beers? And how do you serve your English ales at home?

Interesting you mention Holgate and 3 Ravens in particular because I have read recently about these breweries financing the installation of English hand pump beer engines into Melbourne pubs in the last month or so. I spent a few minutes trying to find the article but couldn't track it, from memory there was a new hand pump being installed at the Great Northern hotel at 3 Ravens expense. (feel free to correct me if anyone else read about this)

But I guess the good news is the people behind actually making the English style beers are aware that they aren't necessarily served correctly and hence will take action to fix this. There are other bars / pubs in Melbourne also with hand pumps installed (Royston Hotel, Transport Fed Square, Local Taphouse?) so hopefully the drinkers catch on and we see more of it.

 

[maxymoo]

Interesting you mention Holgate and 3 Ravens in particular because I have read recently about these breweries financing the installation of English hand pump beer engines into Melbourne pubs in the last month or so. I spent a few minutes trying to find the article but couldn't track it, from memory there was a new hand pump being installed at the Great Northern hotel at 3 Ravens expense. (feel free to correct me if anyone else read about this)

But I guess the good news is the people behind actually making the English style beers are aware that they aren't necessarily served correctly and hence will take action to fix this. There are other bars / pubs in Melbourne also with hand pumps installed (Royston Hotel, Transport Fed Square, Local Taphouse?) so hopefully the drinkers catch on and we see more of it.

Ah that is good news. I was at the Holgate brewhouse in Woodend about 6 months ago, and they had two handpumps for their ESB and their stout, but didn't know about those other pubs?! last time I was at Transport (a year ago?), I seem to remember they just had Lion-Nathan beers?

 

[Pistol]

I spoke to people at Redoak and the Lord Nelson about this recently and was told that to serve things at the correct temperature you'd need a separate glycol system for each tap instead of a bank of taps, which would cost a lot.

 

[komodo]

^That I'd believe.