FIRST IN QLD - TANK BEER now at THE PLOUGH INN

[user 26576]

Ladies & Gents,

http://ploughinn.com.au/Home/OccuranceId/295/ctl/ViewEvent/mid/478

"Carlton Draught Brewery Fresh Tank Beer is a traditional, full strength larger that is crisp on the mid-palate with a good malt character and smooth full-bodied flavour. Clean hop bitterness gives the brew a slightly dry finish. Its taste profile is lively with extra smoothness due to its freshness and the fact it has been exposed to minimal oxygen and other gases until it hits your glass at the tap." (Love the mispelling of lager!)

Very keen to sample this, more out of curiosity than anything else. I'll have to have a standard kegged Carlton Draught this week to refresh my memory on how it usually drinks.

Do you think they deliver by a tanker truck from Yatala? Wouldn't the sloshing in the tanker introduce oxygen, or do you think they would purge with CO2 first? Surely not, as that is a lot of CO2! And I'd like to see the process for transferring to the Pub's tanks.

 

[Yob]

First thing that comes to mind is

Who gives a shit what they do with it?

Ed: by that I mean cub not the pub. But they should be looking to better product also imo.

Sorry...

They won't see my dollars.

 

[Doomy73]

In the picture it looks like multiple kegs in the shape of "tanks".

You could be mistaken for thinking it would be gravity cask ale but you wouldn't be serving a lager as cask.

Looks like a gimmick.

 

[Bribie G]

As I reminisced on another thread, tank beer was pretty universal in the 60s and 70s in the UK, especially in the North and Midlands. It's way old technology that worked brilliantly in its day and is making a comeback in Europe and the UK.
Basically the filtered unpasteurised beer is delivered by road tanker to the pub cellar where it is kept cold, sterile and oxygen free under a CO2 blanket. The beer was generally served by electric pump to decorative fonts on the bars. It was fresh tasting - not pasteurised - not too gassy and was a good half way house between keg beers and real ales.



Advantages were that tanking cut out the massive and expensive operation of buying, filling, cleaning and transporting kegs of beer, as well as returns, inventory control, re-ordering etc.
What killed tanks in the UK was the re-emergence of real ale, kegged lager (that couldn't really be served at tank temperatures and CO2 volumes) and the proliferation of dozens of new megabrews, somewhat the same as has happened in Australia.

In the days of tank most tied houses owned by the big six breweries only served two or three beers on the bar. In my local this was generally Newcastle Exhibition, McEwan's Best Scotch and Newcastle IPA. Plus one keg lager and sometimes keg. Guinness.

I'm surprised it's taken so long for this to catch on in Australia, where the big volumes are still in VB, CD, XXXX etc and as pointed out by the OP there's the breweries right there in Bris or on the M1.
A good example of what these beers could be like, try a schooner of XXXX heavy off the wood, that's taken off the production line before pasteurisation and heavy carbonation. A very drinkable drop indeed.

edit: modern tanks would be more highly pressurised and chilled of course.

Yes it would be CO2 all the way with no air allowed to contact the beer. Breweries, as we do at home, produce masses of CO2 which is captured.

ed: I see that the link has disappeared but from a courier mail article it says there are four 250L tanks and that the beer has a shelf life of 2 to 3 weeks so I'd guess unpasteurised.

 

[Bribie G]

Tanking works very well for craft beers as well, Foghorn in Newcastle serves direct from bright tanks behind the bar.

edit: here ya go.

 

[sp0rk]

Looks like the link has changed
http://ploughinn.com.au/Home/OccuranceId/293/ctl/ViewEvent/mid/478

 

[sp0rk]

It also has an #unpasteurised hastag down the bottom of the article now...
Methinks OP is a CUB mole...

 

[user 26576]

Haha, not at all! The only CUB beer I usually buy is Alpha and the occasional Fat Yak at the pub where nothing better is available! I prefer to support independently owned breweries but I'm not one to dismiss the offerings of the big brewers without trying it first.

I'm just keen to try something different, and I had never even heard of this delivery method previously. Thanks to Bribie G for the history lesson. I found it interesting.

Maybe if it is popular we might see Fat Yak delivered in the same manner? I wouldn't mind the big breweries offering more unpasteurised beers. Matilda Bay's brew bar in Melbourne was serving unfiltered unpasteurised Alpha before it closed, and I'm very disappointed that I missed out on trying that.

 

[Bribie G]

It would be great to see XXXX doing something similar in Brisbane with their heavy. Definitely a superior brew to CD.

Now here's a wonderful idea. How about producing a mini-keg of various Lion brands that you can store in your own fridge and serve straight into the glass as if you are at the pub.......... h34r:

 

[fraser_john]

Had the tank Carlton Draught at the Grovedale Hotel without know it, could not figure out why it tasted so bad....... I mean much worse than normal.

 

[winkle]

Yawn, but a criminal waste of good copper.

 

[Mardoo]

Serve from the bright tank...what's the big deal?

 

[fraser_john]

Yawn, but a criminal waste of good copper.

I guess there is a future possibility of these wastes of space being ripped out and scrapped..... They would be an excellent pickup if you could manage it.

 

[Danwood]

They're obviously just trying to put a 'premium/craft' spin on their shitty product.

Exactly as they've done with the name. The word 'draught' is meant to make you think of sitting at the pub with your mates even when you're not.
That name was imagined years ago when people actually knew draught meant 'served from a keg'. Not anymore.
I had a conversation about beer with an old work mate, after he said he was interested in beer. I asked him what types he liked to drink...he said "I like Draught-styles, mostly".

It was a short conversation. He could have said 'Cold' or 'Dry' style just as easily. Knuckle-head !

 

[Mardoo]

I don't understand your objection. They have keg-shaped cans.

 

[Bribie G]

One of the advantages of old fartdom is that I actually remember when Carlton Draught was on tap as a replacement for Bulimba on tap.



Then in the 1980s it was discontinued and replaced on the bar by VB and Fosters Draught. A few years later it reemerged as a bottle-only brew and wasn't too bad a beer, very reminiscent of the old Carlton Pilsener.



Note the old side basher tap on the label. It may have been served on tap in Victoria but not in QLD and I'd guess not NSW either who still had Tooths draught varieties.

Then it disappeared again and was finally revived in the late 90s with the "brewery fresh" wank theme. By that time they'd taken most of the hop flavour and malt depth out of it.



I get the feeling that CD is a troubled brand with a chequered past and they are constantly trying to rescue it. It doesn't seem to have had the following of VB, New or XXXX heavy and I guess this latest tank thing is another attempt to give it some sort of "quality" cachet.

 

[klangers]

Do you think they deliver by a tanker truck from Yatala? Wouldn't the sloshing in the tanker introduce oxygen, or do you think they would purge with CO2 first? Surely not, as that is a lot of CO2! And I'd like to see the process for transferring to the Pub's tanks.

Typically beer tankers are insulated (not chilled), and filled with beer at around 0 degrees with counter-pressure CO2. The beer doesn't really warm up on its journey since there is so much of it and the tank is insulated. You can be assured that industrial breweries have some of the lowest oxygen pickup rates in the world.

The only reason this beer is unpasteurised is because CUB do tunnel pasteurisation, ie after it is bottled (or flash pasteuration for kegs before filling). So, it's impossible for them to pasteurise beer in bulk!

Another cynical reason is that it would probably come with a big fat exclusivity contract for CUB and any pub who goes down that route. Also, manual handling of 50L kegs is beginning to become a problem in Australia with OHS (fair enough).

 

[Spiesy]

The stuff has been out and about it Melbourne for over a year, I reckon.

I've had it at Naked for Satan and The Terminus (Richmond, not Clifton Hill/Fitzroy North).

Meh, whatevs.

 

[thylacine]

Pic attached from Prague venue visited in 2013. i.e. 'tank beer' housed in a glass cabinet; and this place offered TWO beer styles! ;-)

"...Without pasteurisation, beer is liable to go off quite quickly. But to solve this problem, crafty Czech beer-lovers have come up with an ingenious solution. More and more Prague pubs now serve pivo from massive steel tubes or tanks that hold ten hectolitres of brew in plastic sacks, at the ideal steady temperature of between 8 and 10ºC. Beer is pressed out of the tanks via a high-pressure air compressor, ensuring it stays safe from any risk of contamination but remains fresh. For connoisseurs, the result is immediately obvious: a rounder, more complex flavour full of hops and spices..."

http://www.timeout.com/prague/features/347/pragues-beers-breweries-tank-pub

 

[Bribie G]

Picture wrong way up.


Way old technology, North Country Brewery in the UK (Hull brewery, where Ringwood yeast originally came from) were doing this in the 1970s with tanks lined with plastic bags and served via air pressure that squeezed the bag. No CO2 required thank you.
Used to get wasted on it in Scarborough (Yorkshire).