Question on Wine storage 21

Sorry to everyone else but this is about beer and not wine!!!

Bill It is a long time ago and I cannot pretend to be the expert that I was in 1974!

First of all the art of cask conditioned beer is certainly not a dying art. Indeed many "free houses" ( i.e privately owned pubs) make their own range of draught beers.

I cannot now actually remember but it was obviously important that the cask, once tapped and spiled ( a spile is a pourous wooden peg which allows air to enter the cask - slowly as the beer is drawn off and is also a part of the final conditoning). Thinking back I would expect my 18 gal ( imp) Kilderkins to be on service for not more than about 2 days maximum. But I could protect them a bit as well and I certainly remember that on a slow moving barrel I would squirt some CO2 into the barrel at the end of the evening before putting a hard spile (ie non pourous) into the barrel for overnighting ( I had a couple of CO2 cylinders for my lager "keg"beer). The importance was that I was serving a "live beer" which would continue to be in condition until the last pint was drawn off . At weekends when the beer was moving much faster I could filter of the "ends" of a barrel and carefully feed it into the new one -- bu this took a keen nose and sense of taste to ensure the "old beer" was still in good condition. I certainly did not run an old fashioned "feedback" s ystem where the spillage from the hand pumps was fed back into the "mild" barrel.

I also startled the villagers in Somerset in 1971 when every new order was serverd in a clean glbutt. And I never pulled a pint that washed my taps in the newly pulled pint ( ie I didn't let my beer taps dip into the beer filling the glbutt.

There was a lot of resistance to the "clean glbutt " policy when I first started but within 6 months it worked well and apart from the fact that all my draught beers were served in prime sparkliing condition it all meant that all my wastage was at a minimun. it also meant that I had to have a strile glbutt washing machine -- now that was difficult in 1971 and I didn't find the solution to my problem until 2 years later.

It was also very ,very important that all the pipes feeding the beer from the cellar to the bar hand pumps were washed regularly and a sensible landlord cleaned his pipes on Friday afternoon so that his beer for the w-e were being pullled through the cleanest systems all of the w-e. You could certainly tell the lazy landlord who din't do this -- I couldn't now but then I am certainly not a beer drinker over the last 25 years.

Right that's enuff! On the dark stout that I make for my 98 year old Dad in a 5 gal ( imp) barrel, I use conditioning sugar and indeed i top it up with CO2 when needed to keep it incondition -- it is just the same as i did years ago but not quite so demanding.

To be honest the essentialls were 1. A clean well washed cellar. 2. regular cleaning of the pipes - espescial b4 the w-e. 3. Clean glbuttes every time so the beer can show itself off 4. No cheating with old sour beers! -- ie great care and a lot of time.

Producing good draught beer, on demand, is much more difficult than producing a good bottle of wine!

another apology to all of us wine buffs! Sorry!