The Places Where Beer Comes From – Cask vs. Keg

You can drink beer from a number of places.  You can have it on tap, in bottle or in a can. You can also have it on cask. On what? On cask. WTF is that? Let me tell you.

Cask beer is beer that is unfiltered and is placed straight from the fermentation tank into the cask. It isn’t carbonated other than a slight bit by the natural yeast fermentation that can take place in the cask. It has a shelf life of about 6 weeks where a keg has a life of about 3 months. It typically has some particles suspended in it but not many as “allkleer” is added to get them to crash out. Certain beers are great on cask where as others just aren’t all they could be. In Britian it can be found everywhere. In Canada and the rest of the world cask beer is seen as rare and a special treat with it only being seen as a good thing. It begs the question: Is cask or keg better?

We all know keg beer. It is just the bottled stuff that is unpasteurized, which is why we typically say it tastes better (which is usually true. I can think of 1 exception but that is probably just me).  It has good carbonation, sometimes a nice foamy head and is clear and filtered.

To me, and most beer fans I’d guess, keg beer is the absolute best way to enjoy a pint. The carbonation at a decent level adds to the flavour and experience making the beer better than its unfiltered and uncarbonated counterpart. Keg lasts longer (if it lasts that long) and can travel much better as “allkleer” will only make the yeast crash out 5 or 6 times making travel very bad for it. To me the answer is obvious: keg is much better. I’ll assume most of you haven’t had a lot of cask stuff, if any, so I can’t really ask you but for anyone else, how do you feel about the keg vs. cask debate?