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I find it hard to believe that forty beers are being kept fresh and live and maintained properly Asked honesty and earnestly, why?

by dvtrn 6y ago

chrisseaton 6y ago
Fresh beer ideally lasts about five days. Are these places getting through a whole cask of all their forty beers every five days? Doesn't seem likely to me. I'm guessing that they're using shortcuts like putting it into kegs rather than casks, Pasteurising rather than keeping it fresh, and using carbonation instead of pumping it naturally, in order to support their huuuuuuge ranges. If they focused on a smaller number they woudln't have to do this and they could have higher quality instead.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  There are several styles of beer that can be stored such that they continue fermenting in storage and become a final, drinkable product by the time it gets connected to a tap-so this is HEAVILY dependent on what kind of beer you’re making, it’s not really applicable as a universal statement for the storage of several kinds beer. IPAs for example can last quite a long time if properly store (up to four weeks I believe?). Beers brewed in casks obviously have a different fermentation cycle than something brewed macro systems but storage is less of a problem than you may think for brewpubs and gastropubs, generally speaking. Wits can last for a while if properly stored and rotated (physically as in turning the keg on end), for example. But even then, casks aren’t ideal for long term storage in many cases, and not all beers are suited for storage in casks as opposed to say: steel kegs. (Spent quite a long time in the service industry and worked two large breweries in Texas)
  - jnurmine 6y ago
    On a slightly related note, I've had a bottle of Russian Imperial Stout (from Courage) in the fridge for over 6 years now. The intent was to do an experiment in bottle aging and also to time the opening to celebrate a birthday. I do hope the cap hasn't leaked badly and oxidized everything. The bottle's been in the cold all the time though.
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      I’ve heard that if you’re going to do this put them in a cool area away from light exposure. So if you’re storing them in your kitchen fridge that gets opened and closed frequently that may or may not affect the aging and final taste. THAT BEING SAID I’d love to experiment with this and see for myself and see if there’s any truth to this. Store one Imperial in my kitchen fridge for a year and one in my basement fridge where I’ve got other alchemy experiments (Read: homebrews) going on that very rarely gets opened, and is slightly warmer than the kitchen fridge, ask doctor girlfriend to do a blind taste test, submit results to the local home brew club for a fun beer chemistry discussion. mad scientist grin
- StrangeDoctor 6y ago
  There may be a bit of confusion here, on tap, in the us, usually, just means coming from a keg. Having 40 draft lines is not that odd and beer lasts a long time in a keg. If you meant 40+ cask served beers, then that would indeed require a lot of turnover
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Right, but that's what I mean. Instead of a couple of carefully produced natural cask beers, they have forty mass produced Pasteurised, carbonated kegs. Quantity over quality.
    - dvtrn 6y ago
      Question in search of some clarity: When you say “they” Are you referring to a specific beer made by a specific brewery when you refer to these pasteurized beverages? At least as it pertains to the article, not all of Magic Hat’s products involve this brewing process, unless I’ve misunderstood you?
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        Craft beer bars I go into in the US in general. I'm sure there's tons of exceptions. But in general the beer scene in the US seem to prioritise having a great many taps, over having a smaller number of higher quality beers, and I think quality suffers because of that, through things like old beer, use of kegs and carbonisation.
        dvtrn 6y ago
        Are you sure your personal taste and preferences (which are fine to have, everyone has different tolerances for different flavors and experiences with beverages) aren’t getting projected onto an entire industry here? Of course it’s entirely possible that local craft bars could probably clean their lines a bit better, I’ve definitely experienced this when ordering a beer made by one of the breweries I worked for and immediately Noticing “nope that’s not how this is supposed to taste”, we offered to clean their lines for free because it directly affected perception of our product if people think our beer is skunky due to poor cleaning practices, and wouldn’t you know it the next pour tasted much better. Many craft breweries do this, as well, sometimes employees of bars just take one beer off a line and out on a totally different style of beer without a thorough flush (often times just out of ignorance not knowing better) and you Will definitely taste the difference. So maybe this is a quality control issue with the service delivery and not the way beers are brewed and stored?
- monocasa 6y ago
  Are you from the UK? Cask is considered a sub genre in the US, and not something to shoot for in the general case here. Most consumers here don't want a cask beer, but instead a carbonated one from a keg. If you serve them a cask beer they think it's flat. There's a craft brewery near me that specializes in cask (shout out to Hogshead in Denver if you've never been), but they're embracing the niche aspect of that rather than attempting to be "what beer should be". It's not a case of cheaping out.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    Yeah. Oh right I thought 'craft' sort of implied 'cask' and the kegs were a cheap shortcut, but maybe the taste in the US is more for carbonated beers.
    - monocasa 6y ago
      I edited the above, but if you ever find yourself in Denver, check out Hogshead. Really great brewery focusing on cask beers. Haven't had a bad beer there.
  - Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y ago
    Cask is a sub-genre in the UK as well, limping along with a hyper-nationalist identity. Dude is feigning ignorance.
    - dmurray 6y ago
      Correct. Even in the UK there are plenty of craft brewers who don't produce cask beer. Nobody really thinks all beer should be distributed in casks and other storage methods are only "low-quality shortcuts", despite chrisseaton's four posts in this thread pretending to be shocked.
  - 0xffff2 6y ago
    Even "sub genre" is overstating it. Cask is extremely niche in the US. The vast majority of establishments do not regularly serve cask beers, no matter how craft focused they are.
Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y ago
PC seems very confused about how niche cask ale is (even in the UK), but the point does still stand to a degree. Some styles do have quite short shelf lives, namely the ubiquitously popular IPAs. Even with miniscule DO (dissolved oxygen) levels - breweries measure in PPB - you have a few weeks until staling can be reliably discriminated. Distribution takes a couple of those good weeks right off the top in many cases, making stale beer a real issue for people that like hoppy styles. Much of the trendiness is beer now is due to limited distribution. You can't get Pliny on the East Coast, and you can't get Alchemist or Treehouse on the West. You have to have them specially shipped, leading to one of the worst dick-measuring contests in history with the bottle-trade scene. Those breweries forgo huge sales because they insist on controlling distribution such that quality won't suffer. It is absolutely a real issue. Also, any homebrewer can tell you this first hand. Not just for hops, but delicate malt flavors are often at their peak about two weeks from brewing, just enough time to fully ferment and then mature cold in a keg for a few days. Good taprooms can get you this experience as well, but beer trends are decidedly against delicate malt character, though crispy bois (aka pilsners) are having a moment.
- dvtrn 6y ago
  Distribution takes a couple of those good weeks right off the top in many cases, making stale beer a real issue for people that like hoppy styles. I'm not sure I can concur with this, distribution of spirits is an incredibly well solved problem and a speedy one, taking the forms of self-distribution, "hot-shot" distribution/delivery and wholesale distributors. They vary in scale and they all serve different customer segments in the marketplace. I'll concede that wholesale distribution can definitely sometimes take longer than the other two distribution models, but not by a significant magnitudes that it affects the product as much as many would presume, especially with refrigeration technology able to keep the product from heating up and suffering from basic chemistry doing its thing as the beer "cooks" in transit once it's been kegged and sealed E.g. Self-distribution models if your local state allows it lets brewers sell right out the back of their vans or right off site to any bar or patron that wants to buy and has the proper licenses to sell alcohol (I did this in Austin for 3 years driving from Austin to Houston weekly with a van full of kegs to bars that had made an order only days prior). Hot-shot delivery isn't too different from this only it's usually upstart distributing companies (sometimes former brewery workers who split off, bought a van and got appropriate licenses) who will buy kegs and flip them to consumers. Wholesale, name speaks for itself, but they often sell direct to retailers. Ultmately though, alcohol distribution is a very well solved problem.

I find it hard to believe that forty beers are being kept fresh and live and maintained properly Asked honesty and earnestly, why?

by dvtrn 6y ago

I find it hard to believe that forty beers are being kept fresh and live and maintained properly Asked honesty and earnestly, why?

chrisseaton 6y ago

Fresh beer ideally lasts about five days. Are these places getting through a whole cask of all their forty beers every five days? Doesn't seem likely to me. I'm guessing that they're using shortcuts like putting it into kegs rather than casks, Pasteurising rather than keeping it fresh, and using carbonation instead of pumping it naturally, in order to support their huuuuuuge ranges. If they focused on a smaller number they woudln't have to do this and they could have higher quality instead.

dvtrn 6y ago
There are several styles of beer that can be stored such that they continue fermenting in storage and become a final, drinkable product by the time it gets connected to a tap-so this is HEAVILY dependent on what kind of beer you’re making, it’s not really applicable as a universal statement for the storage of several kinds beer. IPAs for example can last quite a long time if properly store (up to four weeks I believe?). Beers brewed in casks obviously have a different fermentation cycle than something brewed macro systems but storage is less of a problem than you may think for brewpubs and gastropubs, generally speaking. Wits can last for a while if properly stored and rotated (physically as in turning the keg on end), for example. But even then, casks aren’t ideal for long term storage in many cases, and not all beers are suited for storage in casks as opposed to say: steel kegs. (Spent quite a long time in the service industry and worked two large breweries in Texas)
- jnurmine 6y ago
  On a slightly related note, I've had a bottle of Russian Imperial Stout (from Courage) in the fridge for over 6 years now. The intent was to do an experiment in bottle aging and also to time the opening to celebrate a birthday. I do hope the cap hasn't leaked badly and oxidized everything. The bottle's been in the cold all the time though.
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    I’ve heard that if you’re going to do this put them in a cool area away from light exposure. So if you’re storing them in your kitchen fridge that gets opened and closed frequently that may or may not affect the aging and final taste. THAT BEING SAID I’d love to experiment with this and see for myself and see if there’s any truth to this. Store one Imperial in my kitchen fridge for a year and one in my basement fridge where I’ve got other alchemy experiments (Read: homebrews) going on that very rarely gets opened, and is slightly warmer than the kitchen fridge, ask doctor girlfriend to do a blind taste test, submit results to the local home brew club for a fun beer chemistry discussion. mad scientist grin
StrangeDoctor 6y ago
There may be a bit of confusion here, on tap, in the us, usually, just means coming from a keg. Having 40 draft lines is not that odd and beer lasts a long time in a keg. If you meant 40+ cask served beers, then that would indeed require a lot of turnover
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Right, but that's what I mean. Instead of a couple of carefully produced natural cask beers, they have forty mass produced Pasteurised, carbonated kegs. Quantity over quality.
  - dvtrn 6y ago
    Question in search of some clarity: When you say “they” Are you referring to a specific beer made by a specific brewery when you refer to these pasteurized beverages? At least as it pertains to the article, not all of Magic Hat’s products involve this brewing process, unless I’ve misunderstood you?
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      Craft beer bars I go into in the US in general. I'm sure there's tons of exceptions. But in general the beer scene in the US seem to prioritise having a great many taps, over having a smaller number of higher quality beers, and I think quality suffers because of that, through things like old beer, use of kegs and carbonisation.
      - dvtrn 6y ago
        Are you sure your personal taste and preferences (which are fine to have, everyone has different tolerances for different flavors and experiences with beverages) aren’t getting projected onto an entire industry here? Of course it’s entirely possible that local craft bars could probably clean their lines a bit better, I’ve definitely experienced this when ordering a beer made by one of the breweries I worked for and immediately Noticing “nope that’s not how this is supposed to taste”, we offered to clean their lines for free because it directly affected perception of our product if people think our beer is skunky due to poor cleaning practices, and wouldn’t you know it the next pour tasted much better. Many craft breweries do this, as well, sometimes employees of bars just take one beer off a line and out on a totally different style of beer without a thorough flush (often times just out of ignorance not knowing better) and you Will definitely taste the difference. So maybe this is a quality control issue with the service delivery and not the way beers are brewed and stored?
monocasa 6y ago
Are you from the UK? Cask is considered a sub genre in the US, and not something to shoot for in the general case here. Most consumers here don't want a cask beer, but instead a carbonated one from a keg. If you serve them a cask beer they think it's flat. There's a craft brewery near me that specializes in cask (shout out to Hogshead in Denver if you've never been), but they're embracing the niche aspect of that rather than attempting to be "what beer should be". It's not a case of cheaping out.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  Yeah. Oh right I thought 'craft' sort of implied 'cask' and the kegs were a cheap shortcut, but maybe the taste in the US is more for carbonated beers.
  - monocasa 6y ago
    I edited the above, but if you ever find yourself in Denver, check out Hogshead. Really great brewery focusing on cask beers. Haven't had a bad beer there.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y ago
  Cask is a sub-genre in the UK as well, limping along with a hyper-nationalist identity. Dude is feigning ignorance.
  - dmurray 6y ago
    Correct. Even in the UK there are plenty of craft brewers who don't produce cask beer. Nobody really thinks all beer should be distributed in casks and other storage methods are only "low-quality shortcuts", despite chrisseaton's four posts in this thread pretending to be shocked.
- 0xffff2 6y ago
  Even "sub genre" is overstating it. Cask is extremely niche in the US. The vast majority of establishments do not regularly serve cask beers, no matter how craft focused they are.

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 6y ago

PC seems very confused about how niche cask ale is (even in the UK), but the point does still stand to a degree. Some styles do have quite short shelf lives, namely the ubiquitously popular IPAs. Even with miniscule DO (dissolved oxygen) levels - breweries measure in PPB - you have a few weeks until staling can be reliably discriminated. Distribution takes a couple of those good weeks right off the top in many cases, making stale beer a real issue for people that like hoppy styles. Much of the trendiness is beer now is due to limited distribution. You can't get Pliny on the East Coast, and you can't get Alchemist or Treehouse on the West. You have to have them specially shipped, leading to one of the worst dick-measuring contests in history with the bottle-trade scene. Those breweries forgo huge sales because they insist on controlling distribution such that quality won't suffer. It is absolutely a real issue. Also, any homebrewer can tell you this first hand. Not just for hops, but delicate malt flavors are often at their peak about two weeks from brewing, just enough time to fully ferment and then mature cold in a keg for a few days. Good taprooms can get you this experience as well, but beer trends are decidedly against delicate malt character, though crispy bois (aka pilsners) are having a moment.

dvtrn 6y ago
Distribution takes a couple of those good weeks right off the top in many cases, making stale beer a real issue for people that like hoppy styles. I'm not sure I can concur with this, distribution of spirits is an incredibly well solved problem and a speedy one, taking the forms of self-distribution, "hot-shot" distribution/delivery and wholesale distributors. They vary in scale and they all serve different customer segments in the marketplace. I'll concede that wholesale distribution can definitely sometimes take longer than the other two distribution models, but not by a significant magnitudes that it affects the product as much as many would presume, especially with refrigeration technology able to keep the product from heating up and suffering from basic chemistry doing its thing as the beer "cooks" in transit once it's been kegged and sealed E.g. Self-distribution models if your local state allows it lets brewers sell right out the back of their vans or right off site to any bar or patron that wants to buy and has the proper licenses to sell alcohol (I did this in Austin for 3 years driving from Austin to Houston weekly with a van full of kegs to bars that had made an order only days prior). Hot-shot delivery isn't too different from this only it's usually upstart distributing companies (sometimes former brewery workers who split off, bought a van and got appropriate licenses) who will buy kegs and flip them to consumers. Wholesale, name speaks for itself, but they often sell direct to retailers. Ultmately though, alcohol distribution is a very well solved problem.