Everything you need to know about cask conditioning

In the latest in our series Nigel Huddleston looks at the role of the cask in production

Speak to fans of British beer and they’ll tell you that cask conditioning produces beers with finer aromas, fuller flavours and deeper character than those that aren’t, but what nobody ever bothers to explain very often is why.

Conditioning is the process a beer goes through after fermentation to make it ready for dispense.

For draught beer, it can be either conditioned in the brewery or in the cask. The former is done in conditioning tanks, in which the beer is cooled and the yeast sediment filtered out, before being pasteurised and put into a sealed keg to be dispatched to the pub.

The common criticism among overly-serious beerlovers is that these processes combine to remove some of the better flavours and aromas from a beer.

The alternative, cask conditioning, is almost entirely associated with British ale, and involves inducing a secondary fermentation in the cask. The beer is ‘live’ with active yeast when it arrives at the pub, and undergoes its conditioning in the pub cellar.

Before that, back at the brewery, the beer is racked off – unfiltered and without being pasteurised – into barrels in which a secondary fermentation process takes place. While the beer sits in the pub cellar, the yeast is still working on the fermentable sugars in the brew to produce alcohol and carbon dioxide.

It also produces some of the fruitier flavours and aromas often associated with cask-conditioned beer.

Sugar is sometimes added at the time the cask is filled to assist the secondary .....

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By Nigel Huddleston

Section : Beer Production

Page number : 32