In the first of my There is Such a Thing as Free Advice articles for small brewers, I will cover the likely reasons for the most common complaints about cask beer.

2. There’s something
wrong with your beer!
The phone rings, your heart sinks. It’s the
news you dread more than anything. There
are customers not enjoying your beer. Every
brewer, no matter how great, has been
there.
In the first of my There is Such a Thing as
Free Advice articles for small brewers, I will
cover the likely reasons behind the common
complaints about cask beer and how to
never receive them.

3. CAVEATS
Before we get going, what I’m talking about here is cask beer
which has not been heavily dry hopped and is supposed to be
clear and not sour. Dry hopping in tank above 100g/hl can give
you problems with clarity and tends to give you challenges
with finings and cask conditioning. If this is the case, I
wouldn’t want to give advice without knowing exactly what is
done in producing the beer.
If your beer is supposed to be cloudy and sour, happy days!
You don’t need any advice, you’re already god’s gift to beer
and brewing.

4. COMMON – LOGICAL – SENSE
Always try to remember cask beer is a simple thing. Simple things obey the laws of
common sense so when someone gives you some advice about it which doesn’t make
sense to you (like you need to look at your calcium/pH levels or have you considered
S. diastaticus?), don’t take it unless you have exhausted the common sense approach
below. Most (but not all) problems with cask are simple and due to four things.
• Cell count
• Carbonation at point of filling the cask
• Finings rate
• Cask hygiene

5. Before I get ahead of myself,
we should discuss the most statistically likely reason for the cask not being right.
Unless loads of customers are complaining, the majority of problems with the
beer will be due to poor handling in the cellar. When you get the call implying you
are an inept brewer you should ask the following:
1. How long has the cask been broached?
2. Is the beer the same direct from the cask as it at the bar?
3. Has the cask been moved?
4. What is the use by date on the cask?
These questions won’t rule out all the misdeeds which can be perpetrated upon
the cask, but if the beer’s out of date, has been on for a fortnight or they have
been playing the bongos on it, you can breathe a sign of relief.

6. “your beer’s flat!”
To brewers, flat beer means the CO2 level is too low. Drinkers on the other hand
could be referring to the CO2 level (condition) or the head on the beer. It’s worth
asking which of these the complaint is about. If it is a head issue and the beer in
the casks you have checked in the brewery has the required head, you need to
tactfully tell the customer it’s their fault and to buy or employ a new glass
washer. Dirt, grease or detergent on the glasses will all shaft the head of the
beer.
Low CO2 in the cask could be due to flat beer going into cask with insufficient
yeast, residual fermentable material and time to condition. You should ensure
the yeast cell count and CO2 level is the same throughout the tank you are
packaging. It is especially worth checking the condition and clarity of the beer at
the end of the packaging. If the beer is clear and flat as a witch’s tit, then you
have no chance of the beer reaching reasonable condition in the cellar. If you can
afford one, buy a CO2 meter. If you can’t, use your eyes and mouth to check.
Everyone can afford a microscope and a haemocytometer so buy and use them
to measure cell counts as well!

7. “your beer’s flat!”
Another cause of flat beer is if there isn’t much sugar left after the main
fermentation. Unless you are packaging the beer at between 1.35 and
1.50vols of CO2 you’ll need the yeast to ferment in the cask. You can find
the gravity of the beer when the sugars are exhausted by undertaking a
wort attenuation limit test for the beer. If you want the beer to ferment in
the cask you’ll need to package a few degrees gravity above the
attenuation limit.
The acid test for cask beer is to keep back a sample from the start middle
and end of the packaging run and check them throughout the shelf life of
the cask. If they are perfect, it’s very likely that the whole batch will be.
It’s a lot of beer to store and care for but you can use it for bright beer to
prevent it going to waste.

8. “Your beer started out clear but
keeps going cloudy in the cellar”
There is an urban legend in the cask industry
about layering, where the clear and cloudy beer
supposedly separated themselves into discrete
layers like stripes in a pretty rainbow. Although
you may get sediment floating at the top of a cask
if someone has added more than double the
correct amount of isinglass, any other form of
“layering” belongs to the realm of fairies and
unicorns.

9. “Your beer started out clear but keeps going cloudy in the
cellar”
The most likely explanation for this complaint is a loose sediment. If the yeasts
cell count is low (or isinglass rate too high) the sediment formed with the isinglass
will be fluffy and loose. If the pub has tilting stillages, just the tilting action is
enough to suspend the sediment and they’ll get slugs of cloudy beer in the bar. If
they are using floats or rods as the level drops, a loose sediment will rise from the
bottom and again, they’ll be serving cloudy beer. If you are getting this along with
a lack of condition both problems may be down to low cell count at the end of
packaging. You can check for low yeast counts related to loose sediment by taking
a sample in a glass at the start middle and end of the packaging run and seeing if
they get clearer as the rack goes on. If you add the same amount of finings to
each sample glass (around 7ml per pint) you can check the sediment levels. If the
sediment looks like frogspawn on the bottom of the pond it’s too fluffy. It should
be less than 1.5cm in a pint glass and look opaque not like spunk. A sight glass on
the racking arm will tell you the same thing as checking clarity in the glass, but
obviously won’t tell you how the beer will fine.

10. “Your beer started out clear but keeps going
cloudy in the cellar”
Before packaging, you should set up glasses of beer and add increasing
amounts of isinglass across the glasses. The amount you add to cask
should be based on the rate added to the glass with the tightest sediment
which settles in less than 1 hour in a room at about 20oC. When you twist
the glass from side to side a good tight sediment will not float up in the
glass.
If the beer is going sour at the same time as going cloudy it’s either a
micro problem in the brewery/beer or a dirty cask. If you have very low
cell counts, the beer tends to go off more quickly in the cellar as the yeast
is a natural protection against staling and infection.

11. “Your beer is Sour, you
dirty idiot!”
This can be due to the factors above. Low cell count, micro in
the brewery/beer or dirty cask. Casks are a nightmare to clean
because they can be away from the brewery for months and
arrive back with the devil’s spawn crawling out of the
bungholes. Fruit fly eggs are the toughest thing to remove and
probably the most potent source of beer wrecking microbes.
Don’t put beer in a cask which isn’t pristine inside and hasn’t
been sanitised by hot water, peroxyacetic acid or steam.
Heroic acts like leaving the racking lance on the floor between
cask fills or dropping the shive down the drain, wiping it on
your trousers and then putting it in the cask will also give you a
good chance of losing a customer, although it’s amazing what
dodgy practises are gotten away with. You almost never get
away with filling a dirty cask.

12. “Your beer is Sour, you
dirty idiot!”
If you get a cask at random (perhaps towards the end of the rack)
and put it on a stillage for a week sealed, tap it using a sterile tap
through a sterilised keystone, spile it using a sterilised plastic spile
the beer should be and stay clear and delicious for at least a week. I
would recommend doing this for every batch you rack. You’ll soon
see if you’ve got a problem.
The infection may come from inadequate hygiene in the brewery.
You can send samples of wort, beer and yeast off for micro analysis
to see if where the problem starts. However, this is expensive and
can find problems that aren’t there and fail to find ones which are.
If you take aseptic samples of beer from the tank you are packaging
and leave them in a sealed pot in a warm place (as close to 29oC as
you can make it) for 2 weeks, they should not taste or smell off
when you check them. If they do, you ain’t cleaning correctly and
you have a major problem.

13. “Your cask has just exploded,
redecorated my cellar and written off my
stock of luxury tonics, you gibbon!”
Exploding casks are usually due to too much yeast in the beer
at packaging. If you don’t run enough sediment off from the
tank you are packaging, get slugs of yeast coming through
during racking or hoover up some of the tank sediment, the
cell count in the cask will be too high.
If a whole batch is like it, the chances are the cell count was
too high and there was too much fermentable material in the
cask. Leaving too much fermentable material in the cask is
unlikely to be an issue unless you have a high yeast count
(above 2.5 x 106 cells/ml) or have a very long shelf life on the
beer.
Your cell count, glass samples and finings trials will tell you if
you have any of these issues when you are racking. Your start,
middle and end sample casks will also tell you if it’s a batch
issue.

14. “Your cask has just exploded,
redecorated my cellar and written off
my stock of luxury tonics, you gibbon!”
Another remote possibility is a wild yeast infection from an
inadequately cleaned cask. This is unlikely because wild yeast
don’t tend to survive washing (even rinsing with chemical only) in
sufficient numbers to cause CO2 to build up to that point. It’s
definitely not Saccharomyces diastaticus infection in the pitching
yeast, goblins or a terrorist cell working for AB InBev despite
what some brewing “experts” may advise.
Having a means to agitate the tank that you rack from and using
it correctly solves all problems with inconsistent yeast counts.

15. If all else fails
you could just say “I am a brewing artiste and
the reason you are complaining is because you
have failed to ‘get’ the concept that I was
trying to convey in my work. The problem is
not with the beer, it is that you are not
sophisticated enough to understand it”.

16. COMING NEXT
In my next There is Such a Thing as Free Advice article I
tackle how to avoid paying good money for bad
equipment.
In the meantime, if I can help your brewery succeed in
any way please connect and let me know.
LIFE’S TOO SHORT FOR DISAPPOINTING BEER