You Might Want to Open a Real Ale Brewery

It’s cold here already in the Colorado mountains. Earlier than I remember, but this cold weather makes me long for a draw of cask ale. There is just something comforting when it’s snowing outside and you are sitting in a warm pub with your freshly poured pint, foam cascading up to a thick rich head, while underneath a clear ruby ale awaits the first taste. This is beer in its raw pure form.

I offer for your consideration, why not open this type of brewery? There are many advantages to this. The two big ones that come to mind are lack of competition and cost of equipment.

In the U.S. there are some really good examples of real ale breweries, but as a percentage of total breweries, it hardly makes a blip. This makes a brewery specializing in cask ale a stand-out, no matter how many other breweries are in your town. It’s probably also the brewery where the other brewers will want to hang out.

While many breweries may offer a beer or two on cask all the time or for special occasions, a real ale brewery can do the reverse and offer a few cold carbonated versions. It’s just your focus will be on cask ale.

I’ve written about the making of cask ale before. You can follow the rules of C.A.M.R.A (Campaign for Real Ale), or you can make it in a much simpler way as I saw being done in the UK (see below).

Speaking of the UK, there is a great web site that tracks all the real ale breweries and it’s fun just to check them out and see how they are set up. http://www.quaffale.org.uk/php/index.php

OK, for the bones of this operation. Of course you need a kettle and a mash tun, but a small open top dairy tank works fine for your fermenter. From there you can go right into your firkins. The simpler way of course, and CAMRA hates me for even mentioning this, is to have a conditioning tank where you transfer the finished green beer and then fine it. From there you transfer it to a regular keg. Since you have already fined the beer you don’t have to worry about the spear in a regular keg picking up the yeast. I saw this done quite often while visiting the UK.

From there you use a regular Sankey tap, but for the gas inlet you use a cask breather and this allows a sip of CO2 (set your regulator to 3psi) to displace the beer that was drawn out of the keg. This way the beer is in a CO2 environment and doesn’t go bad, as compared to a regular firkin that allows air into the cask. This of course is part of the quality of real ale, but unless you can empty the keg within two days, you will wind up selling spoiled beer. So go with a cask breather.

At the bar you want your beer engines with sparklers on the wands. By giving a strong pull of the engine, it forces the beer through the sparkler and you get a perfect pint every time.

I like to place the pint in front of the customer before all the foam settles so they can watch the show.

Think about this as an alternative to just the regular breweries you see everywhere. I’d be happy to go through specifics with you as well one on one if you are really interested. Just leave a comment below.