Matured Cask Ale at Piper's Pub

I popped into Piper’s Pub tonight (19 September 2011) for a bite to eat and the cask ales. Well, a bite to eat was almost secondary to the beer but it was a good drizzly night for Sheppard’s Pie. My last beer was my favorite: Rivertowne Brown Eyed Finley. This beer on cask tonight was the best example to define the difference between matured beer and off beer. A beer that is off has a sour taste, or flavors other than malt: butterscotch, cardboard, whatever. Finley was matured at Piper’s in the cask cellar and although as it was a bit sour it was not off.

As I took my first sip I was instantly stopped. What was this I was drinking? Was it bad? No! It was what English Brown Ale was meant to taste like. I told Hart, the bartender about my experience and he said: “you are an English Brown Ale drinker”. Decades of drinking in England paid off.

In reading what brown ale once was in England, I seldom found any to comply with the old descriptions: lactic sourness (unlike bitterness). This was not Newcastle. It had a pronounced, yet pleasant tang that gave the beer an exciting difference to ordinary bitter or IPA. It was a textbook example of authentic English Brown Ale of days far gone. The Finley did not start out this was but as it sat in a cask with a soft spile, it oxidized over time. This isi one reason caskbeer can’t sit forever like keg beer. A spile is a wood peg driven into cask to permit carbon dioxide gas to escape, or to stop it. As this beer matured over time it did have a slight, but noticeable tang to it. To be sure, this was not a bad flavor but one that should be relished, as I did tonight. It gave the beer a nice mouth feel and excited my taste buds. It was though my buds were having sex with beer.

Original porters (an off-shoot of brown ale) were matured in the same manner causing a lactic sourness to differentiate it from other beers of the day. As a young beer, brown would be void of any real flavor until it matured. Sadly, in today’s market the maturity would be short lived. The Finley sitting in a cask for nine days came to adulthood this night. I hope it comes back to Piper’s cellar, as the way it was conditioned was the prime example as how a beer should be handled. Thank you Drew and the cellar men (and to Hart) who know how to handle real beer. What a shining example of well-made beer handled properly by people who know proper beer.