Why Cask Ale Rocks!

Cask Ale is important to each of us in very different ways. In this collaborative blogging effort me(Bar Manager), Kelly(Brewer), Mark(Homebrewer), Mark(Beer Writer) and Shea(Young Female Drinker) say why it's important to us.

When I took over The Rake, it had two hand pumps and was doing approximately 8 firkins a week. A little over two years later and Cask sales have more than doubled to the point where on average The Rake goes through 17 casks a week and I’ve had to add a third Handpump and some extra stillaging in the cellar!

So what do I put this down to? Well, for starters, I’ll put it down to the customer. My average punters are not old guys who sit at the bar all day and drink the same thing day in day out, they are a lot more curious than that. Whilst I do get some of the older generation coming in, they are also genuinely after something new, probably more adventurous than a lot of the younger guys.  I’m not saying that the younger folks aren’t curious or adventurous, that’s the nature of youth and I am extremely thankful for that, it makes my job more rewarding if I can recommend a beer to someone and they come back and say that was fantastic!

It’s helped also by the fact that the British craft beer scene is so vibrant at the moment, breweries such as Otley, Thornbridge, Dark Star and Moor, to name just a few, are taking their inspiration from the USA. They have the personalities to give cask ale the hype that it deserves, they are giving their beer a personality too, something that has to be applauded and celebrated.  What craft brewers and bar managers such as myself are trying to do is spread the word that it’s not just about necking 10 pints of lager on a Friday night and writing off your Saturday, it’s more about experiencing the flavours and enjoying the craft that goes into making the beer that goes into your glass.

For years the beer scene in Britain was bland and one dimensional, it made working in pubs a bit dull really and gave us the feeling of working in a factory environment, dishing out the same beers to the same people day after day. That in turn gave credence to the generalisation that anyone could work in a pub and those that do are thick and should be treated like second class citizens. With the amount of different beers coming into pubs, bars and restaurants nowadays the staff are more than just mindless robots dishing out tasteless fizzy rubbish and there is a genuine lack of respect for these human beings. It’s a mindset that is still to be gotten rid of in these enlightened days of craft brewing and growing choice for the consumer but we do what we can and we’ll keep shouting about it.

The recently published Cask Report states that cask beers sell better when they are more expensive than the regular or ‘house’ lager. I generally agree with that sort of pricing, after all, from the first mash-in to racking the beer into barrels, delivering it to the outlet, stillaging, venting and tapping to the final moments up to when the customer takes their first sip of the pint, it’s a labour of love from brewer to cellar man. Cask ale you see is a live product if it‘s not handled correctly it will lose its flavour, its body, its condition or life, it needs to be loved. One of the stigma’s of cask ale you see is that it’s warm and flat. Not so if you pay attention to it, treat it like a baby. It needs to be nurtured and more than anything it needs to be respected.

Super Botel

I want this, I dream of this, who's going to do this?

We've heard the ideas about super-casinos, we've read and watched superman, Super Girl and Super Ted, we've generally had a super time doing so too. So Super is the word of the day.
Which brings me to the idea I dream about, the Super Pub or Super Botel (see Botel instead of Motel). Anyone else had this dream, i'd be interested to know.
What would be in the 'Super-Pub'? What would be in yours?

Where do we begin? How about the outside, it should be shaped like a massive beer keg/cask/bottle or can (your dream, your preference).
Then you come to the door which you don't even notice because someone's opened it for you and you just breeze on in.
A host of some sort, lets for the sake of argument call them Beer Angels.
The Beer Angels would see you to your seat and give you the beer list which would have every beer you could drink up.....sorry think up. The beer list could take any form you like too, be it on old fashioned tome or as upto date as a palm reader for the techno-geeks, fuck it! the proper geeks could have it in good old comic form!
There would of course bee beer floors, they wold have their own breweries on each floor, each floor would be dedicated to a style of beer, the IPA/Pale Ale floor, for me, would have to be on the top floor(best beers, best views!) Again that's all dependant on your preference.

There would of course have to be an army of staff. You'd need loads behind the bars on each of the beer floors. You'd also need an army of chefs on each floor to cook all the beer and food matching.

Lets not forget the science bit...there would be a team of scientists on site making sure that no matter how much you drank you would have some sort of chemical formula on hand to imbibe to counter the effects of alcohol.

Ok so in case the scientists aren't doing their jobs and drinking and driving generally being a complete no-no there would have to be rooms for people to stay in, of course there would be a free mini-bar in the rooms!

Tickers would be welcome, we'd have a room for them so they didn't scar...sorry scare the customers away.
Politians would be barred - particularly any who are neo-prohibitionist half wits.
Of course it would be so 'super' that we wouldn't have to advertise the venue in any press related nonsense (Daily Fail be damned!!)

For the likes of Boggle there would be a spooge room if there was a beer that the 'spoogers' couldn't find in this enormous gothic-like stone & marble keg.
AND...AND....How about a fictional beer room for those people sad enough to want a pint of Romulan Ale or 'the usual' from the Queen Vic.

I'm running out of thoughts for the time being but I'm going to update this post if I think of anything to add to it.

Suffice to say this Super Botel would be 'the nuts'. If you want to add to any of these ideas then feel free to do so, never know what might happen...