Cask Cooling

[Geoff Logan]

All,
How are you folks cooling your cask conditioned ale? I'm just curious to find out about different ways of keeping beer cool. Glycol feed? Ice packs? Any tips will be much obliged.

Geoff

[porter]

Re: Cask Cooling

We use a glycol manifold that taps into the glycol lines that keep beer cool going from walk-in to bar.
With a fitted cask jacket, it keeps the beer about 10F cooler than ambient, which is unfortunately only about 60F.
It might work better if there wasn't a back bar cooler exhaust blowing hot air at the cask itself...

The best results I have seen is an individual small refrigerator for each cask. If I had the room, that's what I would do.

[v2comp]

I saw a picture of a pub somewhere that used glass fronted display coolers (think grocery stores open coolers) that were open in the back where the bartender poured from. they had 12 casks in the coolers and the bar was built over and incorporated the coolers in its design.
I thought if I ever had the chance, I would do something very similar.

[gdebisschop]

Howdy Geoff_
At the pub in MA I used to work at we sold a bunch of cask conditioned ale. We had two methods of keeping them cool:

EXPENSIVE
-most of our volume was done out of hoff-stevens kegs retrofitted for a sankey fitting which was run to a beer engine. These kegs were run out of an under-the-bar type cooler which fit three kegs which got tapped one after the other. The cooler was set at 47F or so which would typically serve beer in the low 50's

CHEAP
-we served firkins off our back bar by gravity/tap pour once a week. To keep these cool we saved up the ice packs from our yeast prop deliveries and taped them together to make several bandolier type things that we would freeze the night before service then drape them over the firkin. We then covered that with the insulated jackets you can buy from uk brewing supplies (and others I'm sure). Even this treatment would result in less-than cool beer in the summer after 8-10 hours.

hope this helps. stop by next time you're back through Delmar!
cheers
geoff

[yog]

here in UK, we buy insulated cask jackets and run cold water/glycol through either a s/s saddle or built-in plastic pipework which runs through mesh on the inside of the jacket. These are available for firkins and kilderkins. Depending on length of pipe run and insulation on pipe between casks, this can chill beer right down. Jackets with built in pipework are available from £45 the s/s saddles are way more expensive, plus you have to buy separate jackets as well there are also s/s probes which go inside the cask and thus have contact with the beer, obviously these must be sterilised first.

[Geoff Logan]

Thanks for the advice all. Here's another challenge: I'm trying to figure a way to cool the casks in existing accounts. I doubt they will let me waltz in an tap into their glycol system. Do the ice packs work well enough? How long do they last? Thanks in advance.

Geoff