Cask tank beer

Bass Charrington, rather oddly, given that they closed the brewery a couple of years later, put a lot of effort into developing a type of tank beer at Joules, at Stone in Staffordshire. The idea being to replicate cask beer in a more economical way.

"Over the past few years many traditional, locally-brewed beers have fallen by the wayside because of the economies offered by nationally distributed brands. But one smaller brewing concern, John Joule & Sons Ltd., a Bass Charrington subsidiary, are managing to retain their traditional beers by cashing in on the savings afforded by bulk tank distribution to pub cellars.

To cater for the increased demand for this tank beer they have recently opened a new £25,000 department at the Stone brewery. Beer which is used in the tanks is naturally conditioned but, instead of being racked into casks, it is racked into Porter Lancastrian tanks, conditioned for 48 hours and then chilled to about 52-54° F before being sent out to trade."
Brewers' Guardian, Volume 99, April 1970, page 60.

Instead of being racked into casks, the beer was transferred to tanks where it was conditioned for 48 hours at 58° F while being roused. The beer was centrifuged on the way into the tank, but not all the yeast was removed, as its presence helped extend the shelf-life to three to four weeks. Before transfer to delivery tankers by compressed air, the beer was chilled to 52-54° F.  

Pubs were fitted with five-barrel tanks, either Fairey and Grundy. Before each delivery a team from the brewery cleaned and sterilised the tanks. After filling, the beer was fined for clarity, left for 48 hours and presumably served by electric pump.  

It sounds basically like cask beer, just in a larger container. I wonder what it tasted like? Could drinkers tell it apart from true cask?

Draught beer in the 1970s (part two)

We're going to finish our look at the different draught systems in use in the 1970s.

Tank beer
This was often bright beer, but filled into cellar tanks rather casks. It was pretty popular for a while in the 1960s and 1970s. It later fell into disuse, partly because of problems keeping the cellar tanks clean.

Many of the Grundy tanks used in UK pub cellars ended up being used as fermenters in US craft breweries.

Hull Brewery caused much division in CAMRA ranks by having most of their beer served from ceramic cellar tanks. The beer was only rough filtered, but not pasteurised and served without CO2 pressure. For a while it was considered real ale, but in the 1980 Good Beer Guide they are dismissed with a simple “all beers are filtered”.

Keg beer
Soon after WW II, brewers started to become interested in keg beer. Mostly to remove the weak link in the chain between the brewer and drinkers: the landlord.  It was designed to be a beer that publicans couldn’t bugger up, either through incompetence or avarice.

The initial crop of keg beers were almost all Bitters. Usually billed as Best Bitters, though the gravities didn’t always live up to that claim. Later keg versions of Mild followed, but it was the Keg Bitters that brewers pushed.

Why were some brewers so keen on keg beer? Because they could charge more for it. When you look at the examples later in this section, you’ll see that keg beer sold at a premium. Keg beer might have cost marginally more to produce than cask, but nothing like as much as the price differential.

Of course, larger brewers were investing large sums in advertising their Keg Bitters. Who would have drunk them if they hadn’t? And that money needed to be recouped.

There was also a fair bit of keg Mild about. And in increasing amounts. Mostly due to the decline in Mild sales. When too little was being sold for cask to be viable, some brewers stretched out the life of the style by kegging it. Though that was only a stay of execution.

Lager, of course, was almost always sold in keg form. Other than the aforementioned experiments with cask Lager.

Finally, there was Stout. Mainly in the form of Guinness. Or maybe totally. There might have been some other keg Stouts. Possibly Murphy’s. 

Cellarmanship in the 1920s (part two)

Continuing our look at cellar practices in the early 1920s, here's something that took me by surprise: tank beer.

I was quite shocked that it was enough of a thing in 1922 to even get a mention. Usually the start of brewery conditioned draught beer is attributed to Watney's in the 1930s. While that might have been the first keg beer produced in the UK, it was by no means the first brewery-conditioned draught.

Brewery conditioned beer had been around since the 1890s, but exclusively in bottled form. UK brewers picked up the technique of producing what they called chilled and carbonated beer from their American colleagues. This new type of non-deposit beer was a big hit and was vital to the sudden growth in bottled beer around 1900.

In his autobigraphy, "Seventy Rolling Years" Sydney Nevile mentions Worthington's attempts to introduce brewery-conditioned draught beer before WW I. These ended in failure, due to resistance from drinkers. They weren't keen on the flavour of this new type of beer and Worthington was forced to abandon the experiment.

But that clearly wasn't the end of alternatives to cask-conditioned beer.

"In London and some of the large towns beer is supplied through a tube, or hose, from a tank cart or motor into a receiver. This beer is suitable only for a quick sale, say forty-eight hours,1 and is ready to sell at once, is always bright and clear to the last drop, and has no deposit.

Thus the paraphernalia connected with barrels, and the care requisite in the treatment of beer in barrels, are avoided.

This beer is known as carbonated ale, and no waste ought to occur.

Beer so brewed is as good on the day it is received as it will ever be, and, no doubt, saves a great deal of labour, anxiety, and care, but these chilled and filtered beers, both in cask and bottle, have not the keeping qualities of beer naturally conditioned.

They are, however, so much limited to a few areas, that we must learn also all about the treatment of beers in cask.

1 Forty-eight hours is not to be taken as the limit of time of the keeping of carbonated ale, but it is brewed for quick consumption."
"The Art and Practice of Innkeeping" by Alexander Francis Part, published by Heinemann London, 1922, pages 198 - 199.

Reading between the lines, it's clear that the author wasn't a fan of tank beer.

The only brewery I can think of that was big on tanl beer WW II was the Hull Brewery. WHo were very early in going over to ceramic cellar tanks in its pubs. Their beer caused some fairly heated discussions within CAMRA as to whether it counted as Real Ale or not.

Martyn Cornell identifies Watney as the first brewery in the UK to use cellar tanks, starting in 1913. Followed in the early 1920s by Charrington and the Hull brewery.