Lazy8 wrote: 
Oh my word, if I weren't so bloody knackered after the busiest week of the year selling the damned stuff I'd love to join in, but I'm going home to eat, log on again just to abuse Cookie and then probably fall asleep at the kitchen table and drool over the keyboard. Again.
 
Except to say, bugger here I go, and sorry for any glaring errors, but I think that the important difference that Beamy was onto is that in the UK keg beer is pasteurised first, and that kills flavour CO², or even a mix with nitrogen is used to put bubbles in the beer, preserve it and force it from the keg to the glass. A cask beer is live, and the carbonation should come from the yeast. The brewer racks the beer and seals it. It's delivered to us. In between the yeast has continued to do what it does so well - eat malt sugars, piss alcohol and fart CO².
 
As it does the latter, pressure builds in the cask, causing CO² to go into solution, which knocks out the yeast. I then vent the cask with a spile which releases the pressure in the cask, suddenly the CO² comes out of solution (bit like opening a can of coke) and can sometimes have some pretty geyser like results. I was nearly killed by a cask of Theakston's Old Peculiar once, but that's another story.
 
The CO² is important, it gives condition to the beer (of which the IPA has had a surfeit this week ) and acts as an antioxidant, which is why bright beers don't last very long at all.
 
I use a clever little device to maintain a natural top pressure when sales are slow - I replace the traditional spile with a plastic spile that contains a spring-loaded non-return valve. The yeast in the beer continue to give off small amounts of CO² which build up in the cask and prevent the surface of the beer coming into contact with oxygen. The spile maintains a light, positive pressure within the cask. When beer is drawn from the cask it allows air in to replace the beer taken out, but as CO² is denser than O² the beer is protected and kept in fine condition.
 
Bugger. Is that the time? Will catch up later.

 beamends wrote:

Carbonation of any type can be overdone, but cask-conditioning is not magic. The only difference I could ever find in my beer was less sediment when I carbonated from a CO2 tank. CO2 is CO2. I can taste the difference between cask-conditioned beer primed with malt and primed with corn sugar (a common homebrewer's shortcut) but not between malt and artificially carbonated. And quite a few beers carbonated from a tank of CO2 have won brewing contests. If there's a difference in the flavor (assuming the sediment on the bottom isn't disturbed—you'll definitely taste that) it's not night and day.

That sediment is yeast—harmless. Germans serve some wheat beers with it in a little bowl. You find it in health food stores here (I like to put it on popcorn for the diacetyl-buttery taste) and you've probably eaten in it Marmite (or Vegemite in Oz) with no ill effects. I have no idea where the old wives' tale that it will give you the trots comes from.

Yeast cells are big. Once the churning from active fermentation is over (and they've run out of things to eat) they settle to the bottom of the fermenter and go dormant. A keg carbonated from a CO2 tank is no more "dead" than a cask-conditioned keg: neither has any active yeast cells floating around in it.

There is a lot of lore and superstition around beer and beer drinkers. You can try and cut thru it with blind taste tests (and I've done some) but they die very hard. I appreciate a lot of what the Campaign for Real Ale has done to preserve the diversity of British beer but they delved into folklore and junk science to do it.

 cookinlover wrote: 

 cookinlover wrote: 
So I gather. Last time I checked my Manbird - English English - Manbird dictionary, I got as far as "eyejelly" "gizzards" and "sump oil" before having to have a shower and a bit of a lie-down.

 hobiejoe wrote: 
Make me!
which is pronounced in some strange way only manbird can understand

 cookinlover wrote: 
Pah!
 
 
 Which is pronounced "bugger off, you cheeky git"

 hobiejoe wrote: 

 cookinlover wrote: 

 
 

 hobiejoe wrote: 
I am going to send you a pronunciation book so you can learn to say it correctly, barkeep.

 MrsHobieJoe wrote: 
Montana, silver miners. As per Prof. Fortey in the book.

 Inamorato wrote: 
Except (perhaps) in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan - which I believe had a large immigration of Cornish folks who worked in the mineral mines.

 beamends wrote: 
Written by someone who obviously knows his way around a cask. Thanks for the info.  

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 
That's right. Keg bitter is fizzy shite delivered by CO2 pressure. So called 'real ale' (actually cask conditioned ale) is delivered by gravity or a beer engine which pumps it up from the cellar (or along from the cellar in most of the few surviving pubs these days since real cellars are fast disappearing). Beer keeps a lot longer with CO2 present, so it's not uncommon for cask conditioned beers to have a low pressure CO2 supply for that purpose (some claim you can still taste it). Cask conditioned ale is still brewing in the barrel, hence it will go off quite quickly and must not be disturbed once racked and broached. Tilting the barrel to get the last few pints out has to be done with great care else customers are in danger of spending quite a lot of time on the bog, even if they can't see/taste the sediment. You can get real ale 'rack bright' (ready to serve) at extra cost, but normally 24 to 48 hours are required for it to settle after delivery.

Just for completeness, there is also bottle conditioned bitter available - you have to pour it carefully to avoid disturbing the sediment in the bottom of the bottle. Most bottled beers of the real ale type are filtered before bottling and given a dose of CO2 to prevent sediment forming the bottle (basically it kills the beer) - that is definitely tasteable. 

 Xeric wrote: 
Goddam Circadia and their rhythm section.

They're still over at their cousin's. We bought some coffee yesterday though and I could hear the little beans, thousands of them, calling out "open our bag! grind us to dust!" so I did.
 
I actually woke up at the usual time then rolled over and got a couple more hours sleep.

 MrsHobieJoe wrote: 

Reading "The Best of Britain" was a pleasant diversion, although a Liverpudlian writing about the divergences of British and American English from his perspective of time spent in Texas is like someone from Newark, New Jersey making a similar commentary from time spent in Northern Ireland!

In America, pasties are usually found in the company of a non-musical G-string and giving a kid a cordial such as Amaretto or Chartreuse would constitute child abuse. 

Sure wish you'd fix that shit (;downarrow:), Bill. . . .

 ScottFromWyoming wrote: 

What the hell are you doing up so early?



Oh. Right. Children.

 Lazy8 wrote: 
I assume they're trying to say the keg's not jacked into a bottle of CO2.

MrsHobieJoe wrote:

Has this person ever actually had a beer?

 duchamp wrote: 
From yesterday's police blotter in our local paper:

"2:28 p.m. – 800 block Lorain Blvd., bag containing 8.9 grams of marijuana found in Speedway parking lot."

Why didn't you give me a hey if you were in the area.