British-Style Cask Ale Is a Challenge, but These Breweries Are Making It Work in the U.S.
At Gigantic Brewing Company in Portland, Ore., brewer and co-owner Van Havig has a response ready for whenever customers ask what cask ale is.
“You look them right in the eye, and you say, ‘It’s the way God wanted you to drink it,’” he says. “The history of beer is some sort of bunged-up, naturally or semi-naturally carbonated product. That’s how we drank beer as humans for forever.”
Like many Americans, Havig first learned about cask ale in the U.K., where the then decline of naturally carbonated beer inspired the founding of the Campaign for Real Ale, a.k.a. CAMRA, in 1971. With 143,300 active members this year, CAMRA is one of the largest and most successful consumer organizations in the world, with cask beer now widely recognized as an essential aspect of the great British brewing tradition. This year, fans even launched a petition to have cask beer recognized as “Intangible Cultural Heritage” by the U.K. government.
It might be more British than Mary Poppins, but recently, cask ale also seems to be making headway on this side of the Atlantic. Beer fans in Portland, Ore., can pick up the PDX Cask Passport, which launched in early 2024, and use that to find great pints at 15 participating venues across the city. This year, several U.S. bars earned first-time awards from Cask Marque, an independent organization from the U.K. that evaluates the quality of cask beer; winners included Brooklyn’s Wild East Brewing Co. and The Fiddlin’ Pig in Smithfield, Va., the first certification from the group in that state ever. In Seattle, new arrivals like Bizarre Brewing, which launched in 2022, are finding success with the format, joining stalwarts like Machine House Brewery, which has been spreading the word about traditional British cask since 2013. And in the Big Apple, the NYC Cask Crew has been organizing cask-focused pub crawls and other events for the last couple of years.
Beer pros admit that cask can be very challenging to serve well, especially in a country where beer is dominated by artificially carbonated keg beer, dispensed under pressure. Spare parts for casks and the old-school hand pumps that are traditionally used to pull cask pints can be hard to find. And without a U.S. equivalent of CAMRA, consumer awareness is very low. But insiders say that cask is worth all the trouble, offering fine, well-incorporated carbonation, integrated flavor profiles, and an attractive way of tapping and serving beer that can complement standard beer lines and attract new customers.
Very British Problems
An award-winning beer writer and filmmaker, Jonny Garrett helped launch the U.K. petition for cask’s “living heritage” status as part of the “Keep Cask Alive” series he and creative partner Brad Evans have posted on YouTube’s Craft Beer Channel. Their first goal is to influence future government policies to benefit British breweries and pubs, he says. The other angle takes inspiration from what happened after UNESCO put Belgium’s beer on its list of intangible cultural heritage in 2016.
“The marketing boost that they saw from that, both from tourists coming in, and indeed from younger people in the country, was immense,” Garrett says. Although cask is in a slow decline at the biggest U.K. producers, currently accounting for only about 9 percent of the country’s total draft beer sales, it seems to be getting a buzz among small, craft-focused brewers. “I think as cask ale starts to get a bit of momentum now, it couldn’t be a better time to have a huge marketing boost and to see the national press really take notice,” Garrett says.
In the U.S., he says, he found excellent cask ales at Forest & Main Brewing Co. in Philadelphia, a city where the style of dispense has long been pushed by a cadre of prominent backers, including Yards Brewing Company.
“We drank mild, we drank porters, all in absolutely sparkling condition and very traditionally made,” he says. “That was my first experience of cask ale in America, and it was just as good as home.”
That said, cask might be a challenge for many U.S. brewers. Since cask ales get their carbonation from the secondary fermentation that takes place in the cask from which they are dispensed, they tend to be far less bubbly than the standard U.S. beer. Although low ABV is not a strict requirement for cask, low carbonation can be challenging for strong beers, especially ones that finish on the full side, with relatively high final gravity (FG).
“It’s understated. But if it’s done well, I’m not going to say it’s the best beer experience in the world — that’s obviously subjective — but it’s right up there with the best.”
“It can be any strength at which you want it to be,” Garrett says. “The only issue would be that if you’ve got a higher FG, which quite a few of these stronger beers tend to have, that lower carbonation can’t cut through, so it becomes quite a struggle to drink.”
Another challenge is temperature. The secondary fermentation that takes place in the cask won’t work at the level of “ice cold beer,” which slows or stops yeast activity. But in the States, most beer coolers won’t operate at the temperatures needed for proper cask conditioning. At Gigantic, Havig ended up buying a wine cooler instead of a beer fridge for his cask ales.
“You have to figure out some way of keeping this f*cking beer at 50 to 55 degrees,” Havig says. “Normally your cooler is 38 degrees. You really want it warmer than that.”
At a previous brewery, he had to build a Rube Goldberg cooler for his cask beers, using oddball parts, including a five-gallon bucket and some copper pipe.
“I found out that a Ford Ranger heater core had the right hose size,” he says.
Worth All the Trouble
Despite that very American, MacGuyver-style solution, most U.S. cask ales seem to have a pronounced British accent. For Bill Arnott, setting up Seattle’s Machine House Brewery gave him a chance to share the beer culture he saw growing up in a small village in Norfolk, England. When he first settled in the U.S., he says, cask was sometimes available, but mostly as a one-off beer with dry hops or other “wacky infusions,” or something that was brewed only for a festival.
“It gets people out. It gets people trying different beers, and it’s a fun way for us to partner up with all these different businesses around Portland who are also serving cask ale.”
“In 2010, Seattle cask beer was mostly event-based,” Arnott says. “For me, it didn’t really hit the spot of what makes cask beer special.” That has to do with the steady, modest nature of cask beer in Britain, where it is seen as a staple — and maybe even a little bit boring. “It’s understated. But if it’s done well, I’m not going to say it’s the best beer experience in the world — that’s obviously subjective — but it’s right up there with the best,” Arnott says.
One of the biggest ongoing challenges for U.S. drinkers, he says, is communication, especially regarding carbonation and temperature. “I feel like people are always worried about English cask beer being warm and flat — in the ideal scenario, it should never be warm and flat,” he says. “It’s going to be less cold and less carbonated than draft beer people are used to, but if we keep it on the cool end of the cellar temperature range and make sure the beer is always super fresh, then for the most part customers will not be surprised in a negative way.”
In Portland, Ore., Niki Diamond started a cask festival in 2021 at Away Days Brewing Co., the brewery she founded with her spouse, Pete Hoppins. That inspired the British-born couple to create the PDX Cask Passport last year.
“It kind of just started to be more and more visible amongst the breweries in Portland,” she says. One of the program’s goals is getting the word out, highlighting both the local venues that have cask available and what it’s like. “It gets people out. It gets people trying different beers, and it’s a fun way for us to partner up with all these different businesses around Portland who are also serving cask ale.”
“Make sure you have the cooperage available to keep it going. You have to be confident that you can kick those pretty quickly, because they have a very short lifespan.”
Other outlets have similar origin stories. In Brooklyn, Wild East Brewing Co. started serving traditional English styles on cask for special events about five years ago, co-founder Tyler March recalls, after which things simply took off.
“We eventually started distributing in Pennsylvania as well, because our distributor there was very interested in cask,” he says. “We put in a hand pump, and ever since we’ve kept cask at the taproom with no interruptions.” That led to this year’s recognition by Cask Marque, which sent anonymous, unannounced judges to evaluate the brewery’s cask offering over multiple visits.
If breweries or taprooms are thinking of offering cask, they really need to commit to it, March says. “Make sure you have the cooperage available to keep it going,” he says. “You have to be confident that you can kick those pretty quickly, because they have a very short lifespan.”
It can be a real pain, Havig admits. To ensure sell-through, many U.S. breweries try to keep their cask ales in smaller vessels like 5.4-gallon pins, which makes for more work for bar staff. But there are also many upsides, including cultural benefits. The same beer served on cask and from a keg can taste wildly different, which can be a fun customer experience. Additionally, the cask process helps new brewers learn how important cellaring beer can be, and how much beer quality is due to what happens after fermentation. Even the simple act of frequently changing casks can be worthwhile if customers end up asking what kind of beer that is.
“Even if the brewers answer, ‘Uh, these things are a pain in the ass,’ that gets the customer to understand, ‘Oh, they put more effort into this,’” Havig says. “Because that’s the other thing, right? You have to put more effort into cask.”
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