I've just watched an old episode of Minder, probably from the early eighties. An old lag (played by Pete - then Peter - Postlethwaite) returns to London after a few years at Her Majesty's Pleasure and some more on the run in Spain. He remarks sadly to Terry and Arthur that "Everything's changed. You can't even get a decent pint of keg any more. It's all that real ale stuff."
It's just the same now Pete. You still can't get a decent pint of keg!
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
ReplyDeletePint of ZeroDegrees Black Lager for the Tandleman.
ReplyDeleteI've had loads of superb keg beer, sadly most of it outside the UK. You should know better, having been to Germany so many times - it's the pasteurisation that fucks beer, not the container it's served from !!!
ReplyDeleteAll this soapy nitrokeg muck you get now is no use to man nor beast - whatever happened to the proper fizzy "real" keg beers of old?
ReplyDeleteGazza - I was going to say you still can't get a pint of decent beer in London, but thought better of it.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at my "Welcome" you will see my views on pasteurisation. Not only should I know better, I do! I must say though very little decent keg beer has passed my lips in the UK - as you say.
BN - Not been in Zero Degrees since Mike McGuigan was brewer, but one swallow doesn't make a summer.
Surely the idea of keg is that most keg is decent. Decent by keg standards of course. Obviously compared with real ale it's shite, but put one British keg up against another and you'd probably have difficulty saying one was worse than the other.
ReplyDeleteNone of the US kegged beer is pasteurized, and none of it is Real Ale. It isn't the vessel, it's the dispense.
ReplyDeleteOne swallow does disprove the statement "There's no such thing as swallows", though.
ReplyDeleteAnd surely there are some great foreign keg beers to be had in Britain. Wrasslers XXXX springs immediately to mind, and someone somewhere has to be doing Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and/or Westmalle Dubbel on draught, no?
Indeed, but I was talking, as no doubt Pete Postlethwaite was, about British keg.
ReplyDeleteNow I must away to the dentist and have a brOken filling dealt with. Bloody pork scratchings at the NWAF.
And the best thing about this is that Pete has had a real ale named after him, and has "signed" one of the plates that adorn the walls of the Grey Horse on Portland Street!
ReplyDeleteThe Ropewalk in Nottingham has Sierra Nevada Pale Ale from a keg, and it's usually better than whatever their cask beers are at any given time.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the Broadway Cinema bar in Nottingham, which sells real ales, has a new BrewDog keg tap with offerings often tastier than their frequently insipid cask beers.
More to the point, although I think in general cask conditioned beer is preferable, in most of the world, it's served from a keg. When I go to America I have lots of excellent beer, most of it from kegs.
The main thing is that good beer is good beer however it's served.
Mr J
ReplyDeleteI agree!
Jeff: "None of the US kegged beer is pasteurized, and none of it is Real Ale."
ReplyDeleteSurely big, huge breweries pasteurise? Hell, Anchor "flash-pasteurises", right?
Not specifically directed at Jeff: What do CAMRA call kegged real ale? Is it not also "keg beer"? If I understand correctly, the description "keg beer" designates that a beer in a keg is specifically served under pressure, yes? Maybe we should call it "gas(sed) beer" instead of "keg(ged) beer"?
(Not sure why this is suddenly so unclear to me; I've had my coffee...)
I would have thought "no US keg beer is pasteurised" to be a highly unlikely thing.
ReplyDeleteThere is no kegged real ale Nick. If it has extraneous CO2 it is keg.
"Surely big, huge breweries pasteurise? Hell, Anchor "flash-pasteurises", right?"
ReplyDeleteHow do you pasteurize a keg?
Large American breweries pasteurize the beer after it's packaged -- in the bottle or can. Kegs are instead kept continuously cold, shipped and stored cold and are not pasteurized, which accounts for the superior flavour of draught beer over bottled.
Anchor does "flash-pasteurize" their beer, before it's ever packaged. The same beer goes into kegs and bottles, which may account for the very dodgy results of Anchor draught beer anywhere outside the immediate San Francisco Bay Area.