Brace yourself: Cask ale ‘redefined’

The headline alone suggests much hand wringing ahead: “Marston’s redefines Cask Ale.”

Pete Brown has an exclusive about the roll out of Fast Cask by Marston’s, one of Great Britain’s most highly regarded breweries.

Without going into too much technical detail, Fast Cask is still cask ale because it has live yeast working in the barrel, conditioning the beer. But that yeast has been put through an innovative process that makes it form beads which do not dissolve into the beer. These beads act like sponges, drawing beer through them to create the secondary fermentation.

Does this sound like something that will turn more than a few CAMRA beards prematurely gray?

Pete offers a succinct summary of what are bound to be long and perhaps loud arguments. Is it tradition and progress or is it tradition versus progress? Beer makers and beer drinkers have been debating just that for more than a thousands years.

Britain’s Beer Writer of the Year concludes: “So what do you think? Is this good? Bad? Significant or not? Do you want to taste the beer first and then decide, or have you already made up your mind?”

Here we go again.