Sunday, June 05, 2011

What is keg?

According to CAMRA "[keg] beer is chilled and filtered to remove all the yeast, and pasteurised to make a sterile product [...][then] put into a sealed metal container, the keg".

Or, if you're a brewer, "keg" is that proportion of your output that you put into keg, rather than cask or bottle. For us, this proportion is zero - we don't do keg.
Update: Oh yes we do.

Or, if you're running a beer outlet, "keg" is that stuff that comes in a keg to which you hook up a keg coupler, gas, etc.

Or, if you're a drinker, it's the cold fizzy stuff that comes out of a tap, rather than a handpump.

So what are we to call products that merely satisfy the expectations of the brewers, retailers and drinkers, but fail to meet the definition adopted by the Real Ale campaigners?

6 comments:

Birkonian said...

We already have the answer to that one - 'Craft Beer'.

Unknown said...

Or what do we call the stuff that is actually in a keg, but is served through a handpull....

I'll have more on this later.....

Tandleman said...

Going to have to name names then Dave. No names, .o cred.

Rob Sterowski said...

With the amount of barely carbonated "cask" beer floating around chain pubs, I have no difficulty finding Dave's allegation plausible.

Ed said...

I think the real ale campaigners have definitions for them all. In early days of keg many were really casks with added fizz and this was 'beer served under top pressure'. Beer that's been racked off the sediment is called 'bright beer', so some 'craft' keg would be 'bright beer served under top pressure'. Other 'craft' keg being filtered and pasteurised would be called plain old 'keg beer'.

StringersBeer said...

"bright beer served under top pressure" isn't a definition. What's the term that this is defining? It's not a definition for the term "some craft beer" because that's not a term with a definable extension - except in a circular way. Which isn't a definition. Oh here we are again. Why have you got a carrot in your ear?