The Evolution of Cask Bitter
A whole lotta cask handles in London in 2019.
A longstanding resolution I’ve held is to follow up on my Craft Beer & Brewing stories with more discussion here. I usually capture a ton of stuff I can’t fit in the article, and I often have comments that weren’t quite on topic for the article, but which deserve to be seen. I’ve obviously failed pretty miserably on this score so far, but let’s see if I can’t turn that around.
Let’s start with the most recent article to appear on the CBB website, Cask Bitter, Refreshed for the 21st Century. It’s a good place to start, because it’s a personal hobby horse of mine. In the piece, I start by posing a question that really functions as a way of describing the way people in the US and UK understand this style:
Tell me which of these two sentences rings most true, in your experience:
Cask bitter is a lovely but antiquated beer style that hasn’t changed much in the past 50 years and is, sadly, dying in its home country.
Cask bitter is a wonderful old tradition in Britain—more template than style—and is currently going through one of the most interesting evolutions in the world.
They’re both true, of course, but Americans have a particular blind spot about the British tradition. Take my home town as a case study. Cask ales are now a decent little side-business for breweries in town, and you can find something like two dozen places serving them, the majority of them breweries. I have yet to encounter a bitter poured on these engines that does not replicate the decades-old bitters represented by Timothy Taylor, Fuller’s, and—well, I almost wrote Harvey’s, but nobody makes a bitter like Sussex Best. Brits drink these beers, of course, but they have so many more options—ones that Americans either don’t know about or ignore.
For this piece, I turned to Pellicle’s Editor in Chief Matthew Curtis, just to make sure I hadn’t been dreaming about what I drank the last time I was there. He confirmed I was not insane.
“The majority of small breweries in the UK produce cask and there are a range doing exceptional things, from the traditional to the very modern …. The answer though, is yes, I think the end result of America's craft beer influence on the UK is that many of our most successful breweries have taken modern formulas and hop varieties and applied them to cask — so intensely aromatic beers that are still very drinkable and have accessible ABVs. Track's Sonoma is a wonderful example — Mosaic, Citra, 3.8%!”
For the CBB piece, I spoke to a few breweries about their approach to this “evolved” kind of brewing. It’s fascinating stuff because the breweries are not making American ales. They’re dealing with much lower-alcohol beers designed to be served a bit warmer and on cask. The beers are generally made with those fruity, traditional yeasts Americans appropriated for their hazy ales, so they have to work to balance the beers in a way that will neither cloy at 4% nor fall out of balance with an overly heavy blast of hops. To the drinker, the thing that’s different is the hops—they come perfumed with the scent of Citras or Motuekas, and have a more tropical or citrusy flavor profile than the old Fuggles-and-Goldings bitters. To achieve that simple effect, however, breweries must reformulate their bitters, not just add more hops.
Malt and Yeast
How do they do this? Matt Dutton pointed out some interesting techniques Track uses. “Over the last decade theres been a distinct move away from crystal and caramel malt which might have been used historically, although they still have their place in more traditional bitters & milds,” he wrote me. “For the smaller beers down at that sessionable ABV we aim for a high mash temp, around 72c (162f) to give a finishing gravity around 1.018 (4.5p). This helps get some body in the beer and pack a bit more malt flavour in there, whilst also giving the hops something hang off.”
When Americans try to make low-ABV hoppy ales, they don’t really get that whole malt deal. It’s always been the soul of cask bitters, and English breweries are extremely picky about not just their malthouse, but the barley variety as well. The balance of traditional bitters is a complex one, with malt, hops, and yeast all playing a role (and commonly, water as well). Disrupt that by adding more hops, and you have to adjust it on the malt side, too.
Marble’s Joe Ince takes a more traditional approach, which makes sense, because Marble is a more traditional craft-era brewery that is known for its wonderful bitters. “The malt plays quite a crucial role especially when combined with flavour from the yeast. We look to use a base malt with some character but not overwhelmingly so usually a combination of a Best Ale or Maris Otter and a base pale malt. We have experimented with some lager malts but find they don't quite offer the character or texture were looking for from here we build with special malts.”
(As an editorial comment, I’d add that the British malts give the beer a richer flavor profile that works well both with new-world hops and the lower-intensity nature of the style. In the recipe Joe gave to CBB, he suggests a slightly warmer mash (152/67) than for traditional bitters (I mostly found them mashing at 149/65) to help balance the hops.)
I promise we’ll get to the hop side of things—it’s what really makes these beers taste “modern”—but it’s important to understand that you can’t just toggle the hop lever and call it good. I also spoke to Cloudwater’s Paul Jones for the piece. He takes us to our next ingredient.
“Yeast is by far the most important ingredient in bitter. It’s what makes someone a fan of JW Lees, but not so much of Holts, or a fan of Holts but not so much Harvey’s. Whilst there’s wonderful variation in malt characteristics and hop profiles, the yeast sets out in some cases the majority of the flavour profile, and certainly becomes a significant point of differentiation.”
I met Paul the first time in San Francisco, by chance. He was doing a tour of the West Coast to learn about those American hops. Later, I visited Cloudwater in Manchester, where they were starting to experiment with old English yeast varieties in their hazy IPAs. JW Lee’s has a wonderful, aldehyde-producing strain and was collaborating with Cloudwater. I don’t know how that turned out, but yeast is a big deal in Manchester.
Track
Marble
Hops
In some ways, this is the easy part. Americans know how to coax gorgeous flavors and aromas from their homegrown hops. Dutton confirms the American sense of the process—with one caveat.
“Hopping on these beers for us has moved to a more IPA-led technique, with whirlpooling at 176/80 at around 6grams per liter. Historically we had been using whole cone for this and when we can we still do. The additional polyphenols and green matter from the whole cone hops helps boost mouthfeel and makes everything seem fuller. This is then supported by a smaller dry hop of 4g/L at terminal gravity to help lift the aroma.The recent influx of new hop varieties from New Zealand the US have given huge amounts of scope for experimentation with new aromas and combinations.”
He added one trick for arriving at this balance I’ll pass along. “It’s a formula that I believe can help get a good bitter recipe started: the ABV, OG, and IBU are all the same number. 3.5%, 1.035 OG, 35 IBU.” That seems like pretty stiff hopping, but you could give it a shot.
We come back to where we started, with balance. If American breweries ever make these juicier cask ales, they need to remember that their nature hasn’t changed, and depends on delicacy and balance. They are still bitters. To that point, Cloudwater’s Jones adds:
“It’s too easy to approach all beers from a modern hoppy-brewing perspective with the sense that more is always more. In the case of traditional styles like bitter, it is absolutely necessary to operate with restraint. Overly hopped beer that may have been intended to be bitter quite quickly becomes something more akin to modern pale ale, and loses its balance of any intended malt flavour, yeast character (arguably the defining characteristic that pits one traditional Bitter against another), and hop flavour and bitterness.”
We’re going to go out with Joe Ince, who adds to Jones’ point.
“Honestly with this we sort of have a two pronged philosophy: a holistic approach where the combination of ingredients should outweigh the sum of those things separately. And in a basic way less is more. Over the last half century the science hasn't really changed but we do understand it a lot more. We use pretty much all new world hops but you can't dry hop a 3.8% 1.010 SG beer at 10g/L—there's just nothing there to hold the hop flavour. So instead, make smart choices with what hops your going to use and when in the process you want to add them. Look for harmony and balance: hops are crucial but they can't stand alone in this style of beer.”
Now consider this a call to action, my American friends. Go brew some classic British bitter, but don’t scrimp on the Citra.