Irish craft beers served at lager temperatures leave a bad taste

On our latest visit to the Republic of Ireland, it was good to see the increased number of craft micro-breweries. Because of advances in microbiology, the quality and choice of malt and hops, sterile equipment, and accurate temperature control, the greatest beers are being produced today.

So why do the brewers meddle with the final product by filtering and serving at top pressure and at lager temperatures?

The result is the same as the gas-ridden, frozen keg beers that 40 years ago started a backlash UK consumer revolution. Neither do the pasteurised keg products of the national brewers offer any respite.

To those who think this presentation enhances the beer, let me say this: try taking a first-growth claret, filtering it, stuffing it full of CO2, freezing it and then giving it to the sommelier of one of Ireland’s top restaurants.

The word ‘craft’ implies quality, yet the way craft beers are served, with a penetrating, CO2 prickle and an anaesthetising serving temperature that destroys the palate, it would be quite possible to use hop pellets or other inferior ingredients.

Forty years ago, when the mega UK keg brewers were determined to annihilate traditional brewing, it was the micro and small, established brewers who, with great success, offered a cask conditioned (real ale) choice.

The great irony is that it is the Irish craft brewers who are denying that choice. Instead of offering a quality, cask beer alternative to the nationals, they have simply gone along with them.

There is nothing wrong in preferring keg to cask, but there is a great deal wrong in denying choice. There is now a proven demand for cask beer, which the Irish craft brewers could, but are failing to, address.

Cask beer has a limited shelf life and requires a commitment that keg beer does not, so keg is an easier option. But then, it is not by taking easy options that Irish cuisine has risen to the international standard it is now at — why should brewing lag behind?

The brewer’s art is not measured in terms of filtration, applied CO2, or palate-anaesthetising temperatures. It is measured in terms of the living, secondary fermenting cask-conditioned beer, served at its fermenting temperature, the unadulterated result of each brew.

I hope that the new Dublin Wetherspoons will, by their proven commitment to cask beer, sow the seeds of quality and choice now denied by the Irish brewing industry.

Keith Watkins,

West Midlands,

UK