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Speaking of lodges under the United Grand Lodge of England (see post below), a group of Masons in Worcestershire are starting to organize a lodge for real ale enthusiasts.
I told you about Lodge of St. Peter & Harmony 600 last year, and Cervisia Lodge 10032 and Horus Lodge 3155 and the Masonic Craft Beer Society the year before. The Provincial Grand Lodge of Worcestershire announced on its website Sunday that local brethren are seeking founding members of a Craft lodge for real ale lovers.
What is real ale? We Americans know nothing about it. The mass market diuretics here are pasteurized, homogenized, flavorless, watery frauds. The Beer Connoisseur says:
In traditional pubs in the U.K., patrons stroll up to the bar to select a beer. Along with offerings in bottles and cans, pubs will pour a range of draft lagers and ales. Most fine pubs will also showcase a row of peculiar, elongated, vertical tap handles that resemble billy clubs. These require the bartender to use a bit of muscle to pump the handle a couple of times to suction beer from the cellar up to the pint glass. These “hand-pulled” beers display colorful pump clip labels featuring eccentric names and artwork, and the unfiltered beer pours from a gooseneck spout with a soft, light CO2 sparkle. This quirky, historic English product is known as “real ale” or “cask ale.”
Fizzy draft or keg beer is filtered and pumped full of pressurized carbon dioxide gas, but real ale breweries in the U.K. usually put unfiltered, uncarbonated ale into 10.8-gallon metal casks called “firkins.” A hint of fermentable sugar and live yeast is included in the sealed firkin. Like a bottle of homebrew, the yeast consumes the residual sugar over a few days, producing a natural, subtle carbonation in the cask ale—making real ale a living product.
When the cask arrives at the pub, the cellar person places it in “stillage” position in the cool cellar. A cask in stillage is left horizontal and motionless for a couple of days, allowing the yeast to settle to the bottom and the beer to clarify. English casks are built with a “keystone” serving hole on one end and a larger opening in the center of the cask known as the “shive.” Plastic or wooden shive and keystone bungs get hammered into both openings to seal up the cask ale. Before serving, the cellar person hammers a small wooden peg or “spile” into a depression in the shive bung to monitor the level of CO2 in the ale. Lively casks are allowed to bubble and vent through the wooden spile for a few minutes or hours until the real ale achieves the perfect level of delicate carbonation.
Sounds great to me, and I don’t even drink any more. (I don’t drink any less, but I don’t drink any more!)
I notice mention above of the “keystone” apertures, so maybe a real ale chapter is in the future. Anyway, if you read the graphic above, you know as much as I about this project. To get involved email the brethren here.
