I was a little late to the Cloudwater launch of 5 differently hopped cask beers at the Beard Friendly Pub of the Year, the Cock Tavern in central Hackney.
I wont comment therefore on the individual beers since by the time I tasted several they would not have been in just tapped peak condition. That said the ones I did try (in halves) were perfectly drinkable.
The wider interest aside from Cloudwater continuing to develop interesting angles on cask beer is that this was very much Beyond Boring Brown Beer as we used to know it.
The beers were brown but thanks to decent amounts of different hops they tasted of something (to one’s taste or not depending on the particular beer).
At £3.90 a pint in London they were priced for pint drinking although at 5% one might wonder how many pints?! Even so it underlines what I sense is a drift back to the idea that drinking sessionable(ish) beers in pints is one area where good craft beer should aim to be. That also means to some extent cask served at 12C. Drinking chilled beer in pints takes times even for seasoned lager drinkers
While the style of the Cloudwater beers was very much classic cask bitter the strength was at that of an ESB (Extra Special Bitter). That obviously gave the beer more depth and body than if it was 3.5%. Perhaps this is a workable future for cask beer…
Even so hats off to Cloudwater for doing something interesting with cask beers, something craft beers in other formats have been up to for a good while
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