When did cold, carbonated beer become the standard, and was there pushback? | Hacker News Reader

When did cold, carbonated beer become the standard, and was there pushback?

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59 pointsthunderbong46 comments

I have an English uncle who grew up around the time lager became the go to beer in England. He drinks a variety of beers these days including ales and lagers, but when he was young only drank lager.

Many years ago I asked him why he switched to drinking larger when he was younger, and his answer boiled down to consistentcy/quality.

Ale in England is pumped by hand into a pint glass, with a quaintly named beer engine, from a cask (not keg). The casks are open, so each unit of beer extracted is replaced in the cask with air. This means many opportunities for infection and oxidation of the beer so it goes off very quickly, and the lines between the cask and the engine need frequent cleaning.

This is expensive and time consuming, so bad pubs often push it as long as they can before doing it, or often just let it go bad. I've been to one pub where I tried every ale and they were all off.

Back when my uncle was drinking in the 60s and 70s he found this very common, so ordering a pint of ale often meant you might get a bad beer.

Lager is in a keg which is CO2 pressurised, so any larger removed is replaced with CO2 this helps keep it drinkable for much longer. The CO2 overpressure is what forces it out of the keg, so it's served from a tap not an engine.

Ale isn't pressurised with CO2 as it has low carbonation, so using pressure to force it out would also carbonate it further and change the product. So that can't be used to extend its life. You can get a soft spile to put in the literal hole in the top of a cask, that keeps flies out, but still air flows in. There are devices called cask breathers that would replace the beer removed with a blanket of atmospheric pressure CO2 so no further carbonation, but much improved life of the beer. CAMRA in the UK fought hard against these as they claim ale needs some O2 to mature (maybe breathing like a wine). I think they fought too hard, harming ale sellers and drinkers. I don't know what their contemporary opinion on them are.

You left out a couple of things here. One is that ale can also be served from keg, and commonly is, so the cask version is often known as "real ale". Guinness, for example, is a keg ale that uses nitrogen to mimic the mouthfeel of real ale.

The main thing, though, is that cask ale is easily the best form of beer that there is, when it's not off. Something about the sparkling freshness of beer that just finished fermenting in the cask, the cellar-cool temperature, and the low CO2 just makes for an incredible taste experience. Most beer goes downhill from the moment it leaves the brewery, but cask ale is at the very height of perfection the moment the cellarman puts it on. Well-kept cask ale is simply the best thing there is.

Interestingly, the best way to drink lager is in Bavaria, from wooden barrels, with low CO2 and relatively warm. It's not quite as sophisticated as real ale, because there's no life in the barrels, but it's still great.

That’s interesting, I have no idea where I’d even find cask ale in the US. Been drinking beer enthusiastically for years and never heard of it.

I went around Oregon in 2008 and it seemed every beer bar (like brewery taps and specifically beer themed, not just a regular bar) had a single beer engine, usually with some local real ale on it.

I've seen a few in NYC, usually Williamsburgy areas. Beer festivals might have a cask or two as well.

Otherwise I've very rarely seen it in the US.

Ken Jennings has a podcast. It's excellent. (PS: Ken is hilarious. PPS: Ken says some pretty dumb stuff in the episode I'm about to mention. It's still excellent—both the podcast and the episode.) Ken's cohost brought to the show in the most recent episode, Entry 615.PS14717 of the Omnibus, the topic of the ice trade. In it they mention cold beer originally being, like many fruits, a seasonal thing. (I was sure when I saw the topic that this episode is what motivated the submission. Guess not.)

On the other hand, Meredith Burgess did a WWII-era training film for US troops called Welcome to Britain where part of it is spent explaining how to behave in a British pub. Notable for his admonishing to the viewer that, "The beer isn't cold in England. No, they don't like it cold—and they haven't any ice, so if you like beer, you better like it warm."

Burgess Meredith*

https://youtu.be/SyYSBBE1DFw?feature=shared

Very cool. Beer section is at the beginning.

Even with no additional processing, beer is naturally carbonated through the fermenting process - the CO2 is a byproduct of the yeast. It's similar to champagne which, at its most basic, is just wine where the CO2 isn't allowed to escape, such as because of being in a bottle - which led to the famous, and not entirely historically accurate, anecdote of champagne being discovered because of bursting bottles of wine in a monastery cellar.

>similar to champagne which, at its most basic, is just wine where the CO2 isn't allowed to escape, such as because of being in a bottle

"similar" and "at it's most basic" is hiding the accurate difference between champagne and still wine. To make champagne, the sugar in the grapes is fermented to make wine, just exactly like wine is made. At this point almost all the sugar is gone, and the carbon dioxide is also gone. That wine, called vin clair (for a blanc de blanc we are talking about a delicious glass of chardonnay) is then put into bottles and more sugar is added, called "the dosage" (it's french, pronounce it like corsage), and now this extra sugar is fermented by the yeast in the bottle and the CO2 from this extra fermentation is captured in the bottle and makes the wine fizzy.

This is exactly how homebrewers carbonate bottles of home made beer. We call it "priming", and you get special spoons that measure an exact amount of sugar per bottle, or sugar candies that you can pop into each bottle.

There are formulae that you can use to calculate the amount of sugar required to achieve a desired amount of carbonation.

The main point was, "carbonated" vs. "CO2 from the yeast", and neither beer nor champagne are carbonated.

    carbonate
    /ˈkɑːbəneɪt/
    verb
      dissolve carbon dioxide in (a liquid).

> more sugar is added, called "the dosage"

A dosage is added at the very end of production, but this is to already fizzy wine to sweeten it for the market, and leads to the classification like brut (dry) or doux (sweet).

"During the bottling process, the winemaker adds the liqueur de tirage (a sweet blend of 1 kg of cane or beet sugar per liter of old wine), which initiates the second fermentation period lasting for 6-8 weeks." [0]

You can get champagne with no dosage, usually called extra brut, that is very dry.

[0] https://www.pernod-ricard.com/en/media/champagne-production-...

Pushback? In the UK at least there's CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale) -- it was founded in 1971:

https://camra.org.uk

Real ale is wonderful, I highly recommend it to anyone visiting the UK. I wish it were more common in the US.

Bitter was the one thing in the UK that I wish I could get here (Australia). You can get London Pride in Melbourne, but they keep it refrigerated like a standard lager, so the flavour is off. There really is nothing quite like it.

Interesting… does it not come back to life when warm?

That's the point. It finishes the last bit of fermentation in the cask in the pub, so what you get served is at absolute top condition. At least initially. That, with the low CO2 and the relative warmth, makes for an experience that's completely superior to cold, carbonated beer. But you have to get used to it.

Bottled bitter is better booted off the shelf. Tap only, thanks.

The US has one of the most well developed craft beer industries on the planet. If you look a bit, there's lots of great beers to be had.

('Real ale' is fine, though I usually prefer Central European styles like Lambic, Gose, Lichtenhainer, flanders red ale, etc. There are American breweries doing these styles nowadays, too.)

I quite like Jester King, they are from Texas.

Craft beer yes, but is it not cold? In traditional hand pump draft way, the temperature is far higher than anything you would get outside the UK, about 13C.

CAMRA's definition of real ale has nothing to do with temperature and is more about live yeast in the final product.

It's still much warmer than craft beer.

Huh? Different beers (craft or otherwise) are best served at different temperatures.

There's no single craft beer, and no single temperature at which this non-existent single beer would be served best.

You would want to drink a (craft) lager colder than a (craft) stout or the Duchesse de Bourgogne.

I've also had mulled beer (think like mulled wine, but with beer; a slightly sour fruit beer in this case, with spices added; but there are all kinds of recipes). And that was served hot, on a cold winter's day.

When I drink craft beer at home, I stick the bottle or can in my own fridge. I control the temperature of that.

As for draft when drinking out: how finely they control the temperature (and whether they take different beer styles into account), depends entirely on how fancy the place is.

> The US has one of the most well developed craft beer industries on the planet.

It absolutely does. And those beer styles you mention are also very good. But cask ale is still better.

Lambic and Flanders red ale are not central European, btw.

Well, it depends whether you count Belgium as Central Europe or not. But it's just a question of definition, not very interesting.

> But cask ale is still better.

Do you mean cask ales as just ales that are in a cask, or something special?

You know what, fair enough. There's definitely places near me that serve all of those, as well as cask ale, but you do have to look for them.

I guess what I meant is, as an American who loves stouts and cask ale, I really enjoyed the common beer styles in the UK. (And the food was pretty good too)

Yes, the average British pub has perhaps slightly better beer than the average American (or definitely average Australian pub).

But if you look a bit, you can find much better options on both sides of of the pond.

There's a widespread belief in the UK that you can't get real beer in the US, which is totally wrong. It's everywhere now.

Correspondingly, there's a widespread belief in the US that you can't get decent food in the UK, and that's also wrong. I've found lots of excellent food there.

The first time I tasted beer in college, I was surprised to discover it's carbonated. I wasn't aware, and wasn't expecting that. It's still kind of weird and annoying to me, and I prefer beer like Guiness where the carbonation is less pronounced.

Those silky smooth bubbles in your Guinness are nitrogen

Do they do they in craft stouts too? I find those to be silky.

A lot of them have nitrogen, here's a pretty good list https://www.mensjournal.com/food-drink/nitro-beers

I had a roommate from Mongolia who disliked beer with carbonation. I never understood the full story of why but he said it was better flat. He would show up with a sixpack, dispense half each can into Gatorade bottles, then shake them and leave them out for a few hours to go completely flat.

The carbonation in Guinness is a blend of CO2 and Nitrogen which creates the different bubbles. Some beers are carbonated in different ways and have a different feeling.

My father when he was younger knew a brewery owner who before bed each night would pop open a fresh beer and set it on his night stand, then when he woke up in the morning drank and enjoyed his flat room temperature beer. Apparently did it every day for atleast 40 years.

In the winter in northern China beer is served room temperature, in a bucket of steaming hot water [1].

[1] https://photos.app.goo.gl/oSEqPzyLGXGMw83Y8

The depressing thing is that this is lager which is (imho of course) awful is not very cold; many ales are fine though. I had many meals in Shanghai in summer accompanied by a warm Tsingtao and everyone around me drinking it with pleasure while I switched to tea.

But, Tsingtao is one of the very few (non-bitter) beers that tastes great at room temperature. (My 0,02€.) Did you at least give it a try ?

Many times! I like the beer but over 6C I don’t really like it…

I was watching Inspector Morse recently for the first time and modern beer was something the character was against. I'd never heard of the history really, so ended up reading this entire Wikipedia article on Beer in England, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_in_England, enjoyed the read.

At a quick skim that doesn't seem to mention that the main reason it was a staple for everybody, including children. It's because it was safer than water. The water it's made from is boiled eliminating any funkiness, and by the end the alcohol it has in it makes it inhospitable to said funkiness. By contrast stagnant water is a breeding ground for all sorts of stuff you generally wouldn't want to consume.

Isn’t that mainly a myth some people on the internet are very adamant about repeating for some reason?

> The water it's made from is boiled eliminating any funkiness, and by the end the alcohol it has in it makes it inhospitable to said funkiness

Except ale produced at home goes bad very fast. In the middle ages it basically had to be consumed on premise/same village and couldn’t be transported anywhere. Also it’s a wonderful and nutritious environment for bacteria to spread. The alcohol content is generally much too low to affect this.

It's definitely not a myth, but a lot of earlier beers might not really be recognizable to many as beer today. I have not made ale, but I've been making kvass [1] for years - which may have been much closer to what was "beer" in the past. I find it extremely curious your ale goes bad so quickly, because kvass takes ~48 hours to produce and lasts for at least months, though it becomes more alcoholic and more flat over time, which gives a less pleasant flavor but simultaneously would also make it even more tolerant against bacteria and such.

But back to beer, by the late Midages it had already even started to become a significant international trade good in many places, which wouldn't really work if it was just spoiling. Similarly in the Age of Sail (and probably before) it was also a typical ration on board ships, which again doesn't really work without very substantial longevity.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kvass

I came across a comment on HN a few weeks ago linking to a different post in this subreddit, but apparently this myth is confirmed and even has a FAQ entry in AskHistorians

https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/vfaq#wiki_middle... (Middle Ages, subsection Health and Hygiene)

The other post I cannot find right now was much more detailed than the faq links, but I can’t seem to find it again using HN search

> extremely curious your ale goes bad so quickly

Not mine. Medieval ale didn’t have any hops in it (it didn’t become widespread until the 1400/1500s in some countries like England) so its shelf life was shorter

> It's definitely not a myth

Why do you think so?

Beyond what I've mentioned? You can find reference, both direct and indirect, to the casual consumption of what we call beer everywhere. For instance even in the Old Testament, look at Isaiah 1:22: "Your silver has become dross, Your drink diluted with water." The Bible imposes countless prohibitions on alcohol but exclusively on "wine" and "strong drink". And that's from the 8th century BC. But we can actually go even much further back. For instance Egyptian workers working on the pyramids received rations of about 5 liters of beer per day. [1]

You can also find the preservation of a certain type of mentality all the way to modern times. In many places, including Russia and Sweden at the minimum, many alcoholic beverages (like kvass) are not age restricted at all, because they're not considered an alcoholic drink in the normal connotation of such. Here's [2] also a nice quote from an 18th century book: "For the drink of the more robust children water is preferable, and for the weaker ones, small beer."

There is overwhelming evidence for beer as a normal staple throughout most of all history, and for people of all ages and stations.

[1] - https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/5000-year-old-pay-st...

[2] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_beer#History

In 1870.

Because that's when the refrigerator was invented.

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