On Food and Cooking

The Different Flavor of Beer on Tap
Bottled and canned beers and ales are
generally cold stabilized and pasteurized
(at 140–160ºF/60–70ºC) to survive extreme
temperatures during shipping and storage,
while keg beers, which are kept
refrigerated continuously, may not be. This
is why bottle and keg versions of the same
beer can taste very different. However,
even keg beer is a world apart from the
traditional cask-conditioned beer. Keg beer
has been cleared of all its yeast before the
keg is filled, while in cask conditioning,
the new beer and the yeast that will help
mature it are sealed together in the cask.
Cask-conditioned beer is thus in contact
with yeast until the moment it’s dispensed,
and its flavor reflects this. Cask beer is
fragile and has a drinkable life of about a
month, compared with three months for
keg beer.
Lagering The conditioning process for