The weather is warm so seal those casks up

Through winter when there aren’t as many flies, wasps, slugs and snails about it isn’t so bad. Casks that are sealed up after being used are great. Though the ones that aren’t sealed will fester away with all the bugs and microbes in the air to create some truly horrible dregs.

The photo above is a tiny fraction of the disgusting slop that empties out of unsealed casks, it makes a sort of putrid bio-slime which we used to refer to as ‘Afterbirth’ not the nicest use of the word admittedly. This weeks dirty cask washing hasn’t been bad but last weeks were the exact opposite and I doubt Writer Howard Overman or Ryan Reynolds could come up with a better description than ‘it’s like slimer from Ghostbusters was eating turds while simultaneously jazzing into his own turd vomit’!
The worst casks we’ve ever had back I could only describe their ‘aroma’ as Old Arse Turnip – Grim! They literally took weeks of washing and soaking to bring back to clean beer standards.

Get the picture?!

Things to seal casks up with:

• Pegs and Corks – usually supplied by the bigger beer distros and brewers
• Duct Tape – or any sticky tape really, stick it over the holes
• Blue Roll / Paper Towels – I think we all have something similar to blue roll in the Pub and Brewery sector, ram a wad of it in the holes
• Cardboard – roll it up and wedge it in the cask holes
• A bit of plastic bag – Same as the cardboard, screw it up and wedge in the cask holes

All brewers thank you for sealing up their casks after use. It stops flies breeding and doesn’t stink.

We try really hard to ensure our casks are thoroughly clean and smell good, with a visual check along with a sniff test, before fresh beer is put back in them. Dirty casks are all cleaned at the end of a week, jet washed externally, rinsed and caustic washed. This helps us limit the amount of beer flies that enter the brewery and we wouldn’t want our neighbours to complain of flies etc. Then on cask filling day the casks are washed again in hot Caustic and thoroughly rinsed and checked before filling.

We wrote about this before here.