The sparkler debate is something I have observed with mild puzzlement for years. British real ale drinkers seem to feel very strongly about it, but whether they are in favour of it or against it seems largely to depend on their point of origin. The northern beer enthusiast tends to fall into the pro sparkler camp, while the southern ale aficionado will most likely consider it to be an abomination. There are logical arguments for and against the use of a sparkler, but I think the fact that there is a geographical divide tells us that there is more tradition and emotion at work here than logic.Before I go any further, I think, as this is an Irish blog, I had better give an overview of cask conditioned ale and explain exactly what a sparkler is and what it does. If you are familiar with how real ale is served and what role the sparkler plays, feel free to skip ahead.
Cask conditioned ale is a traditional British way of packaging and serving beer. The beer is served at cellar temperature (12C-14C) and rather than being pushed to a tap at the bar by pressurised carbon dioxide, as with keg beer, real ale is drawn up using a hand pump, know as a beer engine.
To package beer in a cask, you can either take beer which has not quite finished fermenting and fill the cask with it, or you can take finished beer, add sugar to it and fill the cask with that. Either way, the yeast in the unfiltered, unpasteurised beer will continue to ferment in the sealed cask, consuming the remaining sugars and carbonating the beer with natural carbon dioxide. The cask is then sent out to the pub, where it is allowed to rest and condition until it is ready for serving.
Once the pub c
ellarman judges the time is right, he taps a wooden peg, known as a spile, into a special spot on the cask, venting some of the gas, in order to get the carbonation level just right. A tap is then attached to another part of the cask, so that the beer can be tested and checked for clarity, before finally fitting the line for the beer engine. Because the beer is now exposed to air, it will go off if it is not served within the next few days.Cask conditioning was once the way beer was served in Ireland too, but a certain large brewery, which is now part of an even larger multinational, used it's market dominance and marketing prowess to persuade people that beer that has been pasteurised, had high pressure nitrogen gas forced into it and is then served from a keg under a nitrogen/carbon dioxide mix, is superior to the natural, living product they had been drinking (they now want us to believe that it is actually the same product generations of Irish people have been drinking, despite the fact that the process was only invented in the mid 20th century). The reason for the brewery to do this is that the shelf life of the product is extended and there is no cellarman skill required to tap a keg.
So what is a sparkler then?A sparkler (seen in action above. Photo shamelessly pinched from wikipedia) is a small piece of metal (or sometimes plastic) which attaches to the spout of a beer engine. It has several small holes in it, so that when the beer is pumped up from the cask, it is forced through the small holes, which causes gas to come out of solution. The settling process and creamy head which results will look rather familiar to stout drinkers and forces me to conjecture that, in the past, Ireland fell into the pro sparkler camp, as this is what the nitrogen keg process appears to be trying to mimic. Without the use of a sparkler the same beer will have little or no head.
My experience of sparklers has been pretty limited up until now. I did encounter them a few years a go when I was attending a course run by Brewlab in Sunderland, but I wasn't as familiar with cask beer as I am now and most of the real ale I have consumed since has been of the sparkler free southern persuasion. My recent trip to Liverpool for a meeting of the EBCU landed me back in sparkler territory and the difference was striking.
The creamy head and settling process put me in mind of nitrogenated stout, of which I am not a fan (I would rather a bottle, thank you) and the experience of drinking the resultant bitter was somewhat muted in flavour. I'm not saying that the beer was ruined in the same way as nitrogenation would have done (smooth flow * shudder*), just that the edge had been taken off it. I like my hops and the sharp bitterness I normally enjoy in cask bitter had been partially suppressed by the creamy head, which was enough to put me off.
So is that me in the anti sparkler camp now? Well, not really and here is why; bitter was not the only thing I drank while in Liverpool.
I have a soft spot for mild and have always liked porter (I'm an Irish beer geek, I have to know my stout). What I found was that the darker, more malt focused beers came out quite well. Where I sometimes find cask stout a little lifeless, the sparkler seemed to flesh it out quite nicely, but without the impenetrable cap of flavour killing nitrogen a nitro keg would have put on it. Fullers London Porter, which I have always enjoyed in the bottle, was delicious from a cask with sparkler, as was Wapping Stout. The milds fared well too, with the sparkler just adding a little something extra without killing any flavour.
So in conclusion, I think the sparkler can be a good thing, but only in the right beer. Hoppy bitter beers end up a little dull, which is a shame, but more malt forward beers seem to shine when the sparkler puts a creamy head on top. I think that more in depth investigation of this phenomenon is in order.
For more detail on our Liverpool trip and the beers experienced, have a look at TheBeerNut's Blog.
