Madison's First Microbrewery

We eastsiders here in Madison are finally getting a brew pub and the city is finally getting its first "true" microbrewery - the Ale Asylum. More from the Crap Times here. An excerpt:

"We'll be the only true microbrewery in Madison," said Dean Coffey, the award-winning brewmaster at the Angelic Brewing Company who recently left the downtown brew pub.

Coffey is teaming with another ex-Angelic employee, Otto Dilba, in launching the Ale Asylum. The pair has put together a small group of local investors - including several members of the non-profit Madison Homebrewers & Tasters Guild - and have leased 7,800 square feet of space at 3698 Kinsman Blvd. near the MATC campus.

One side effect of this is that the Angelic will stop brewing its own beer. Oh well. At least they'll still serve quality suds. Now, I wonder if the Asylum will be serving real ales.

With a brewery conditioned or keg beer, the aim is to produce a product with a long shelf life, which is ready to drink as soon as it leaves the brewery. The conditioning in the brewery is completed, the beer is chilled and filtered to remove all the yeast, and pasteurised to make a sterile product. The beer is put into a sealed metal container, the keg.

These processes have a profound effect on the beer. Filtration and pasteurisation remove flavour and character from the product, and pasteurisation adds distinctive flavours of its own - a sort of burnt sugar flavour. These processes also remove the natural carbon dioxide in the beer. In order to make the beer lively, and also to dispense it, the beer is made fizzy with excess carbon dioxide - this gives the beer a distinctive bite. Keg beers are generally served very cold to disguise the taste, or lack of it. Some beers such as Guinness and the so-called nitrokeg beers do not use carbon dioxide alone, but a mix of this and nitrogen gas. This produces a creamier and less fizzy beer, and tends to produce a distinctive head. However nitrokeg beers still undergo the sterilising processes which prevent the beer attaining its full flavour potential. Indeed, nitrogen tends to eliminate bitterness, making for a blander product still. (Nitrokegs are also called smoothflow, creamflow, cream ales and similar names.) All canned beers, all draught keg beers, most bottled beers, and nearly all draught lagers undergo these processes. ...and real ale

There is a clear contrast with real ale. Real ale is a living fresh beer that undergoes a natural second fermentation in the cask. Like any natural product, the beer will age and go off, and therefore must be drunk within a strict timescale. It requires care in handling on its way to the pub, and care within the pub to bring it to perfection. However, real ale can reach its full flavour potential, without filtration, pasteurisation and added gas.

The difference starts in the brewery. Real ale is put in casks, which nowadays are usually metal but a few brewers still use wood. A small dose of sugar is added to encourage further fermentation and some beers are dry-hopped - a fistful of hops is added, to produce an extra dose of aroma. Finings are also added to the beer before it is sent to the pub. This is a glutinous substance made from the swimbladders of fish. Finings sink through the beer, attracting particles of yeast, until the beer is clear. This natural process ensures an attractive product without needing to filter and remove flavour. Finings are not actually drunk, remaining in the sediment, nor do they alter the flavour. The cask is now sealed, and will be transported to the pub for the next stage of its life. We have described a generally traditional brewery. There can be differences with more modern plant. Rather than using open fermentation tanks, some brewers used sealed conical vessels. Some brewers use a liquid extracted from hops rather than the whole flowers - generally with inferior flavour. However, providing the end ale is allowed to undergo its secondary fermentation in the cask, it is still cask conditioned beer, real ale.