Really interesting read, lends some credence to my dissatisfaction for cask ale (If I’m reading it correctly). It looks like a lot of cask ale is undercarbonated BEFORE serving. Granted, this all depends on the brewery, etc. but I typically don’t go to cask tapping events, so when you couple in the carbonation loss can be 27% after two days, no wonder cask ale in central IL is lackluster. To be fair, I’ve tried some in Hawaii, Colorado, and California and found the same thing. Any thoughts on this? Does this match with your experience?
Are you referring to an article in Zymurgy or somewhere else? Cask ale traditionally has low carbonation as it relies on secondary fermentation of the original wort for carbonation and because the cask could be served over several days.
Yes, I’m talking about the zymurgy article. The article indicates optimum carbonation levels (according to the author/Brewlabs) is 2 g/L or about 1 volumes, but there’s a lot of spread around that.