Bottling from cask

[markw]

I heard a brewer a while back say that he was going to tap a cask and put it into bottles, to meet demand for bottles of that beer. Assuming that the cask had been primed, how would you go about that? Would you vent and put a a tap in, and fill bottles and cap them? Would there be enough carb in the beer in the bottle to give a good experience when opening up the bottle at a later date?

[McMullan]

Assuming that the cask had been primed, how would you go about that? Would you vent and put a a tap in, and fill bottles and cap them?

How else are you planning to do it? You're essentially considering using a cask as a settling/bright vessel and a conditioning vessel. When you bottle, re-priming is going to be required. The end product is going to be bottle conditioned, not cask conditioned. If you want bottle conditioned ale, let the ale go bright in a secondary vessel (a cask is fine) then bulk prime in a bottling bucket and, well, bottle. Otherwise you're plan involves priming twice, for no apparent reason. It's going to take longer too, priming twice

[markw]

I wasn't really asking for doing it myself I was just wondering what this brewer was doing ie him deciding to tap a cask to put the beer into bottles as there was a demand for bottles (and presumably not a demand for the cask). You can take a takeaway plastic key to a beer festival and have the beer put into the takeaway cask and take it home and drink it later that day, and the beer will be fine. But if you were to pour the beer from the cask into a bottle and cap it, what would the beer be like a few weeks later?? I'm guessing not as carbonated as if the beer was put straight from the FV into the bottle and primed with sugar so it would taste quite different to beer bottled that way.

[McMullan]

If s/he (the brewer) doesn't re-prime, demand for their bottled ale is likely to decline too. It might be that they only have access to casks and do, in fact, re-prime. Without doing so, the ale is likely going to be crap a few weeks later. 'Craft' brewer?

[Fil]

imho without flushing out the bottles with co2, repriming, and prechilling the cask prior to tapping/bottling well below optimum serving temp any cask/bottled beers would be good for a day or 2 perhaps a week at most.

a quick n 'dirty' tap n bottle without any other conditions would be a solution to provide bottles for immediate consumption only.

sure sounds like a 'craft' concept..

[Yorkie]

I suspect the brewer may be counter pressure filling their bottles with the already conditioned beer from the cask.
Obviously with little help from some co2 to push it out.......is my guess.

[YeastWhisperer]

One can bottle cask-conditioned beer without priming in the bottle. I do it all of the time with keg and cask-conditioned beer. It is a little bit easier with kegged beer. The bottles have to be placed in one's freezer until they are cold enough for frost to form when they are removed from one's freezer. With a soda keg, I use a picnic tap with a piece of racking cane inserted into it to fill each bottle. With a cask, the cask needs to laid on its side and a spigot needs to be used (one could probably get away with a beer engine as long as sparkler is not affixed to it). A short piece of plastic tubing is placed over the spigot and inserted into a bottle. Because the bottles are so cold, CO2 remains in solution long enough to capped. A counter-pressure bottle filler is nice, but not absolutely necessary when the bottles are freezing cold.