Most beers have an ideal serving temperature, but as a general rule, the temperature at which to serve a beer is correlated to the strength of the beer. As beers go up in alcohol, they are generally drunk at a warmer temperature. This is because stronger beers often are sipped slowly, and enjoyed for their complexity of flavour and aroma while weaker beers are often consumed for refreshment.
Cask Ales
To experience all the smells and tastes that the brewer wants you to, cask ale must be dispensed at the correct temperature. If the beer is too warm unpleasant and unplanned aromas will be given off, too cold and the clean, fresh, vibrant tastes will be lost.
The recommended dispense temperature of the majority of brewers is between 11 – 13°C. Cask Marque audits to a required range of 10-14°C allowing a little leeway.
Some cask ales are meant to be dispensed at lower temperatures, particularly summer beers. These have been specially brewed in order that no chill haze ocurrs at temperatures where other cask ales might be affected.
Standard Lagers & Keg Products
Standard lagers and keg should be dispensed between 5 – 8°C.
Extra Cold Products
The trend these days is towards colder products and many pubs and bars will be using glycol cooling systems and flash coolers in order to dispense ‘extra cold’ products. These are normally dispensed between 0 – 5°C depending on the equipment.
Bottled Products
Bottled beers should be served at between 4 – 6°C.
You mention that bottled beers should be served at a much cooler temperature than cask ales but what about bottle conditioned British ales?
Ideally bottled beers should be stored half way between the two so about 8 degrees although most places don’t have the spare fridge space to sp this. There is also allowance depending on the style of the ale. A darker ale or porter should be to the warmer side.and then a light ale or ipa etc is better towards the 8 degrees mark. I am as picky with my cask ales. For example ill serve most ales at 11 but doom bar is one of a few I always dispence a couple degrees lower and it’s so quoffable. But it means having a separate Cooler for each beer. Hope this helps.
Hi can you please answer a question can we have fridges and freezers in our beer cellar to store food in? regards Pearl
Yes legally that’s acceptable but bare in mind that they produce a large amount heat and that will over work your coolers or lower cellar temp. Even one degree in a cellar can shorten beer life and disrupt at point of dispence. A barrel of beer produces a couple kilajules of energy when it does its secondary fermentation so you will already have heat generating in most cellars be for u even add a fridge. We have shelving for storing vegetables etc in our cellar but it’s not cold enough to legally store any other foods. Hope this helps.