Bottle-Conditioned Beer
Most Cheddar Ales are available in 500ml bottles. These are available from many shops, and from the brewery itself. To maintain our high standards of quality and the subtlety of flavour in our beers, we produce them bottle-conditioned.
What's the difference?
Many breweries, even those producing cask-conditioned beers, will filter a beer and artificially add carbon dioxide when it comes to bottling their products. This process strips a beer of a lot of its character and, strictly speaking, the final product can no longer be described as 'real ale'.
Here at Cheddar Ales we like to do things properly. We want our bottled beers to taste just as good as our cask-conditioned ones and so we bottle-condition.
Bottle-conditioning involves adding yeast and sugar to every bottle so that the fermentation process will continue after bottling. The yeast will work on turning the sugar to alcohol, all the while producing carbon dioxide to give the beer condition. This process will also continue to improve the overall flavour, just like cask-conditioning does.
Please note that, as a result of bottle-conditioning, our bottled products do contain slightly more alcohol than the cask-conditioned versions (generally 0.2% ABV).
Serving Bottle Conditioned Ale
Take care when serving our bottled beers - they are alive! They contain active yeast still hard at work improving the flavours. For maximum enjoyment you should:
- Allow the yeast to settle by storing the bottle in an upright position
- Refrigerate the bottle upright until it is chilled, but not cold (10-12°C)
- Pour your ale carefully into a glass leaving the settled yeast in the bottle