We want you to enjoy your beer as much as you would at the pub so here are a few pointers which may help especially as we are experiencing some glorious warm and sunny weather:
We’ve handled your beer with care and if you do too you will enjoy a characterful pint.
Below are some notes from the brewer himself (he’s a scientist you know!). Essentially the message is keep it cool and keep it steady. Not too warm and not too chilled. (Garage is perfect)
If anything unclear just ping us a message and we’ll respond as soon as we can but please be mindful we are a small team responding to challenging times and are very busy.
Stay safe everyone and enjoy the ‘holiday’ weekend.
From all at Bishop Nick
All the minicasks, polypins, minipins, and most of our bottled ale are living products – it has not been filtered to remove the yeast, which continues to slowly digest the residual malt sugars left in the beer after the primary fermentation has finished. Yeast cells behave like humans, if they feel cold they go to bed and hibernate, but in warmer conditions they wake up and start feeding on the sugars, converting them to more alcohol and crucially carbon dioxide.
If you keep your beer unopened at 20 degrees or more, it will become quite gassy and will ultimately have a drier, thinner mouthfeel (loss of malt sugars). This is not a huge problem but your beer won’t be as perfect as I’d like it to be.
The big problems will arise if you allow air to get to your overly warm beer. Air is the enemy to good beer as it allows the aerobic bacteria Acetobacter to thrive, which slowly turns your beer sour. This is not a problem for your bottles, and shouldn’t be an issue for the polypins and minipins (they have a collapsable bag which prevents air ingress), but it is an issue for the minicasks as they behave like a normal cask – every time you draw a pint of beer from it, a pint of air is drawn into the cask to replace the lost volume.
The process of acetification is accelerated by warmth. In warm weather it is always better to keep your beer too cold than too warm. I must stress this is only my opinion – I don’t take too much notice of instructions not to store things in the fridge as your beer will come to no harm and it will extend it’s life.
Just remember to take your bottle out the fridge 20 minutes or so before you drink it as beer loses it’s flavour at less than 10 degrees.
The mini-casks can also be stored in the fridge, if you don’t have space, just take out the non-essentials (like salad, vegetables etc).
You may find temperatures less than 6 degrees causes a chill haze to develop (it’s just protein, don’t worry about that – it’ll disappear if you let the pint warm up, it’s because we don’t filter our beer).
If you have a garage or shed, keep your minipins, minicasks and polypins there as the cool nights and warm days will keep your beer at an average temperature of 13 or 14.
Bottles can be stored at room temperature, but if you like a cooler pint, pop in it in the fridge an hour or so before serving.
If you want your minicask to keep for longer than three days after opening, you’ll need to keep it cool, but really I’d hope you’d have polished it all off by then 😉
