Two containers, two products

Keg and cask are not two sizes of the same thing — they are two different beers. Keg beer is filtered and pasteurised, then served under pressure: it is stable, forgiving, and pours the same on day one and day ten. Cask ale is live: it keeps conditioning in the vessel, which is where its character comes from, and it has a limited window once tapped.

Neither is better. They are different jobs, and your cellar has to be planned for the one each beer is doing.

What keg asks of you

A keg is a sealed vessel served with external gas — usually CO₂ or a mixed gas depending on the beer. The cellar work is mostly about temperature and hygiene:

• Store and serve cold, at the temperature the beer was brewed to be poured at.
• Keep lines clean on a schedule; a dirty line ruins a good beer faster than a bad one.
• Match the gas to the beer. A stout poured on the wrong mix pours wrong no matter what the cellar did right.

Kegs tolerate a busy week. If a line sits quieter than you expected, the beer in the keg does not know.

What cask asks of you

Cask asks for the opposite: it is not pushed by gas, it is drawn by hand pump or stillage tap, and it is alive in the cellar.

• It needs to settle after travel before it is tapped — moving a cask straight onto the pump pours cloudy.
• It has a drinking window once tapped, measured in days, not weeks.
• Temperature still matters: too cold and the yeast sleeps, too warm and it runs away from you.

The reward is the reason real-ale drinkers order it: a beer that finished its journey in your cellar, not in a brewery.

Planning the space

Most venues run both, and the cellar maths is unforgiving because kegs and casks do not stack the same way and do not rest the same way. Before you order, know three numbers: how many lines you actually pour from, how long a keg of each line lasts you in a normal week, and how much floor space a full week of stock takes. Ordering more cellar than you have space for is how full kegs end up stored warm — which wastes the money you just spent.

Ordering and empties

Whichever you pour, the logistics are the same on our side: order before 4pm and it travels on the next delivery day for your area, and empty kegs and returnable containers go back on the same run that delivered your full ones — have them at the door. A cellar that turns its empties on schedule is a cellar that never runs out of space.