If you clicked on the title of this article hoping for tips about how to make beer part of your low carbohydrate diet, I promise that you’re in for something far tastier. No, we’re not discussing low carbohydrate ale, but rather low carbonation ale.
Americans have been known to comment that beer in Britain is served warm and flat, but this is an exaggeration. First of all, if you order a pint of lager in the sceptered isle, rest assured that it will be every bit as cold and fizzy as you’ve come to expect here in the former colonies. But, if you order a pint of bitter, or any other real ale, you’ll receive 20 ounces of cellar temperature (55°F/13°C) ale that has roughly 40 percent as much carbonation as light American lagers. For sure, it’s neither super fizzy nor ice cold, but it is not warm and flat.
Ales in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland are traditionally cask conditioned. This means that a dose of priming sugar is introduced into the keg (typically a 10-gallon firkin) before it is sealed with a stopper. Yeast remaining in suspension naturally carbonates the ale over a period of a few days, just as homebrewers naturally carbonate ale in bottles.