Western pour

[west1m]

In the old western movies , a lot of beer gets poured. How did they do it? Gas in a keg would be gone ( in the wagon before it got there) after a couple pours. Were there CO2 bottles and regulators? Did they put the kegs upstairs and use gravity? Must have been tasty out in the desert with no modern refrigeration.
I guess that is why you see a lot of whiskey drinkers.

 

[Brew Cat]

thats Hollywood
actually they drank more whiskey and the beer would have been served cask style or kellerbier except in the cities where they had refrigeration
and those big explosions of foam would to me say infection

 

[Craigerrr]

Prior to Western pours, how would they have poured from the casks they sent on the tall ships? You know when they unwittingly invented one of the most popular beer styles ever (or at least one of the most popular styles today)?

 

[J A]

Traditional cask beers are pumped by hand, sometimes through a restrictor plate that will produce a foamy head.

 

[Hawkbox]

Probably depended on whether or not they had access to a cellar too. It would at least cool the beer some.

 

[Josh Hughes]

Pretty sure case style. Barrel and best in a spigot. Like you see when they start Oktoberfest each year. My guess at least.

 

[Brew Cat]

did they have beer in the old west

copy and paste the above phrase in your Google search bar for many interesting facts

 

[west1m]

did they have beer in the old west

copy and paste the above phrase in your Google search bar for many interesting facts

That brings a lot of interesting articles.

 

[BarbarianBrewer]

I wouldn't see why not. There would have been farmers growing grain and the European immigrants would have brought brewing knowledge and the yeast(?) with them. The German immigrants to Mexico learned to adapt to the climate there so I'm sure they did the same in the warmer climates in the US as well.

 

[Brew Cat]

You realize the "old west" was not that long ago in brewing history

 

[Donoroto]

Old West. Is that what we’re calling the OP now?

 

[west1m]

I resemble that remark.

 

[Ward Chillington]

From the Oxford:

"A version of the beer engine was patented by the prolific British inventor, locksmith, and hydraulic engineer Joseph Bramah in 1797. The modern beer engine has changed little since the early 1800s; it consists of a simple piston attached to a long, sturdy handle. Check valves assure that beer flows only in one direction, up from cask to glass. Traditionally, all beer engine parts were made of brass, but a British law passed around 1990 mandated that all parts in contact with beer henceforth had to be made of plastic or stainless steel. Beer engines are designed to dispense a half or a quarter (Imperial) pint per pull. Proper beer engine installations have some measure of cooling all the way up the beer line and the piston chamber should be insulated. Operating a beer engine in a busy pub is hard physical work, requiring patience, skill, and muscle. Experienced bartenders will switch back and forth between using their right and left arms to pull pints—otherwise they may suffer the so-called barman’s bicep, where one arm grows noticeably larger than the other. "

Given that yeasts' role in carbonation wasn't really known until the mid 1800's and fizzy largers only became available in the US even later, I tend to agree with @Brew Cat . More whiskey..maybe cider and remember...movies are for entertainment.