Real ale is the name coined by the

Campaign for Real Ale The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) is an independent voluntary consumer organisation headquartered in St Albans, which promotes real ale, cider and perry and traditional British pubs and clubs. History The organisation was founded on 16 ...

(CAMRA) for

ale Ale is a style of beer, brewed using a warm fermentation method. In medieval England, the term referred to a drink brewed without hops. As with most beers, ale typically has a bittering agent to balance the malt and act as a preservative. Ale ...

that is "brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous

carbon dioxide Carbon dioxide is a chemical compound with the chemical formula . It is made up of molecules that each have one carbon atom covalent bond, covalently double bonded to two oxygen atoms. It is found in a gas state at room temperature and at norma ...

Cask and bottle-conditioned beers

Cask and

bottle-conditioned Brewing is the production of beer by steeping a starch source (commonly cereal grains, the most popular of which is barley) in water and fermenting the resulting sweet liquid with yeast. It may be done in a brewery by a commercial brewer, ...

beers are referred to as real ale by CAMRA, as both fit its description of beers served from a container in which they have undergone secondary fermentation.

Distinction from filtered beer

The fundamental distinction between real and other ales is that real ale is unfiltered and unpasteurized, leaving its

yeast Yeasts are eukaryotic, single-celled microorganisms classified as members of the fungus kingdom (biology), kingdom. The first yeast originated hundreds of millions of years ago, and at least 1,500 species are currently recognized. They are est ...

alive and slowly fermentating in bottle or keg. This secondary fermentation continues until the ale is served, allowing it to retain its natural

carbonation Carbonation is the chemical reaction of carbon dioxide to give carbonates, bicarbonates, and carbonic acid. In chemistry, the term is sometimes used in place of carboxylation, which refers to the formation of carboxylic acids. In inorganic che ...

. In contrast, natural carbonation is removed from standard beer and ale during filtering, requiring them to be artificially re-carbonated (and often very 'gassy'). Real ales are served "bottle conditioned", gravity direct from the cask, or hand pumped. No external pressurization is used. Electric pumps are occasionally seen, especially in the

Midlands The Midlands is the central region of England, to the south of Northern England, to the north of southern England, to the east of Wales, and to the west of the North Sea. The Midlands comprises the ceremonial counties of Derbyshire, Herefor ...

and

Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the United Kingdom's land area, consisting of the northern part of the island of Great Britain and more than 790 adjac ...

. powered by mains water pressure, were the traditional means of dispensing draught beer in Scotland but this method is discontinued.

Cask breather

cask breather A cask breather (sometimes called a cask aspirator) is a type of demand valve used to serve draught beer. The cask breather enables the empty space created when beer is drawn from a beer cask to be filled with carbon dioxide from an external sourc ...

adds low pressure

into the cask to replace the beer as it is drawn off, preventing the admission of ambient air containing oxygen and nitrogen, forestalling spoilage, and thereby extending the beer's saleable life. It does not pressurize the beer like typical of

keg beer Draught beer, also spelt draft, is beer served from a cask or keg rather than from a bottle or can. Draught beer served from a pressurised keg is also known as Name Until Joseph Bramah patented the beer engine in 1785, beer was serv ...

. Before 2018, CAMRA refused to regard a cask ale kept "fresh" by cask breather as real ale. In 2018, this policy was changed, allowing pubs using cask breathers to be listed in the ''

Good Beer Guide The ''Good Beer Guide'' is a book published annually by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA), listing what it considers to be the best 4,500 real ale outlets (pubs, clubs, and off-licences) in the United Kingdom. Details The content of the ''Guid ...

''.

CAMRA

The term "real ale" was coined by CAMRA in the 1970s to attract media attention in the U.K. to naturally fermented and served ales at a time when there were very few independent breweries left and most production had gone over to filtered and

pasteurised In food processing, pasteurization (American and British English spelling differences#-ise, -ize (-isation, -ization), also pasteurisation) is a process of food preservation in which packaged foods (e.g., milk and fruit juices) are treated wi ...

" filtered ales" - "keg beer" - served under carbon dioxide pressure.

Popularity

Cask conditioned ale remains popular within the UK, particularly in traditional pubs. In 2019, 420 million pints were sold in the UK, 13.5% of total pint sales. Described as 'Britain's National Drink', cask ale's 'Britishness' is an important factor in its promotion and consumption.

References

External links

The Directory of UK Real Ale Breweries
- Information on real ale brewers in the UK *CAMRA'
Good Beer Guide
{{Beer styles Beer in the United Kingdom Types of beer Beer culture