Real Ale

[Cheshire-cheese]

We can easily get tied up with terminology, as has been said topping up with CO2 is pretty much essential for a slowly consumed beer at home.
On terminology: It is a shame that "home brew" in some (lay) peoples minds is synonimous with high strength, low quality affairs (untill they taste an AG brew that is).

[DarloDave]

Does anybody else think that real ale needs to get a bit more exciting? I know one of the reasons I took up brewing, was for the fact that I'm sick of just drinking boring 4% bitters that all seem to taste the same. American craft brews all seem a lot more exciting. I'd even like to see a couple more lagers being put out by breweries, obviously i mean proper lager and not carling etc.. I know a lot more people who'd try a new brand of lager than they would try a real ale.

[DarloDave]

The real money is with the youth market though imo. All i know is that the majority of my mates wouldnt go anywhere near a best bitter, yet if a slightly fizzier colder say 7% american style ipa was available, not from a traditional handpull, but a fosters style tap, I guarentee most would give it a go, and id put money on the majority liking it, and buying it again.

[Eadweard]

Some British breweries are starting to head that way, look at Brewdog for example. I like their beers, but I bet I still drink more 4% best bitter!

[DarloDave]

IMO Brewdog are definatly on the right lines. Their products look and sound 'cool' and appealing. 'Real Ale' is for old men (apparently) and I get called an old man for drinking real ale. If I ordered a bottle of something like a Brewdog beer, my friends would be interested and check them out themselves. I dont know if its the same for everyone, but this is certainly true for my group of friends.

[Whorst]

The San Diego Real Ale Festival goes on in mid June. It's packed with ages 25+ and on. It's funny how on one side of the pond cask ale is considered an old mans drink, while over here it's the rage.

[Tequilla6]

It also depends on where you are as well I guess. The Cambridge Beer festival is frequented of all age groups, maybe because we are a university town with a large student population. We still get the beards but I would suggest that its a more youthful crowd than an old timers crowd.

[Parp]

Yes, you get a good youth turnout per-festival.
And I can recount a youth present at most of the bars I frequent.

But as a country wide dynamic, it's a different story.
And probably, to survive, you have to appeal to the masses, not just the few who make their choices regardless of hype, marketing and peer pressure.
And the masses seem to be elsewhere.

[Philipek]

I use the terms live beer and pasteurized beer rather than real ale and keg beer or whatever. I find 'real' ale needs the two fingered quotation marks, and I won't do that. With pasteurized beer I'm not offending anyone.

I also think that the way bitter has been advertised has been slightly annoying. Bombardier and Spitfire went for a patriotic type of campaign. That only works if you want to be self-consciously English while drinking beer. Fullers was good with "whatever you do, take pride". Stella's ads were fantastic. Gorgeous cinematography, almost had me buying stella.

I agree with Chris - target the wine snobs and upper classes. I mean, it worked wonders with wine. Then they did it with football!

I don't think that British breweries have a dull product though, Borodave. I do agree that they could have a go at the super ultra hopped US style IPAs and the wildly alcholic Imperial stouts. But I remember drinking Old Peculiar at a wetherspoons for 1.50 a pint. That was amazing. Winter ales are pretty funky too and Sam Smith's Taddy Porter. The Breweries' products are pretty exciting, I think. The 4% bitter would still be my staple (If I were still in Britain), there's so much variation in just that one style.

[simple one]

But they are exciting to us because we actively seek out these beers. If your part of the youth, all you get is a couple of fizzy lagers, maybe a guiness and a token bad bitter on the pumps in your town/city centre pubs/bars. When they happen to come across porters and winter ales they will never try them because they attach youth to lager or cider, and old man to anything else out of there experience.

I like the old punk IPA, tastes really good, they have pushed the boat out with the hops. But I hate the packaging. It looks cheap.

[Billy Hunt]

The thing with most people these days is that they don't want their beverage to taste of anything, which is why extra cold products are so popular and when they're all bloated up on these drinks they'll then move onto alcho pops to round the night off.

[Bribie]

Now here's something I have wondered about. I grew my beer gland in the UK in the 1970s and although the NE of England was a 'real ale' desert a lot of the beers served there weren't too bad and they weren't keg either. I used to really like my Newcastle Exhibition, Camerons Strongarm, Northern Clubs Federation Brewery 'Fed Special', Vaux Sampson... What they all had in common was that they weren't keg, they were bulk delivered unpasteurised tank ales served to the bar by electric pump rather than pushed by CO2, and hence were fairly lightly carbonated and served at cellar temp so not frozen to death, although clear as a bell with rather dramatic heads. Oldies here might still remember the brass pumps with the glass cylinders on the bar where you could see the piston going this way and that dispensing half a pint per 'pass'. Not to mention the beer tanker with the huge hose snaking down into the cellar.

the 'real' keg beers such as Tartan and Whitbread Tankard etc were pretty appalling but the tank ones were extremely varied in taste and colour and six or seven pints would flow down like mothers milk. I'm brewing a double batch of Strongarm at the moment from GWs book in memory of those days. Are tank beers still served in the North or has it all gone to creamflow kegs nowadays?

[Parp]

I'm 38 and I remember the bright tank stuff.

Many a tale was heard of certain pubs watering down their beer.

I also heard that after everything went "sealed keg", people who usually drank the bright stuff in these places were initially knocked sideways by the alcohol levels in the untampered product!

[Scotty]

Although a member of CAMRA, they are stuck in their ways and go about the 'Real Ale' arguement without compromise but I feel it is up to the younger members like me to take the club forward.

As an example, I'm a member of SOC (Saab Owners Club), again associated with beards and bellies but the younger generation are starting to move the club along into today by way of performance, modifications etc.

Complaining about a clubs' actions without action to change things is the reason why these types of clubs continue to push their ideal and never change.

[Parp]

I'm a member of SOC (Saab Owners Club)

I was in that a few years back, I had a 1989 900 - nowt flash.