Keg brewing has really taken off here in recent years as well.
CAMRA are indeed all about 'real', cask ale. But the organisation was created to fight against the encroaching lagerisation of everything. In the 70s and 80s (from what I can tell, I didn't pass legal drinking age until 1996) the beer scene in the UK was dire. Mass produced lagers were about the only thing on offer, the likes of Carling, Fosters, Stella etc. You'd usually find there was a 'bitter' on tap in most pubs, but it would be a bland, mass produced brown beer like John Smiths or Tetleys. Even in the early 00s many pubs had a bunch of lagers and a concession to other beer types in the form of a single tap of fullers "London Pride". The traditional breweries were suffering and the real art to beer making was being lost in the UK, despite our rich history of it.
At the same time, supermarket sales and home drinking were impacting on the pub, which had been a traditional social hub for a lot of the country for a long time.
So in stepped CAMRA to promote real pubs and real British beer, with real, varying flavours and an eye to tradition. It was a roaring success, though slow-burning at first. Now they hold massive festivals, local real ale breweries are everywhere, pubs have a wide selection of great stuff again.
The craft revolution some years later took them by surprise. Their attitude to good beer in a keg seems to be "well it's not exactly what we're about, but great! People are taking an interest!". AFAICT they've decided the cask is their focus, but so long as we're not going back to the days of five lagers and a substandard 'bitter' on tap in every pub you go to, then we're all good.
Those days were even still around when I first moved to Cardiff. 90% of pubs only served Brains beers, which are...average at best, and lagers. It was so bad that the Cardiff morris dancing side has had a 30-40 year tradition of piling on a bus and going for drinking tours up the South Wales valleys just to find good beer.
I must admit that I am partial to asking the bartender to take the sparkler off the cask tap when pouring a pint. I grew up with flat beer and sparklers seem to be an industry way of trying to sell bitter to people who expect beer to be fizzy.
Thankfully it has changed for the better, but I am worried about the effects of the lockdown on the upstart good-beer pubs. My local had finally given into my nagging and was permanently keeping a dark beer on tap, which is a rare find here; IPAs and the like are much more popular :D
Interesting. Down here in Southampton there aren't often sparklers on ale taps.
Apparently in England (can't speak for Wales) there's a regional divide - Us southerners like a relatively flat ale, with no real head. In the north a beer ought to have a bit of fizz and hold a foamy head.
Yeah I wonder if the lockdown is going to kill any of the local industry. There are three or four decent ale and craft bars in walking distance of my house, and I'd like to keep it that way.
Yeah that's pretty much my experience as well. Wales seems to follow the north in liking sparklers, although there's fewer darker beers/bitters over here. I grew up in the Cotswolds with nice flat bitters, so I struggled when I first moved over here :D
It's a small plastic attachment which the beer is forced through, causing it to froth up with tiny bubbles. Allows you to form a head on a pint of bitter without having to add any gas and in theory makes it taste a bit thicker. Reference image: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2F...
A widget goes in the bottom of a can, and IIRC, releases nitrogen when you open the can forming lots of microbubbles in the beer, creating a smooth head on pouring.
A sparkler is like the aerator on a hand washing tap, it screws on to the beer dispensing tap (the one fixed to the bar, not a keg tap). It aerates, or they used to. Beer technology has moved on a lot in the more-than-a-decade since I was the wrong side of the bar.
I recently finished reading Pete Brown's Man Walks Into A Pub: A Sociable History of Beer, which is a good and quite humorous introduction to the history of beer in Great Britain. I'd recommend it to anyone taking an initial interest in the subject. I've followed up by starting Brown's next book, Three Sheets To The Wind: One Man's Quest For The Meaning Of Beer.
Since the start of lock-down in mid-March, I'm now brewing my fourth batch of home brew. I recently purchased Durden Park Beer Circle's Old British Beers and How to Make Them[1] book. I'm looking forward to trying out a few of the old recipes.
I am also worried about the potential closure of a couple of good pubs serving craft beer in my location. I even contacted the owner of my local to suggest I support him by buying beer directly to take home, but he said regulations prevent him and he didn't want to risk his licence. Hopefully they'll be able to open again soon.
I'm a homebrewer myself. Used to use home-made fly-sparging kit but have moved to BIAB because it's so much less cleanup and still gives great results.
I have a Saison coming towards the end of its fermentation at the moment, to be kegged soon. I know it's not 'real ale' that way ... I've had some good results bottling stouts in the past but the preparation and cleanup is so much more than kegging, and my attempts at emulating a cask have been poor.
CAMRA are indeed all about 'real', cask ale. But the organisation was created to fight against the encroaching lagerisation of everything. In the 70s and 80s (from what I can tell, I didn't pass legal drinking age until 1996) the beer scene in the UK was dire. Mass produced lagers were about the only thing on offer, the likes of Carling, Fosters, Stella etc. You'd usually find there was a 'bitter' on tap in most pubs, but it would be a bland, mass produced brown beer like John Smiths or Tetleys. Even in the early 00s many pubs had a bunch of lagers and a concession to other beer types in the form of a single tap of fullers "London Pride". The traditional breweries were suffering and the real art to beer making was being lost in the UK, despite our rich history of it.
At the same time, supermarket sales and home drinking were impacting on the pub, which had been a traditional social hub for a lot of the country for a long time.
So in stepped CAMRA to promote real pubs and real British beer, with real, varying flavours and an eye to tradition. It was a roaring success, though slow-burning at first. Now they hold massive festivals, local real ale breweries are everywhere, pubs have a wide selection of great stuff again.
The craft revolution some years later took them by surprise. Their attitude to good beer in a keg seems to be "well it's not exactly what we're about, but great! People are taking an interest!". AFAICT they've decided the cask is their focus, but so long as we're not going back to the days of five lagers and a substandard 'bitter' on tap in every pub you go to, then we're all good.