What is real ale?

In the early 1970s CAMRA coined the term ‘real ale' to make it easy for people to
differentiate between the bland processed beers being pushed by the big brewers and
the traditional beers whose very existence was under threat.

Many pubs and brewers use the term to describe their beers, but, just to keep you
confused, they are also called cask beers, cask-conditioned ales or even real beer! In
the pub the huge majority of real ales are served using traditional hand-pulls, rather
than through modern fonts, but there are some exceptions to this, so if in any doubt,
just ask.

What makes real ale ‘real'?

Real ale is a natural product brewed using traditional ingredients and left to mature in the cask (container) from
which it is served in the pub through a process called secondary fermentation. It is this process which makes
real ale unique amongst beers and develops the wonderful tastes and aromas which processed beers can never
provide.

What's the difference between ‘ale' and other beers?

There are a huge range of different beer styles, each with different qualities, tastes and strengths, but each
falls into one of two main categories; ale or lager. The key difference between ales and lagers is the type of
fermentation. Fermentation is the process which turns the fermentable sugars in the malt into alcohol and
carbon dioxide. Lagers are made using bottom-fermenting yeast which sinks to the bottom of the fermenting
vessel and fermentation takes place at a relatively low temperature. Authentic lagers then undergo a long
period of cooled conditioning in special tanks. Ales, which includes bitters, milds, stouts, porters, barley wines,
golden ales and old ales, use top-fermenting yeast. The yeast forms a thick head on the top of the fermenting
vessel and the process is shorter, more vigorous and carried out at higher temperatures than lager. This is the
traditional method of brewing British beer.

Why isn't all beer real?

Real ale is a natural, living product. By its nature this means it has a limited shelf life and needs to be looked
after with care in the pub cellar and kept at a certain temperature to enable it to mature and bring out its full
flavours for the drinker to enjoy.

Brewery-conditioned, or keg, beer has a longer shelf life as it is not a living product. Basically, after the beer
has finished fermentation in the brewery and has been conditioned, it is chilled and filtered to remove all the
yeast and then it is pasteurised to make it sterile. This is then put in a sealed container, called a keg, ready to
be sent to the pub.

The problem is that removing the yeast and ‘killing off' the product through pasteurisation also removes a great
deal of the taste and aroma associated with real ale.

NOTE :

Malt Definition:Barley or other grain, steeped in water and dried in a kiln, thus forcing germi
nation until the saccharineprinciple has been evolved. It is used in brewing and in the distill
ation of whisky

Barley is a common staple in human and animal diets. Part of the grass family, barley grows in over 100
countries and is one of the most popular cereal crops, surpassed only by wheat, corn and rice. Although barley
is fairly adaptable and can be grown in many regions, it is a tender grain and care must be taken in all stages of
its growth and harvest.

What is beer?

All beer is brewed from malted barley, hops, yeast and water, although other ingredients such as fruit, wheat
and spices are sometimes used. The yeast turns sugars in the malt into alcohol and the hops provide the bitter
flavours in beer and the flowery aroma.

The flavour of the beer depends on many things, including the types of malt and hops used, other ingredients
and the yeast variety. Getting the yeast right is essential as each variety has its own distinctive effect on the
beer.

Tasting Beer

There are over 2,500 different real ales brewed regularly in the UK. With such an amazing range of
different beer styles, such as bitters, old ales, milds, barley wines and stouts and the biggest variety of
draught beers in the World it’s no wonder that tasting British real ales has become every bit as
sophisticated as tasting wine.

There has never been a better time to appreciate our traditional British drink, but you don’t have to be
an expert. Such a wide range of flavours are available to you that you will soon realise what beers
most appeal to your taste buds, whether they are chocolatety stouts or light floral golden ales.

Tasting beer is just like tasting wine, but forget about spitting it out. The first step is to make sure the
beer you are tasting is served at the right temperature. Too cold and real ale loses many of its
complex flavours. Served too warm, it can develop some you don’t want and quickly loses condition in
the glass.

Use your eyes!

Beer should look good. It should be colourful and bright and if it is meant to have a significant head of
froth, this should be thick and creamy. Remember that many beers, particularly from the south
ofEngland, are not brewed to be served with creamy heads. Remember too that some beers, such as
wheat beers may be cloudy, but these too should look attractive and not dull or flat in appearance.
Generally though, your beer should be bright and clear and your glass should not contain any
sediment.
Use your nose!

The best way to sniff your beer is with a glass which is half-empty. This enables you to give it a quick
swirl, place your hand over the glass to hold in the lovely aromas fighting to escape and then dive in
and take a nice deep breath. You will soon learn to recognize key features such as hoppiness from a
classic pale ale, the burnt chocolate flavours of a stout or the banana nose of a wheat beer.

Now the taste!

As you take your first taste of the beer you’ll notice the sweetness from the malts at the front of your
mouth while dry bitter flavours from the hops dominate the back of your mouth as you swallow the
beer and learn to appreciate the ‘finish’

Just like wine, beers have their own unique characteristics and complexities from the style, the
ingredients and the recipe. Tasting beer is every bit as satisfying as tasting wine and you’ll soon learn
to appreciate the various styles. Beer can be enjoyed on its own, but it is also exceptionally good with
food, so don’t think for a moment that the dining table should be reserved for wine! Experiment and
you’ll soon become skilled in matching different beers to different food dishes.

Beer in the pub

Keeping and serving keg beer is a simple matter - connect the keg to a cylinder of gas and press a button! Real ale is
a different matter…

Keg beer is simply connected to a cylinder of gas and served. Real ale is a very different matter. When the beer
arrives at the pub it needs to undergo its secondary fermentation before it can be served. The usual practice is for the
casks to be placed in a cool deep cellar.

Some pubs keep their beer in a special cool room on the ground floor, a few keep their beer behind the bar -
preferably nowadays with some modest external cooling system. Real ale is served at cellar temperature 12-14 C (54-
57 F), which is somewhat cooler than room temperature. If real ale is too warm it is not appetizing, it loses its natural
conditioning (the liveliness of the beer due to the dissolved carbon dioxide).

A keg is a cylindrical container, usually constructed of aluminum, steel or wood. It is commonly used to store,
transport, and serve beer. Other alcoholic or non-alcoholic drinks, carbonated or non-carbonated, may be housed in a
keg as well. Such liquids are generally kept under pressure.
On the other hand if the beer is too cold it will kill off the subtle flavour. Unlike keg beer which has to be chilled, real
ale has flavours you need to taste! Real ale is not 'warm', 'cloudy' or 'flat'. Real ale is served below room temperature,
like red wine; served properly it should be entirely clear; if it kept and served properly it will have enough natural life
to be appetizing.

How long a beer needs to stand depends on the beer, particularly its alcoholic strength and how vigorously it
ferments. Some modern beers have a weak fermentation and may clear within twenty four hours. That does not mean
that these beers have conditioned sufficiently and to serve them as soon as they are clear is not necessarily to serve
them at their best.

The cask is wedged on its side, to encourage the sediment to sink into the belly. Every cask has two plugs where
instruments can be knocked into the cask by force. The cellar person knocks a small wooden peg into one. A hard
wood peg seals the cask, a soft wood peg allows carbon dioxide to escape. By alternating hard and soft pegs as
needed, the cellar person carefully controls the natural carbonation of the beer. Too high a carbonation and the beer
will have a nasty bite, too little and the beer will be flat.

When the fermentation is about right, a tap is knocked into the cask at the other entry point. The cellar person will
check that the beer is clear, has the right level of carbonation, and has lost the unpleasant flavours associated with
beer that is too young. When the beer is ready to serve, the tap is connected to the dispense system. How long the
beer lasts depends on its strength - stronger beers are more robust, and may last for weeks, weaker beers are
normally drunk within a few days. This is why turnover is so important for quality - ideally the pub sells enough beer
that you always drink it at its best.

Serving real ale

The most common means of dispensing real ale is the beer engine - a tall handpump on the bar, which operates a
simple suction pump. When the handle is pulled a half pint is drawn into the glass.

Sometimes in the Midlands and North an electric pump is used. This simply uses a machine to do the same work as
the handpump in drawing beer to the bar. In appearance electric pumps can be confused with the dispensers used for
keg beer. Real ale can of course be poured straight out of a cask behind the bar, often called gravity dispense. Finally,
in Scotland, a tall fount is used. This drives beer to the bar with air pressure. There is one final point about the beer's
journey to the glass. Serving beer through any handpump agitates the beer to some extent and aerates it. Some
dispense systems deliberately maximise this agitation. A sparkler is a tight nozzle, normally at the end of a long
'swan-neck' tube. Beer must be forced through the tight holes, often requiring several strokes of the handpump. This
agitation produces a thick creamy head; it also removes much of the natural carbonation from the body of the beer,
and drives much of the hop bitterness into the head of the pint. Such dispense is traditional in some parts of the
North, and beers are brewed there with this in mind. Used on other beers it leads to a different flavour balance to that
intended by the brewer - the beer may become blander than the brewer wanted.

No gas needed
There are systems which dispense cask conditioned beer by gas pressure. Other systems store cask beer under gas so
as to prolong the shelf-life. CAMRA disapproves of both systems and actively discourages their use. The first makes
beer unpleasantly fizzy, the second interferes with the maturation processes of the beer. Such gas systems are not
needed in a well run pub.

Keg Beer

With a brewery conditioned or keg beer, the aim is to produce a product with a long shelf life which is
ready to drink as soon as it leaves the brewery. The conditioning in the brewery is completed, the
beer is chilled and filtered to remove all the yeast, and pasteurised to make a sterile product. The beer
is put into a sealed metal container, the keg.

These processes have a profound effect on the beer. Filtration and pasteurisation remove flavour and
character from the product, and pasteurisation adds distinctive flavours of its own - a sort of burnt
sugar flavour. These processes also remove the natural carbon dioxide in the beer. In order to make
the beer lively, and also to dispense it, the beer is made fizzy with excess carbon dioxide - this gives
the beer a distinctive bite. Keg beers are generally served very cold to disguise the taste, or lack of it.
Some beers such as Guinness and the so-called nitrokeg beers do not use carbon dioxide alone, but
a mix of this and nitrogen gas. This produces a creamier and less fizzy beer, and tends to produce a
distinctive head. However nitrokeg beers still undergo the sterilising processes which prevent the beer
attaining its full flavour potential. Indeed, nitrogen tends to eliminate bitterness, making for a blander
product still. (Nitrokegs are also called smoothflow, creamflow, cream ales and similar names.) All
canned beers, all draught keg beers, most bottled beers, and nearly all draught lagers undergo these
processes.

There is a clear contrast with real ale. Real ale is a living fresh beer that undergoes a natural second
fermentation in the cask. Like any natural product, the beer will age and go off, and therefore must be
drunk within a strict timescale. It requires care in handling on its way to the pub, and care within the
pub to bring it to perfection. However, real ale can reach its full flavour potential, without filtration,
pasteurisation and added gas.

The difference starts in the brewery. Real ale is put in casks, which nowadays are usually metal but a
few brewers still use wood. A small dose of sugar is added to encourage further fermentation and
some beers are dry-hopped - a fistful of hops are added, to produce an extra dose of aroma. Finings
are also added to the beer before it is sent to the pub. This is a glutinous substance made from the
swimbladders of fish. Finings sink through the beer, attracting particles of yeast, until the beer is clear.
This natural process ensures an attractive product without needing to filter and remove flavour.
Finings are not actually drunk, remaining in the sediment, nor do they alter the flavour. The cask is
now sealed, and will be transported to the pub for the next stage of its life. We have described a
generally traditional brewery. There can be differences with more modern plant. Rather than using
open fermentation tanks, some brewers used sealed conical vessels. Some brewers use a liquid
extracted from hops rather than the whole flowers - generally with inferior flavour. However, providing
the end ale is allowed to undergo its secondary fermentation in the cask, it is still cask conditioned
beer, real ale.

The History of Beer

We know for sure that beer has been brewed for about 6,000 years, but it’s likely that brewing first
started in Neolithic times, basically since harvesting of cereals first began! Beer has a somewhat
mystical history. Beer was used to honour the dead in Ancient Egypt, was an ancestral offering in
China and brewers who abuse their position in Babylon faced the death sentence!

In the middle ages brewing was largely the preserve of women, known as brewsters, and almost
every other house in a community brewed and served its own beer. These were effectively the first
taverns or pubs.

The industrial revolution in the 1800s brought many changes to the way beer was brewed and the
introduction of new beer styles, many of which still exist today.

The use of natural ingredients earned beer it’s reputation as liquid bread, and throughout history it has
often been consumed as a healthier alternative to water, which was frequently contaminated.

Making Beer

Making malt

Brewing starts with barley. The starches in barley cannot be fermented, so they must be converted
into a fermentable form, by malting. The grains of barley are soaked in water and allowed to
germinate. Then they are heated and turned regularly, either in the traditional 'floor' maltings or in
huge rotating drums.

When germination has unlocked the rich natural sugars in the barley, the grains are heated in a kiln,
which stops germination. The degree of heat affects the type of malt produced and its flavour - high
heat produces dark roasted malts, lighter heats lighter coloured malts. Malt does not just give the
wherewithal to produce alcohol, it also gives colour and the body of flavour of the beer. Brewers do
use other ingredients such as sugars and fermentable starches. Some ingredients improve the
appearance of the head, assist fermentation, or act as preservatives. CAMRA has long argued that
brewers should declare the ingredients they use, just as happens with other foodstuffs. Excessive use
of fermentables that are not malt is one cause of dull beer.

Brewing

The malt is now ready for brewing. In the brewery, malt is crushed into a powder, and then mixed with
hot water. The thick porridgy liquid is left in a vessel called a mash tun for several hours while the
sugars in the malt dissolve. When the liquid has absorbed as much sugar as possible, it is run off
through the slotted base of the vessel. This liquid is now called wort. Hops were introduced
to Britain in the 16th century by Dutch brewers; they add bitter flavour and aroma to the beer, but also
act as a preservative. Wort is boiled with hops in a vessel called a copper for at least an hour. The
most traditional brewers use the whole flowers of the hop. After boiling, the hopped wort is run over a
bed of the boiled hops as a filter. The wort is then cooled and run into fermentation tanks, where yeast
is added.
Fermentation

Yeast is a microscopic fungus which feeds off the fermentable sugars, producing alcohol and carbon
dioxide. Yeast cells divide and grow rapidly in this warm sugary liquid. Within a few hours a scum
appears on the top of the wort, and this rapidly builds up into a great foamy yellowy-brown crust -
though fermentation takes place throughout the liquid. British ales are brewed with the ale yeast
Saccharomyces cerevisiae, at a temperature of .... C (65-72 F). Brewers go to great lengths to retain
their own specific yeast variety uncontaminated, as each one produces different flavours during the
fermentation process. Leftovers: Yeast may be turned into Marmite; yeast and spent grain may be fed
to farm animals, used hops are used as fertiliser. When fermentation has finished, the 'green beer' is
run into conditioning tanks for a few days. The remaining yeast continues to turn sugar into alcohol,
and also helps purge the beer of rough after-tastes. It is how the beer is treated now that determines
whether it is traditional cask conditioned ale ('real ale') or a brewery conditioned product.

Beer Styles
There many different styles of real ale, varying from malty, lightly-hopped milds to dark and bitter stouts and
porters. With over 700 brewers producing around 2,500 ales, it can truly be said that British real ale is an
incredibly diverse product. Whatever your taste preference you can be sure that there is a beer to suit almost
everyone! To find out more about individual beer styles please click on the links below.

Mild
Bitter
Golden Ales
Pale Ale or IPA
Porter & Stout
Barley Wine
Old Ale
Scottish Beers
Light Bitters
Mild

Mild is one of the most traditional beer styles which is enjoying a revival in today's real ale market.
Usually dark brown in colour, due to the use of well-roasted malts or barley it is less hopped than bitters
and often has a chocolatety character with nutty and burnt flavours.

Cask conditioned Mild is a rarity in a lot of parts of the country, which is a crying shame, because Mild is
a distinctive and tasty beer. Mild is one of, if not the, oldest beer styles in the country. Until the 15th
century, ale and mead were the major British brews, both made without hops. Hops were introduced
from Holland, France and Germany after this time. This also started the trend on reducing the gravity of
ale, as the Hop is also a preservative, and beers had to be brewed very strongly to try to help preserve
them. The hop also started the rapid decline of mead, which is only made in a very few places today.

So what is Mild? It is a beer which has tastes and textures all it's own. Basically it is a beer that is less
hopped than bitter, etc. The darkness of Dark Milds, such as Greene King XX Mild, comes from the use
of darker malts and/or roasted barley which are used to compensate for the loss of Hop character.
"Chocolate ", "fruity", "nutty" and "burnt" are all tastes to be found in the complexity of Milds. However,
not all milds are dark. Yorkshire brewed Timothy Taylors Golden Best is one of the best examples of a
light coloured mild, as is Bank's Original, the name changed from Mild to try to give it a more modern
image. In Scotland, 60/- ale is similar to mild (Belhaven's being a good example).

Milds today tend to have an ABV in the 3% to 3.5% range, with of course some notable exceptions. In
fact, a lot of the Microbreweries who try their hand at mild are bringing the alcohol content back up
somewhat! Mild wasn't always weaker though. In the latter half of the 19th Century, milds were brewed
to about the same strength as bitters as a response to the demand for a sweeter beer from the working
classes and in those days most bitters were around 6 to 7% ABV.

During the First World War, malt rationing and pressure from the temperance movement led to brewers
rapidly reduced the strength. Following the Second World War, as prosperity returned, mild`s popularity
as a cheap ale began to fade, not being helped by being kept badly in run down pubs as the Big Brewers
began to heavily promote their keg lager brands. Coupled to this was a gradual, but steady decline in
heavy industry in the North and Midlands of Britain, mild`s great marketplace.

By the 1970s, the keg lager boom had seen mild's share of the market fall to around 13% and it was a
shame to see a bland gassy and overpriced product, which was generally weaker than the mild it was
trying to oust, succeed in many cases.

Bitter
Bitters developed towards the end of the 19th century as brewers began to produce beers that could be served in pubs
after only a few days storage in cellars. Bitters grew out of pale ale but were usually deep bronze to copper in colour
due to the use of slightly darker crystal malts.

Towards the end of the 19th century, brewers built large estates of tied pubs. They moved away from vatted beers
stored for many months and developed ‘running beers' that could be served after a few days' storage in pub cellars.
Draught Mild was a ‘running beer' along with a new type that was dubbed Bitter by drinkers. Bitter grew out of Pale
Ale but was generally deep bronze to copper in colour due to the use of slightly darker malts such as crystal that give
the beer fullness of palate. Best is a stronger version of Bitter but there is considerable crossover. Bitter falls into the
3.4% to 3.9% band, with Best Bitter 4% upwards but a number of brewers label their ordinary Bitters ‘Best'. A further
development of Bitter comes in the shape of Extra or Special Strong Bitters of 5% or more: familiar examples of this
style include Fuller's ESB and Greene King Abbot. With ordinary Bitter, look for a spicy, peppery and grassy hop
character, a powerful bitterness, tangy fruit and juicy and nutty malt. With Best and Strong Bitters, malt and fruit
character will tend to dominate but hop aroma and bitterness are still crucial to the style, often achieved by ‘late
hopping' in the brewery or adding hops to casks as they leave for pubs.

Golden Ales
This new style of pale, well-hopped and quenching beer developed in the 1980s as independent brewers attempted to
win younger drinkers from heavily-promoted lager brands. The first in the field were Exmoor Gold and Hop Back
Summer Lightning, though many micros and regionals now make their versions of the style. Strengths will range from
3.5% to 5.3%. The hallmark will be the biscuity and juicy malt character derived from pale malts, underscored by tart
citrus fruit and peppery hops, often with the addition of hints of vanilla and cornflour. Golden ales are pale amber,
gold, yellow or straw coloured and above all, such beers are quenching and served cool.
Pale Ale or IPA
India Pale Ale changed the face of brewing early in the 19th century. The new technologies of the Industrial Revolution
enabled brewers to use pale malts to fashion beers that were genuinely golden or pale bronze in colour. First brewed
in London and Burton-on-Trent for the colonial market, IPAs were strong in alcohol and high in hops: the preservative
character of the hops helped keep the beers in good condition during long sea journeys. Beers with less alcohol and
hops were developed for the domestic market and were known as Pale Ale. Today Pale Ale is usually a bottled version
of Bitter, though historically the styles are different. Marston's Pedigree is an example of Burton Pale Ale, not Bitter,
while the same brewery's Old Empire is a fascinating interpretation of a Victorian IPA. So-called IPAs with strengths of
around 3.5% are not true to style. Look for juicy malt, citrus fruit and a big spicy, peppery bitter hop character, with
strengths of 4% upwards.

Porter & Stout

Porter was a London style that turned the brewing industry upside down early in the 18th century. It was a dark
brown beer - 19th-century versions became jet black - that was originally a blend of brown ale, pale ale and ‘stale' or
well-matured ale. It acquired the name Porter as a result of its popularity among London's street-market workers. At
the time, a generic term for the strongest or stoutest beer in a brewery was stout.

The strongest versions of Porter were known as Stout Porter, reduced over the years to simply Stout. Such vast
quantities of Porter and Stout flooded into Ireland from London and Bristol that a Dublin brewer named Arthur
Guinness decided to fashion his own interpretation of the style. The beers were strong - 6% for Porter, 7% or 8% for
Stout. Guinness in Dublin blended some unmalted roasted barley and in so doing produced a style known as Dry Irish
Stout. Restrictions on making roasted malts in Britain during World War One led to the demise of Porter and Stout and
left the market to the Irish. In recent years, smaller craft brewers in Britain have rekindled an interest in the style,
though in keeping with modern drinking habits, strengths have been reduced. Look for profound dark and roasted
malt character with raisin and sultana fruit, espresso or cappuccino coffee, liquorice and molasses, all underscored by
hefty hop bitterness. Porters are complex in flavour, range from 4% to 6.5% and are typically black or dark brown;
the darkness comes from the use of dark malts unlike stouts which use roasted malted barley. Stouts can be dry or
sweet and range from 4% to 8% ABV.

Barley Wine
Barley Wine is a style that dates from the 18th and 19th centuries when England was often at war with France and it
was the duty of patriots, usually from the upper classes, to drink ale rather than Claret.

Barley Wine had to be strong - often between 10% and 12% -- and was stored for prodigious periods of as long at 18
months or two years. When country houses had their own small breweries, it was often the task of the butler to brew
ale that was drunk from cut-glass goblets at the dining table. The biggest-selling Barley Wine for years was
Whitbread's 10.9% Gold Label, now available only in cans. Bass's No 1 Barley Wine (10.5%) is occasionally brewed in
Burton-on-Trent, stored in cask for 12 months and made available to CAMRA beer festivals. Fuller's Vintage Ale
(8.5%) is a bottle-conditioned version of its Golden Pride and is brewed with different varieties of malts and hops
every year.

Many micro-brewers now produce their interpretations of the style. Expect massive sweet malt and ripe fruit of the
pear drop, orange and lemon type, with darker fruits, chocolate and coffee if darker malts are used. Hop rates are
generous and produce bitterness and peppery, grassy and floral notes.

Old Ale
Old Ale recalls the type of beer brewed before the Industrial Revolution, stored for months or even years in unlined
wooden vessels known as tuns. The beer would pick up some lactic sourness as a result of wild yeasts, lactobacilli and
tannins in the wood. The result was a beer dubbed ‘stale' by drinkers: it was one of the components of the early,
blended Porters. The style has re-emerged in recent years, due primarily to the fame of Theakston's Old Peculier,
Gale's Prize Old Ale and Thomas Hardy's Ale, the last saved from oblivion by O'Hanlon's Brewery in Devon. Old Ales,
contrary to expectation, do not have to be especially strong: they can be no more than 4% alcohol, though the Gale's
and O'Hanlon's versions are considerably stronger. Neither do they have to be dark: Old Ale can be pale and burst
with lush sappy malt, tart fruit and spicy hop notes. Darker versions will have a more profound malt character with
powerful hints of roasted grain, dark fruit, polished leather and fresh tobacco. The hallmark of the style remains a
lengthy period of maturation, often in bottle rather than bulk vessels. Old Ales typically range from 4% to 6.5%

Scottish Beers
Historically, Scottish beers tend to be darker, sweeter and less heavily hopped than English and Welsh ales: a cold
climate demands warming beers. But many of the new craft breweries produce beers lighter in colour and with
generous hop rates. The traditional, classic styles are Light, low in strength and so-called even when dark in colour,
also known as 60/-, Heavy or 70/-, Export or 80/- and a strong Wee Heavy, similar to a barley wine, and also labelled
90/-. In the 19th century, beers were invoiced according to strength, using the now defunct currency of the shilling.
Light Bitters

We define light bitters as any bitter with an ABV of 3.4% or lower or an original gravity (OG) of 1034 or
lower. By light bitters, we generally mean low gravity or low strength, but they do also tend to be lighter
in colour than stronger bitters.

Originally these beers were most prevalent in the West Country where they were colloquially known as
Boy's Bitters. Other names that have been used over the years are Family Ales or Luncheon Ales.

Recent years have seen a reduction in the number of traditional West Country light bitters, most notably
the tragic demise of Palmer's Bridport Bitter, although St Austell IPA and Arkells 2B still fly the flag.
Other parts of the country have seen the reintroduction of lower strength family ales such as Weltons
Pride and Joy, mainly from small independent brewers.