BBF celebrates its 10th anniversary with real ale—but what is cask beer?

Native to the British Isles, real ale has given rise to the false legend that the English drink their beer warm and flat. But what style are we talking about? In reality, it does not correspond to a specific beer style, but rather to a way of fermenting, maturing, carbonating, and serving it. It is the traditional method by which the British brewed and sold their top-fermented beers in pubs. While they are usually Anglo-Saxon styles—mild ale, pale ale, porter, etc.—this is not a strict rule.

Real ale undergoes its second fermentation in a cask, a type of barrel that is wider in the middle than at the ends. They used to be made of wood; now they’re made of steel. When transferring from the fermenter to the barrel, some yeast in suspension also goes along which, since it remains alive, naturally carbonates the beer and finishes rounding it out with a unique ester profile. The beer is never filtered; instead, the dead yeast settles in the belly of the cask when the liquid is at its optimal point.

When the casks arrive at the pub from the brewery, the beer is still unfinished. To allow it to finish maturing, they are conditioned in the cellar of the establishment at a temperature of 11ºC. Cool, but not cold. A few days later, it begins to be served using a handpump. CO2 is not injected to push it to the tap; instead, it is drawn by introducing air into the cask each time the handle is pulled, creating a vacuum effect.

However, by the 1970s, real ale had lost its place in pubs to industrial lagers that were filtered, pasteurised and force-carbonated. As a reaction to this loss of beer identity, the consumer organisation CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) was founded with the aim of preserving British beer culture. Among other actions, this organisation publishes the Good Beer Guide, a recommendation of pubs and breweries that preserve the cask ale tradition and work in a traditional way.

Likewise, every August they hold the Great British Beer Festival to promote the product they revere. In a similar vein, the Barcelona Beer Festival, which will take place from October 14 to 16, has organized the BBF Cask Revolution experience to bring authentic real ale to Spain this year. Behind this very special setup is Install Beer, which handles the export of handpump beer engines and the necessary equipment directly from the United Kingdom. Without a doubt, a great opportunity for lovers of British beer.