HANDPUMPS, SMILING BEHIND THE

"Please come to our pub.  Look, we put this photo on Twitter!  Look how happy we are!  Look at all these pumpclips!  We've even mentioned all the breweries' accounts by name!  And CAMRA! But for information!  Not attention! Not for retweets and likes or anything!  Please come to our pub and drink our beer.  It's really quiet and our over-ambitious cask ale line up is going off.  Please, we beg you.  We'll take the Marillion off the jukebox!  We'll clean the toilets!  We'll even put Titanic Plum Porter on! Please!  We're desperate!"

KEG, EVIL

If you were a CAMRA member, life used to be simple.  There was cask conditioned beer (or "Real Ale" as they termed it themselves) and there was KEG beer.  Bitter, lager, stout. Didn't matter.  It was all mass-produced, adjunct-laden, expensive fizzy filth.  And many CAMRA members, if not nostalgic for the days of Watney's Red Barrel, preferred the simple dichotomy.

Then the new wave of brewers arrived with their IPAs and Imperial Stouts.  And because they were taking their cue from America, they put them in kegs and used carbon dioxide to dispense it.  And, despite these being the antithesis of bland keg beer, a lot of  CAMRA members didn't like it.  It was from a keg.  And keg is evil.

To be honest, these fundamentalists were few in number, but they filled the local CAMRA magazines and the CAMRA newspaper, "What's Brewing", with their views.  Reading these copious missives about the forthcoming keg takeover brought to mind those apocryphal Japanese soldiers captured on isolated islands in the 1960s who thought World War 2 was still ongoing.

Needless to say, a lot of CAMRA members, even many in lofty positions in the organisation, drink this "craft" keg beer.  They're just not allowed to talk about it in their own publications lest it be seen as not "promoting cask ale".

The world will move on.  The future will happen whether the diehards like it or not.  But it will hurt. By god, it will hurt.

KEG

Once upon a time, a brewer was fed up of his beer being bashed about, left to go off and generally mistreated by the chiselling pub landlord looking to cheat the Working Man out of his pennies.  "This cask fermentation thing leaves too many variables." he said "What if I brew it, filter all the solids out, and infuse it with carbon dioxide for make up for the fact it's gone flat?  Then I can put it in a sealed barrel and no amount of stupidity or penny-pinching can ruin my beer."  That was the theory.  Cut out the British small businessman with packaging, and your product will be served  as intended.

Not many people can remember the original Watney's Keg Bitter, as it debuted at East Sheen Tennis Club in the 1930s.  Presumably there were few complaints about the actual taste as after an hour or so of knocking a ball back and forth over a net and shouting "Jolly good show!", a chap can get rather thirsty and any refreshment is welcome.

But whereas Keg Bitter survived the dubious cellarmanship of the times, it fell prey to Big Business.  Over time, the carbonation was increased, cheaper ingredients were introduced and the price, of course, went up.  Premium product. old boy.  It's "consistent".

Flavour undoubtedly suffered, and, according to received wisdom, The Campaign for Real Ale came and saved us all from nights of burping and mornings of diarrheoa.  And everyone was grateful.  Or so they say.

Sadly, nobody asked the Working Man his opinion, because of course such things were never done.  He repaid CAMRA's efforts by ditching bitter and mild, and increasingly turned to mass-market lager.

It was fizzy and consistent, after all.

BAMBER BRIDGE ON A MONDAY NIGHT

Bamber Bridge is a large village three miles south of Preston.  An average place, if you like.  It has a railway station, a non-league football club and a nearby industrial estate.  It also has a pub, Ye Olde Original Withy Trees (so named because there are about 20 other Withy Trees pubs in the area) which is much beloved of the local branch of The Campaign For Real Ale.

Central Lancs CAMRA hold their monthly branch meeting at the Withys once every four months or so.  It's always at 8pm on a Monday, typically after all public transport in the area has finished for the day.  One assumes the active members have understanding, and probably long-suffering, partners willing to ferry them back and forth from such relative backwaters as Bamber Bridge, Goosnargh and Lostock Hall.

But it's about the quality of the pub and the beer, obviously.  As a committed CAMRA member you will go to where the real ale is decent.  That's the important thing.  And, as the local pub events are discussed, many ales will be consumed as the evening inevitably wears on towards closing time.  Has Paul finished his column for Ale Cry yet?  He's not missed a single issue since 1978.  I see Adrian's not turned up tonight after storming off in a huff at the last meeting.  Known him 35 years.  He can be an odd bugger sometimes.  Of course I'd never drink in THAT pub.  I asked the landlord about a discount in 1989 and he told me to piss off.  Never been back since.  Serves them right.

Afterwards, a suitably sanitised version of events will be published in the branch magazine, saying that although the meeting was well attended, its a shame that they never see any new faces.

Funny, that.