On Real Ale by David

Our time in Britain was always going to involve B & B. Beer and Buses. But both have been eye-openers---- in sheer scale. Hardly a week goes by in the March-to-November period without an event somewhere involving old buses, and almost every town has its bus enthusiasts’ group, or even museum. And real ale has had a revival of awesome proportions in the time since we last came, 29 years ago.
At that time CAMRA, Campaign for Real Ale, was a fledgling movement, perceived as vaguely akin to the anti-nuclear protest movement, or the Animal Rights League. Now it has hundreds of active branches, thousands of members,
and publishes an annual Good Beer Guide of 800-plus pages.
Our time in Devon and Cornwall must rate as an epiphany of Real Ales. Nearby Plymouth has 15 pubs listed in the guide: a staggering figure for a modest provincial city. The counties of Devon and Cornwall, fairly remote and quiet in English terms, together boast 34 independent breweries . (London, with 20-odd million people, has 10).
Now to put some hoary old myths to rest. Yes, real ales are ‘flat’, and a bit warmer than ice-cold lager. Any colder and the flavour is destroyed. You would just as much think of chilling a fine Australian Merlot as chilling an ale. It is drawn, lifted in fact, by a hand-operated suction pump (beer engine), from the cellar, where it is kept ideally at about 12-15deg C. The sucking action releases from the beer a cloud of CO2 gas, produced naturally during fermentation and also during later storage in the cask, which gives the pint a head that quietly subsides, but there is still some dissolved gas to give a gentle bite on the tongue.
The recipe has only three ingredients: barley in which the starch has been converted to sugar by malting, and hops, and yeast. There are dozens of variations on the malting procedure, from roasted malt (Guinness) to pale malt for pale ale, and at least a dozen hop varieties. (Fuggles and Goldings are the main ones in British Ales). Yeast is the natural enzyme, which lives on sugars and converts them to alcohol and carbon dioxide plus millions of extra yeast cells. (Vegemite). Brewers have huge freedom to try various combinations of malts, hop varieties, yeast cultures and brewing temperatures and times to produce thousands of different styles of ale. Even so, wine, with only one ingredient (plus yeast) comes in an infinitely greater range of styles, and prices.
Sadly, bottling real ale is a disaster: the result is never as pleasing as the draught product, which is aged for no more than a few weeks or months in the cask. Pubs are the only places to find a decent ale: and the publican has to keep his cellar in order and his pipes and pumps clean. Cooper’s is the nearest Australia comes to a real ale, actually conditioned (given its head) in the bottle.
Armed with our CAMRA bible, Pennie (yes) decided we would lunch on Tuesday at the Blisland Inn. I can do no better than quote the entry:
“Still CAMRA’s premier pub in Cornwall, the Blisland continues to offer an eclectic choice of real ales, with over 2,000 different brews passing over the bar to date. A former national Pub of the Year and four times local winner, the inn strongly supports Cornish breweries which are featured heavily in the line-up of seven beers and ciders on offer. The pub has a strong community focus and good food is served, prepared with locally-sourced fresh produce.”
Where is it? Nowhere. The village of Blisland has maybe 100 inhabitants, and is at the western edge of Bodmin Moor, miles from the nearest towns of Bodmin and Lostwithiel, but the place is booming: people find it in the CAMRA book I suppose. The publican is a heavily tattooed ex-Navy man, probably from Portsmouth, and he goes off to London every year or so to receive yet another award. Otherwise he never leaves the county, he says.
For the customer it is hard work but the job has to be done: the fruits of the brewers’ labours must be tasted. Services are held daily in inns of worship, from 10AM to closing time. And here we have an insight into the basic weakness of Islam and Shariah Law: what is the point of turning up in Heaven/Paradise with the liver of a five-year-old and sore knees?