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Beer history real ale

The Great Air Pressure Schism

Illustration from the 1978 Good Beer Guide.

In 1977, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) had its first real wobble when Truman tested their faith by launching a beer in the south of England which was dispensed using ‘air pressure’. It exposed some gaping holes in the definition of ‘real ale’ around which 30,000 members had rallied and nearly split the Campaign in two.

We’ll be honest: our understanding of (and interest in…) the many different methods of dispense is fairly limited, though we’re having to learn as we go. Air pressure saw otherwise ‘real’ ale pushed out by air (not CO2 as with ‘top pressure’, of which more another time) which was pumped into the cask/keg, rather than being ‘drawn’ out as was more usual. A pretty fine distinction as far as most people are concerned, right? Nonetheless, Truman’s Tap Bitter, which they seem to have intended as a sop to CAMRA, was ruled ‘unreal’ by the National Executive — the air pumped in, they felt, would stop the beer breathing and make it ‘fizzy’ — and serving it did not, therefore, make pubs eligible to appear in the influential annual CAMRA Good Beer Guide (GBG).

Scottish CAMRA activists were incensed. Air pressure was common in Scotland and they’d tended to considered beer served that way to be ‘real ale’, without question. There ensued an entire year of increasingly bad-tempered and geeky debate in the pages of What’s Brewing until a messy compromise was reached whereby air pressure was declared acceptable, but it was left up to local branches to decided whether pubs serving air pressure beer would be on their GBG list. A fatal split was, by all accounts, narrowly avoided, but ill will lingered on between factions for some time thereafter.

The simple fighting message of 1973 — keg bad, real ale good, let’s get drunk! — had suddenly turned into something rather boring, bureaucratic and muddy: what was ‘real’ was no longer crystal clear. Richard Boston, having grown increasingly irritated by CAMRA, said snippily: ‘When someone gets round to writing the history of fatuous arguments, their discussion will surely deserve a prominent place, alongside those of the most pedantic of medieval theologians.’

CAMRA lost around 8000 members between 1976 and 1978, dropping from 30k to 22 in a little over a year.

Illustration scanned from the 1978 CAMRA Good Beer Guide; That Richard Boston quote is from a long article about air pressure and CAMRA in The Guardian, 9 July 1977; and Roger Protz covers the the row in some detail in his 1978 book Pulling a Fast One.

9 replies on “The Great Air Pressure Schism”

ISTR in the very early days there was a controversy when CAMRA had initially accepted Hull Brewery’s beer as real ale, as it was unpasteurised, kept in large ceramic cellar jars, and often handpumped. But it was later declared to be “bright beer” and excluded.

I recall drinking Truman’s Tap around 77-78 as well as Watney’s Fined (later Stag) Bitter and then London Bitter, all served by air pressure. The beers were nothing special, serving them looked rather difficult (certainly the barmaid in the Horn Hotel – Berni Inn – in Braintree seemed to take a very long time to serve a pint), but they were preferable to the other products of the breweries by a country mile. In some parts of East London and Essex they provided some form of relief to awful keg, or at least an alternative pub to visit if you didn’t like the only pub nearby with decent beer.

Nothing excites young potential beer drinkers more than a good old fiery method of dispense debate.

“the air pumped in, they felt, would stop the beer breathing and make it ‘fizzy’ ”
If anyone can explain the thinking behind this statement I should be eternally grateful.

“Thinking” is probably putting it a bit strong. Blame the gobsmackingly poor standard of science education.

Jon –
Indeed. How much tedious, pointless, turgid dispute could we have been spared over the years if the idiots who have felt it to be their place to pontificate (such as the example above) had simply been taught a few, relatively simple, laws of physics. Boyle’s Law, Henry’s Law and Charles’ Law would probably cover it.

I’m new to this blog – which is ace btw – so may be going over old ground. Have any of you noticed the tendency of (usually young) barstaff to aggressively ‘pump’ the pint as they pour it? 
I’ve seen this happen on several occasions – in Fuller’s and Young’s pubs – over the last few months, as if they think that evenly drawing will leave the undesired effect of a flattish head. Instead I’ve been served pints of ‘foaming’ ale of almost cartoonish proportions.
I asked one why she drew pints like this and she told me her manager had instructed her to do so because customers otherwise complained their pints were flat.

Thanks, Paul. Interesting observation re: aggressive pint-pulling (well, interesting to us…). We’ll keep an eye out.

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