Glossary
Real ale
CAMRA’s term for beer that completes its fermentation in the container it is served from and is dispensed without added carbon dioxide.
Also called real ales, cask marque, cask ale.
Campaigning definition. Defined by an organisation as part of a position it advocates. Precise and useful, but not a neutral technical standard. Defined by CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale).
This is a campaigning definition, and identifying it as one is not a criticism. CAMRA coined the term in the 1970s to name something that was disappearing, and the definition is precise, technically coherent and has done a great deal to preserve a genuine tradition.
What it is not is a neutral technical standard or a quality grading. Beer excluded by it — keg, filtered, pasteurised, or served under gas — is not thereby defective, and a badly-kept cask ale is worse than a well-made keg beer. The definition describes a production and dispense method, and BeerHQ records it as exactly that.
Cask Marque is a separate accreditation scheme assessing the condition of cask beer as served, which is a different question from whether a beer meets the real ale definition.
Commonly misunderstood
Frequently used as a synonym for "good beer" or "traditional beer". It names a specific dispense and conditioning method, and says nothing about quality.
Related
- Cask conditioning — The practice the definition is built around.
- CAMRA — The organisation that defined it.
- British cask ale — The tradition it names.
More vocabulary
Brewery tap · Brewpub · CAMRA · Contract brewing · Craft beer · Cru · Microbrewery · Session beer · Small beer
See every term on the glossary index.
Last reviewed 2026-08-16.
Evidence
What BeerHQ knows about this, and how. Every statement carries the state of the evidence behind it rather than being presented flatly as fact.
"Real ale" is a definition created and maintained by CAMRA as part of a consumer campaign, and while it is precise and technically coherent it is neither a statutory standard nor a quality grading.
Backed by a source
Source: Campaign for Real Ale