United Kingdom

CAMRA is founded

Four drinkers founded what became the Campaign for Real Ale, defining "real ale" and organising consumer pressure against keg-only national brewers.

1971Documented

The definition CAMRA created — beer that completes fermentation in the container it is served from, dispensed without added carbon dioxide — is precise, technically coherent and constructed to advance a case. BeerHQ records it as a campaigning definition for that reason, which is a description rather than a criticism.

What was going on around it

An event on its own is a date. These are the periods it belongs to, where the argument about what changed is actually made.

Consolidation and revival
Choice narrowed almost everywhere for thirty years, and then was rebuilt from below — by a consumer campaign in Britain and by homebrewers in the United States, for quite different reasons.

Why it matters

Cask beer survived in Britain in a way it did not elsewhere, and that is substantially attributable to this campaign.

How well this is established

Certainty	Documented. Supported by contemporary records that survive and are agreed on.
When	1971. Known to the year rather than to the day.
Where	United Kingdom

Traditions

British cask ale — Beer that completes its fermentation in the container it is served from and is dispensed without added gas, at cellar rather than fridge temperature.

Either side of this

← 1966: Pierre Celis revives witbier · 1972: Cascade is released →

See the whole sequence on the beer history timeline.

Last reviewed 2026-08-16.