Pale ale
Ordinary bitter
The everyday British cask ale: low in strength, gently bitter, and built to be drunk in pints over a whole evening.
- Strength
- 3.2–3.8% ABV
- Bitterness
- 25–35 IBU
- Colour
- Gold to deep copper
- Serve at
- 11–13°C
Also known as bitter, session bitter.
Bitter is the beer the British pub was designed around. Low gravity, low carbonation, served cool from a cask, with a balance that stays interesting through several pints — a genuinely difficult thing to achieve, and one that maximalist brewing traditions tend to overlook.
The name is a nineteenth-century contrast with mild, which was less hopped, rather than a claim that the beer is very bitter. By modern standards an ordinary bitter is not especially bitter at all.
This is the everyday beer of the British pub and the hardest kind to appreciate from a bottle, because it was designed around cask dispense. Low carbonation, cellar temperature and a gentle hand pump present a beer whose whole appeal is delicacy and drinkability, and cold heavy carbonation flattens all of it.
Strength is deliberately low, and that is the point rather than a limitation: an ordinary bitter is built to be drunk in quantity across an evening while remaining interesting. A good one balances biscuit malt against earthy English hops with a dry finish, and tastes noticeably better in its third pint than its first.
Questions this page answers
- what is ordinary bitter — Measurements
- ordinary bitter food pairing — What to eat with it
- ordinary bitter serving temperature — Serving
- how long does ordinary bitter last — Freshness and storage
- is undercarbonation normal in ordinary bitter — Characteristics that may be expected here
How it tastes
BeerHQ’s own comparative scale, not a measurement. Each bar is a range because a style is a span of real beers rather than one beer.
Appearance and character
| Colour | Gold to deep copper |
|---|---|
| Clarity | clear |
| Head | Off-white, low and soft; fuller where a sparkler is used |
| Fermentation | Top-fermented (ale). Fermented warm with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which collects at the surface. Warmer fermentation produces more esters and phenols, so ales tend to carry more fruit and spice from the yeast itself. |
| Origin | United Kingdom |
| Tradition | British cask ale |
Measurements
Conventional ranges published by style bodies, not a specification. IBU measures iso-alpha acids in a lab and does not track perceived bitterness — compare it against the sensory scale above rather than reading it as a flavour rating.
| Measurement | Typical range |
|---|---|
| ABV | 3.2–3.8% ABV |
| IBU | 25–35 IBU |
| Colour | Gold to deep copper — 8–14 SRM, 16–28 EBC. |
| Original gravity | 1.030–1.039 |
| Final gravity | 1.007–1.011 |
| Carbonation | 0.8–1 vol CO₂ |
| Apparent attenuation | 70–78% |
Classified by BJCP-2021 as Ordinary Bitter (exact fit). BeerHQ maintains its own taxonomy and records how it maps onto others rather than adopting any one of them.
What goes into it
| Hops | East Kent Goldings, Fuggle, Challenger |
|---|---|
| Malt | Maris Otter, Crystal malt |
| Yeast | English ale yeast |
| Water | Burton-on-Trent water — Extremely high in calcium sulphate, the water that made Burton the centre of world pale ale brewing and gave brewing the term "Burtonisation". |
Serving
| Temperature | 11–13°C |
|---|---|
| Glass | Nonic pint, Dimpled mug |
| Dispense | Cask, hand-pulled — Beer that completes fermentation in the cask and is drawn by hand pump without added gas, served at cellar temperature.Cask, gravity-dispensed — Cask beer poured straight from the tap under gravity, with nothing between the cask and the glass. |
Freshness and storage
Ordinary bitter shows best within 3–21 days of packaging. After that it declines in quality rather than becoming unsafe.
Drink fresh. Buy it as young as you can and drink it soon. What makes this beer worth drinking is the first thing to leave it.
- Changes quickly enough that freshness is the dominant quality variable.
Cask beer is a live product with a working life of a few days once tapped. Freshness here is measured in days, not months, and badly kept cask is genuinely unpleasant.
What changes with time
- Oxidation. Reaction with oxygen, producing wet cardboard and sherry notes in pale beer and dark-fruit depth in strong dark beer. Months to years, depending on packaged oxygen and temperature.
- Staling. The general, gradual loss of freshness that affects all beer, accelerated sharply by warmth. Months, and roughly twice as fast for every 10 °C warmer.
In the package
- Aluminium can — No light can reach the beer, so lightstrike is impossible in this format.
- Brown glass bottle — No format-specific concerns beyond the general advice above.
- Keg — No light can reach the beer, so lightstrike is impossible in this format.
- Cask — No light can reach the beer, so lightstrike is impossible in this format. This format admits air by design and assumes the beer will be drunk within days rather than months.
Old beer tastes worse; it does not become dangerous. Ethanol, low pH, hop compounds and the absence of oxygen make packaged beer hostile to the organisms that cause foodborne illness. The exception is a compromised package — visible mould at the closure, a pierced or rusted can, a lifted cap — which is a reason to discard the beer regardless of its age.
Guidance, not an expiry date. How a beer is stored matters more than the date printed on it, and staling roughly doubles in rate for every 10 °C. See storage and freshness for the full model.
What to eat with it
- Fish and chips
The British pub answer. Bitterness cuts the batter and the low strength lets you finish the plate and order another. Cask ale’s gentle carbonation means it cleanses less aggressively than a lager, but the malt sweetness handles the salt better.
- Pork scratchings
The archetypal British bar pairing, and a genuinely good one: very salty rendered fat against a low-strength bitter that clears it and asks nothing.
- Pork pie
Cold fatty pastry and salty pork need bitterness and not much else. The low strength matters — this is lunch, not an event.
- Gyoza
Beer and dish carry similar weight, so neither flattens the other.
- Ham
Beer and dish carry similar weight, so neither flattens the other.
- Tapas
Beer and dish carry similar weight, so neither flattens the other.
Beers to try
Widely-known examples BeerHQ carries as reference points for this style. Not a recommendation list and not ranked — these are the beers that make the category concrete.
If you like this, try
Best bitter
The same beer at slightly higher strength.
Suits you if: You like Ordinary bitter but want less floral. Reason not to: The main shift is less floral, which is a small step rather than a change of direction.
Dark mild
The less-hopped, maltier session counterpart.
Suits you if: You like Ordinary bitter but want less bread & biscuit. Reason not to: Noticeably less bread & biscuit than Ordinary bitter, which may make it feel thin by comparison.
British golden ale
A paler, crisper modern take on the same session role.
Suits you if: You like Ordinary bitter but want more carbonation. Reason not to: The main shift is more carbonation, which is a small step rather than a change of direction.
Irish red ale
Same family — both are Pale ale beers.
Suits you if: You like Ordinary bitter but want less bitterness. Reason not to: The main shift is less bitterness, which is a small step rather than a change of direction.
English pale ale
Same family — both are Pale ale beers.
Suits you if: You like Ordinary bitter but want more carbonation. Reason not to: The main shift is more carbonation, which is a small step rather than a change of direction.
Compare with
- Ordinary bitter vs Dark mild — The main difference is bread & biscuit: Ordinary bitter has far more of it than Dark mild. Ordinary bitter also leads on bitterness; Dark mild on roast and sweetness.
- Ordinary bitter vs British golden ale — The main difference is citrus: British golden ale has noticeably more of it than Ordinary bitter. Ordinary bitter also leads on caramel & toffee and herbal; British golden ale on hop aroma.
- Ordinary bitter vs American amber ale — The main difference is dryness: Ordinary bitter has far more of it than American amber ale. American amber ale also leads on citrus, carbonation and resin & pine.
- Ordinary bitter vs Australian sparkling ale — The main difference is carbonation: Australian sparkling ale has far more of it than Ordinary bitter. Ordinary bitter also leads on caramel & toffee, sweetness and floral.
Characteristics that may be expected here
Each of these is treated as a fault in most beer, and in this style it can be part of the character. Intensity and context decide which: a trace that suits the style and an obvious, dominating version of the same thing are not the same finding. Follow the link where you want to work out which one you have.
Undercarbonation
Cask-conditioned British ale is deliberately low in carbonation, and sahti is essentially still. What would be flat in a pilsner is correct there. The fault is carbonation below what the style intends, not low carbonation as such.
Faults to watch for
- Oxidation — The universal ageing fault: oxygen degrades beer into papery, cardboard-like staleness, and dulls everything that made it good.
- Diacetyl — A buttery compound with a very low threshold — normally a sign of rushed fermentation, but traditional at trace levels in some Czech lagers.
- Infection — Unintended microbial growth — which is a fault only because it was unintended, since the same organisms define lambic.
How it got here
"Bitter" was originally what drinkers called pale ale to distinguish it from mild, and for much of the nineteenth century it was a considerably stronger beer than it is now.
The strength came down through the First World War and did not go back up. Grain restriction and duty charged on gravity pushed brewers steadily downward, and the ordinary bitter that survives — around 3.5% and built to be drunk several at a time — is that settlement rather than an older tradition.
1914–1950 British beer strength collapses through two wars
Wartime restriction and gravity-based taxation drove British beer strengths down sharply, and they never returned to nineteenth-century levels.
See the whole sequence on the beer history timeline.
Common misconceptions
“Cask ale is warm and flat.”
It is cooler and livelier than that suggests. Cask is served at cellar temperature — around 11–13 °C, cool to the hand rather than cold — and it is conditioned in the cask, so it carries real carbonation, just less than a kegged beer under gas. A cask ale that is genuinely warm or genuinely lifeless is badly kept, and that is a fault rather than the style.
How it is made
The steps that shape this style in particular, rather than the ones every beer goes through.
- Infusion mash — Reach and hold a single conversion temperature by mixing grain with water at a calculated strike temperature, without further heating.
- Top fermentation — Ferment warm with Saccharomyces cerevisiae, producing the ester and phenol character that distinguishes ales from lagers.
- Open fermentation — Ferment in a vessel open to the air, allowing krausen to be skimmed and yeast to be cropped from the surface.
- Cask conditioning — Complete fermentation and carbonation inside the cask the beer will be served from, so it arrives at the drinker alive.
Questions
Why is bitter not very bitter?
The name is a nineteenth-century contrast with mild ale, which was hopped much more lightly. Against mild, bitter was noticeably bitter. Against a modern IPA at 60+ IBU, an ordinary bitter at around 30 IBU is moderate. The word records a historical comparison, not an absolute level.
Sensory levels are BeerHQ’s editorial abstraction, described as None–Very high on a six-point scale. Measurements are conventional style ranges. Last reviewed 2026-08-15.
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.
On Burton-on-Trent water
The confident round figures given for historic brewing city water profiles are much shakier than their presentation suggests, and how seriously to take them is genuinely argued.
— The figures are widely reproduced across brewing literature and are useful as a description of relative character between cities.
— They typically derive from single nineteenth-century analyses of one source, while cities drew from multiple wells of differing chemistry and brewers treated their water before use — so they describe a supply rather than what went into a mash.
BeerHQ stores them as ranges with a mandatory per-profile caveat, and treats them as indicative of relative character rather than as specifications.
Genuinely contested Credible sources disagree, so both positions are given rather than one.
Sources: Water: A Comprehensive Guide for Brewers — print; Beer: The Story of the Pint — print
On Burton-on-Trent water
The strength of the claim that a city’s water determined its beer style is contested: the correlation is real, but the causal account is weaker and more contingent than the way it is usually stated.
— The conventional account: Burton’s gypsum-rich water made pale ale possible there and Dublin’s alkaline water made stout the practical choice, so water determined regional style.
— The qualified account: brewers worked with the water they had and selected recipes that survived it, which is selection rather than determination. Water treatment, and Burtonisation in particular, severed the link entirely once available — any brewery could then reproduce any profile.
BeerHQ presents water as a strong constraint on what worked historically, not as a designer of styles.
Genuinely contested Credible sources disagree, so both positions are given rather than one.
Sources: Water: A Comprehensive Guide for Brewers — print; Beer: The Story of the Pint — print
On Infection
Packaged beer is a hostile environment for human foodborne pathogens: the combination of ethanol, a pH typically between about 3.8 and 4.6, hop-derived iso-alpha-acids with antibacterial activity, near-absent oxygen and dissolved carbon dioxide means no such pathogen is known to survive and grow in it.
Backed by a source
Sources: Brewing: Science and Practice — print; Beer: Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing — print
On British cask ale
The Supply of Beer (Tied Estate) Order 1989 required any brewer with interests in more than 2,000 licensed premises to divest, stop brewing, or come within a ceiling of 2,000 premises plus half the excess above that, by 1 November 1992.
Checked against the source Applies in United Kingdom. In force from 1989-12-19. Last checked 2026-08-16.
Source: The Supply of Beer (Tied Estate) Order 1989 (SI 1989/2390), Article 2(1); Schedule, paragraph 3(1) (As made, 19 December 1989)
On British cask ale
The Beer Orders are widely held to have separated pub ownership from brewing in Britain: rather than the tied estates dispersing, large parts of them were sold into newly formed pub companies, and several national brewers left brewing altogether. How much of that the Orders caused, as against a consolidation already under way, is a matter of historical interpretation rather than an established finding.
BeerHQ’s own reading
On Infection
The organisms that do spoil beer — chiefly Lactobacillus, Pediococcus and Brettanomyces — are the same organisms deliberately used to produce sour and mixed-fermentation styles, which is why the identical organism is contamination in one brewery and the product in another.
Backed by a source
Sources: Brewing: Science and Practice — print; Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation — print
On British cask ale
BeerHQ addresses widely-held beer myths directly rather than omitting them, because a reader who arrives holding one and finds no mention of it concludes the site simply does not cover the topic.
BeerHQ’s own reading
On British cask ale
British brewing consolidated sharply in the mid-twentieth century into a small number of national groups, which replaced cask beer with keg products across large tied estates — the change CAMRA was founded to resist.
Backed by a source
Sources: Campaign for Real Ale; Beer: The Story of the Pint — print
For much of their history "bitter" and "pale ale" named the same beer through different channels — bitter on draught in the pub, pale ale in bottle — rather than two distinct products.
Backed by a source
Sources: Historical brewing log transcriptions and analysis; Beer: The Story of the Pint — print
On British cask ale
A large share of the popular history of beer originates in brewery marketing and centenary publications rather than in independent research, which is a substantial part of why so many origin stories are both vivid and unsupported.
Backed by a source
Sources: Historical brewing log transcriptions and analysis; Beer: The Story of the Pint — print
On Undercarbonation
The prickle of a carbonated beer is a chemical sensation rather than a physical one. Dissolved CO₂ is converted to carbonic acid at the oral surface by carbonic anhydrase, and the acid stimulates trigeminal nerve endings — so the bite is felt even when no bubbles form at all.
Checked against the source
Source: Wise et al., "The Influence of Bubbles on the Perception of Carbonation Bite" (2013), abstract, and Experiment 1 results (PLoS ONE 8(8):e71488)
On Cask conditioning
Cask-conditioned beer completes its fermentation in the container it is served from, retaining live yeast and residual fermentable material, and is dispensed without added carbon dioxide.
Backed by a source
Sources: Campaign for Real Ale; Institute of Brewing & Distilling technical publications
On Crystal malt
Crystal malt is produced by stewing wet germinated grain so that starch converts to sugar inside the husk, then kilning so that sugar caramelises in place — which is what distinguishes it from ordinary kilned malt.
Backed by a source
Sources: Malt: A Practical Guide from Field to Brewhouse — print; Brewing: Science and Practice — print
On Crystal malt
Crystal malt contributes sugars that brewing yeast largely cannot ferment, which is why it adds residual sweetness and body rather than alcohol.
Backed by a source
Sources: Malt: A Practical Guide from Field to Brewhouse — print; How to Brew (4th edition) — print
On Diacetyl
The buttery or butterscotch character described as diacetyl is 2,3-butanedione, a vicinal diketone formed outside the yeast cell by oxidative decarboxylation of alpha-acetolactate.
Backed by a source
Sources: Beer: Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing, chapter on flavour — print; Brewing: Science and Practice — print
On Diacetyl
Diacetyl has one of the lowest flavour thresholds of any beer compound, detectable by many tasters at concentrations in the region of 0.1 mg/L or below, with substantial variation between individuals.
Backed by a source
Sources: Beer: Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing — print; Technology Brewing and Malting — print
On Diacetyl
A low level of diacetyl is traditional and accepted in some Czech pale lagers and in some Yorkshire and Scottish ales, where it contributes a rounded buttery softness the brewers are not attempting to remove.
Backed by a source
Sources: Tasting Beer (2nd edition) — print; The Oxford Companion to Beer — print
On Diacetyl
Diacetyl reaches beer by two unrelated routes: as a normal fermentation by-product that healthy yeast subsequently reabsorbs, or from bacterial contamination — chiefly Pediococcus — which produces it continuously and cannot be rested out.
Backed by a source
Sources: Yeast: The Practical Guide to Beer Fermentation — print; Brewing: Science and Practice — print
On East Kent Goldings
East Kent Goldings holds Protected Designation of Origin status — the stricter of the two protected food name categories — so the name identifies Goldings-type hops actually grown in East Kent rather than the variety wherever it is grown.
Checked against the source Applies in United Kingdom and European Union. In force from 2013-08-01. Last checked 2026-08-16.
Sources: UK protected food name register, Register entry: East Kent Goldings (PDO); The Oxford Companion to Beer — print
On Fuggle
Fuggle and Goldings between them supplied most English hop character for over a century, and remain the reference points against which English aroma hops are described.
Backed by a source
Sources: Wye College hop breeding programme records; For the Love of Hops — print
British beer gravities fell substantially during and after both world wars under wartime restriction and gravity-based taxation, and never returned to nineteenth-century levels — which is why traditional British styles are weaker today than their historical namesakes.
Backed by a source
Sources: Historical brewing log transcriptions and analysis; Beer: The Story of the Pint — print
On Burton-on-Trent water
Magnesium functions as a yeast nutrient at low levels but begins to read as sour or metallic above roughly 30 mg/L, which is one reason the full Burton profile is rarely reproduced literally.
Backed by a source
Source: Water: A Comprehensive Guide for Brewers — print
Ordinary bitter is designed around cask dispense and low carbonation at cellar temperature, and is one of the styles most changed by being served cold and carbonated rather than hand-pulled.
Backed by a source
Sources: Campaign for Real Ale; The Oxford Companion to Beer — print
On Oxidation
In strong dark beer the same oxidative chemistry produces sherry, port and dried-fruit character that many drinkers actively seek, which is why oxidation is a defect in a fresh pilsner and part of the appeal of an aged barley wine.
Backed by a source
Sources: Tasting Beer (2nd edition) — print; The Oxford Companion to Beer — print
On Oxidation
The wet-cardboard character of stale beer is attributed principally to trans-2-nonenal, a carbonyl formed from lipid precursors and perceptible at extremely low concentrations.
Backed by a source
Sources: Beer: Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing — print; Journal of the Institute of Brewing
On Oxidation
trans-2-Nonenal, a product of lipid peroxidation, is the compound behind the cardboard or papery flavour characteristic of stale beer.
Checked against the source
Source: Wu et al., "Identification of a Protein with Antioxidant Activity that is Important for the Protection against Beer Ageing" (2011), Introduction (Int J Mol Sci 12(9):6089–6103)
On Oxidation
Staling reactions in packaged beer are strongly temperature-dependent, with the conventional working figure being that the rate roughly doubles for every 10 °C increase in storage temperature.
Backed by a source
Sources: Beer: Tap into the Art and Science of Brewing — print; Technology Brewing and Malting — print
On Infection
A compromised package — visible mould at the closure, a pierced or corroded can, a lifted cap or cork — admits organisms the beer’s own chemistry did not exclude, and is the situation in which discarding the beer is the correct response.
Backed by a source
Source: Institute of Brewing & Distilling technical publications