CAMPAIGN FOR REAL ALE

• Supermarket Beer Prices
• Hunts Cider
• Hunts Food & Drink Festival

25 YEARS AGO

Charles Wells re-introduced brewing to the city of Cambridge in autumn 1983 after a gap of eleven years with the opening of their new Ancient Druids pub and brewhouse. Cambridge once had over fifty breweries and in 1983, Ale, the newsletter of CAMRA Cambridge branch, looked forward to celebrating the existence of fifty breweries in the city again as it announced the opening of the Ancient Druids. In 2008 there are three working breweries in Cambridge, so there are still a few to go.

Real ale was defined for the first time by the Oxford English Dictionary in a 1983 supplement, following acceptance of a definition proposed by CAMRA. The definition reads 'A name for draught (or bottled) beer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide; also called "cask-conditioned" and "naturally conditioned" beer'. CAMRA claimed that the definition would be used 'to establish our point in cases where breweries try to claim that their filtered or top-pressure dispended or canned beers are "real ales".'

St Neots CAMRA held autumn meetings at the Windmill, Somersham and the George and Dragon at Eaton Socon.

There were socials at the Prince of Wales in Hilton and in Southoe at the Bell and Three Horseshoes. There was also a visit to the Green Man, Leighton Bromswold and the Swan at Old Weston.

The Watney group became the first national brewing group to launch a cask porter. Their Hammerton Porter was named after an old Watney stout. Meanwhile Wilsons, the Manchester arm of the Watney group, launched cask Gold Medal, a new bitter brewed to an original gravity of 1042.

In Norfolk, CAMRA officials met Watneys directors following a number of rural pub closures. Watneys agreed to look at alternative ways of keeping pubs open such as linking them with shops or post offices and flagging up poorly performing pubs to prompt local 'rally round your local' campaigns.

Woodfordes brewery at the Spread Eagle in Erpingham, Norfolk was undergoing reconstruction work after a fire. Meanwhile Woodfordes beers were being produced by a small brewer in Suffolk and the fire was to be the inspiration for Phoenix XXX, a 1047 og cask beer that would become a very popular part of the Woodforde's portfolio.

Boddingtons Bitter came south after the Manchester real ale went on sale for the first time in pubs in the Home Counties and railway station bars, where it replaced Ruddles County.

The first cask-conditioned lager was launched by Allied Breweries. Gold Cross Cask Lager was test marketed in 52 Midlands pubs.