Peter Ross: Why real ale is enjoying a revival

FOR thousands of beer fans, the exotic names and flavours are an obsession that cannot easily be slaked

THERE is nothing quite like walking along the prom at Troon, amid the smell of the sea and the bracing morning air, to put you in just the right frame of mind for a pint of Nutty Slack or Hurricane Jack. The Ayrshire Real Ale Festival is about to begin. Over three days, some 3,000 drouthy punters attend the festival, which takes place in the local concert hall. The grand barrel-vaulted ceiling gives the impression that we are actually inside a beer keg. Well, actually no, not a keg. Real ale devotees are against kegs as these contain gassy lager, a substance they find noxious. Better to say that it is like being inside a cask. Casks are sacred vessels of the real ale scene, the idea being that they hold a brew which is alive, containing yeast which continues to ferment. This is National Cask Ale Week, a holy week in the beer calendar.

“I’d sooner give up drinking than go back to lager,” says Shaw Monaghan, a 28- year-old from Paisley. “As soon as I tasted the good stuff, that was it.” You sense from the emotion in his voice what an act of self-sacrifice this would be. He is wearing a T-shirt with a picture of a fierce goblin holding a pint and the slogan, “Not for lagerboys.”

Real ale drinkers often talk about the switch from lager to real ale as a sort of conversion experience. There is, in the real ale scene, something rather evangelical, and the beer festivals are essentially revival meetings. It is not a complicated religion or one that requires a great deal from its acolytes. They believe in ale, they believe that it should be served in a pub at between 11C and 13C, and they believe, firmly, that a pint glass should contain a full pint.

Beer arriving with an inch of foam on top is a heresy which pains them enormously. “That’s no use,” mutters Ray Turpie, a 62-year-old Aberdonian. Ray first drank real ale 30 years ago, a pint of St Peter’s Well that he remembers with Damascene clarity. “I thought to myself, ‘Where has this been all my life?’ ”

Ayrshire, now in its 12th year, is one of around 150 beer festivals taking place across the UK throughout the year. The hall is hoaching and there are 120 beers on sale, lined up three-deep in their silvery casks like depth charges in a weapons bay. The air smells deliciously warm and comforting, which is to say of booze and sweat and beef and gravy. “Say aye to a pie,” signs a urge, though in truth few need much urging to try one.

There is a tremendous sense of bonhomie. A group of greybeards, taking their ease in a side room, keep everyone’s spirits up with dirty jokes and songs. “We’ve been here five hours and there’s no’ been a fight,” says one, wonderingly. His pal explains their confusion: “We’re from Glasgow.”

Another group of men, here from Prestwick, attend each year and grow amusing facial hair for the occasion. It is a beard festival within the beer festival. There is an informal competition among them to see who can grow the daftest, a competition I suspect 45-year-old Cameron Winton may win. “I’ve had all sorts,” he says. “The droopy ’tache, the Donald Findlay job. I was thinking of Captain Haddock for this year, but I’ve gone for a cross between an Edwardian gentleman and Frank Zappa.”

Over the weekend, well over 10,000 pints will be drunk. Guidelines drawn up by the Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA) suggest that the average attendee at a UK beer festival will drink 3.5 pints during their visit. In the West of Scotland, however, the figure is somewhat higher. One old hand has brought with him a small plastic funnel which he uses to decant favoured ales into plastic bottles for supping, later, at home.

For those of us who are working and keen to keep a clear head, the beers need not be tasted to be enjoyed. One need merely walk the length of the bar, which takes up one entire side of the large chamber, noting the fantastic names written across the casks: Poet’s Tipple; Gowfer’s Gold; Leezie Lundie; Ballard’s Wassail. I am sorry to see that my own favourite beer name, Sheepshaggers Gold, a brew which makes up in maltiness what it lacks in possessive apostrophes, is not present.

Eric’s Ale, a newcomer from the Sulwath brewery in Castle Douglas, is named for Eric Hirons-Smith, a great champion of real ale, who died in March at the age of 76. He lived in Rotherham but travelled to Troon, his favourite beer festival, each year. There’s a wee photo of him on the font. His son, Andy, has travelled up from Warwickshire to drink Eric’s Ale. “It’s sad and I miss him a lot,” he says. “But I feel a real sense of pride that he is being remembered in this way.”

It’s not all beer at the beer festival, by the way. Over at the cider and perry bar, a wildly enthusiastic Irishman called Paddy has pinned some handwritten tasting notes on the wall. Gwynt y Draig Black Dragon is hailed as “proof that the Welsh can do things right” while a perry called Troggi is “one for the ladies”.

Yes, ladies. In attendance there are, no doubt, plenty of men of middle years with bellies which jut prow-like before them as they chart a steady course to the bar. But there are lots of younger people, too, and not all of them male. The real ale boom, which has seen cask beer take a 15 per cent share of the market at the expense of lager sales, is being driven by younger, affluent, often female consumers.

You can see the evidence of generational change all around in Troon. There are loads of men and women in their twenties, for whom this is their first beer festival. One group are using iPhones, an Apple product, to take photos of another apple product – their delicious pints of Old Goat cider. “It is,” says one, “what Steve Jobs would have wanted.”

I also notice, in a vignette which seems metaphoric, a group of attractive young women – coiffed, tanned and moisturised within an inch of their lives – coming into the hall just as a paunchy punter with a florid nose and thick, silver muttonchops is heading out. Imagine, if you will, the cast of Hollyoaks passing Amos from Emmerdale.

In part, the change is simple arithmetic. CAMRA, which has 130,000 members across the UK, is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, meaning that the children of the original members, raised in the true faith, have never strayed from the path of righteousness. Gavin Wallace, a 25-year-old DJ, is the son of CAMRA stalwart Bob Wallace. “Tennents and Carlsberg were swearwords in our house,” he says. “If you drank that you’d get no dinner for a week.”

Marie Grant, 29, is the daughter of Lindsay Grant, CAMRA’s Scottish director. “I’m a bit fussy with my beers. My favourite is Orkney Dark Island,” she says, screwing up her nose at the mere mention of Bacardi Breezers. “Real ale was always seen as being for old men with beards and woolly jumpers. That’s probably why women wouldn’t drink it in the past. But things are changing now.”

As someone who is a fan of beards and woolly jumpers, I find this a little sad. But there are still plenty of the old guard around. Alan Watson, 69, introduced to me as a “CAMRA legend”, joined the group back in 1973, back when it was still known as the Campaign For The Revitalisation Of Ale. Things were grim then. You could hardly get proper beer anywhere. Watson, a Partick Thistle fan, took along CAMRA membership forms to Firhill and signed up six of his pals. The following week, each of them signed up six more. It was like pyramid selling, he recalls. Thus, CAMRA in Scotland was built on a bedrock of Jags support. “Real ale has grown, bound by bound,” says Watson. “Thistle, sadly, have not followed suit.”

There is a serious side to the Ayrshire festival, and that is the judging for the Champion Beer Of Britain. The overall winner is chosen at the Great British Beer Festival in London, but the various heats take place all over the UK. Troon, today, is deciding amongst the milds, strong milds and old ales. One judge announces his credentials thus: “I’ve drunk a helluva lot of beer.” The pints under consideration are held up to the light. They are sniffed, sipped, swirled round the mouth and then swallowed. This isn’t like a wine-tasting. You don’t spit. The rationale is that aftertaste is an important part of a good ale’s charm, but there is also a sense that it would be sacrilegious to waste beer.

Sitting in on the judging does bring Jilly Goolden to mind. Beer is compared, in its taste and aroma, to blackcurrant, chocolate, caramel and even paint.

“There’s initial hints of ginger,” says one judge, sipping a pint.

“That’s what the midwife said to my mother,” replies Derek Hoy, a judge whose hair and beard are flaming Viking red.

The beer festival goes on until midnight, but by 7pm I’ve had my fill, and head back along the sea front for the train. The sun is setting behind Ailsa Craig and the only sounds are the shush of the surf and the bevvied greeting of a reveller taking a head-clearing turn on the beach.

“Did you try yon Hurricane Jack?” he asks. “Man, it blew me away.”