Is Bitter Real Ale, and lager not real ale?
Not necessarily. Bitter is a traditional British style of beer, getting its name from the slightly bitter flavour imparted by the use of hops. There are over 1000 bitters in the UK which are real ale. You can recognise them as they are usually served by a Hand Pump or straight from the barrel. There are a score or so of bitters which are served in dead, keg form These are generally found spewing from little illuminated boxes on the bar, or from those pretentious brass T-bar fonts. They are mostly household names. Like Domestos or Toilet Duck, you should not drink them! Lagers, in the UK, are almost always not real ale. They are simply a sub-style of keg beers, often given a fake Germanic or Scandinavian name to kid you that they are not produced in a factory in Wrexham or Moss Side. A cynical ploy to cash in on the market for foreign beers which grew up with the package holiday boom of the Sixties, they are extremely poor imitations of various European styles. One or two micro-brewers
