Farmhouse ale Farmhouse ale Farmhouse ale is an ancient European tradition where farmers brewed beer for consumption on the farm from their own grain, hops, and yeast. Most farmers would brew for Christmas and/or harvest time, but in areas where they had enough grain farmers would use beer as the every-day drink. This was in a time when it was safer to drink beer than water. Farmhouse ale has enormous variation in the ingredients and brewing process used, both of which follow ancient local traditions. Today many microbreweries make beers they market as farmhouse ale, but in most cases the connection with
Cask ale great stronghold of natural beer was about to be wiped out. In 1971 the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) was founded in Britain to save what they came to term "real ale". The campaign was extremely successful and real ale is now almost universally available and sought after in British pubs. Many smaller breweries were founded or revived to meet this demand, competing successfully with large conglomerates which had promoted the move towards keg products. Real ale is the name coined by the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) in 1973 for a type of beer defined as "beer brewed from