Newcastle Brown Ale and ale in the Federation Brewery site in Dunston, Gateshead, which was to pass to them with their £7.2m purchase of the Federation Brewery. The purchase and consolidation at Dunston created the new brewing company, Newcastle Federation Breweries. The last production run of Brown Ale in Newcastle came off the Tyne Brewery line in May 2005. Pre-production trial brews were conducted at Dunston to ensure no change occurred in its taste after the move. The Tyne Brewery site was bought by a consortium of Newcastle University, Newcastle City Council, and the regional development agency One NorthEast, as part of the
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