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A history of beer dispense
In the beginning there were no pubs.
It’s hard to believe, I know, but it has taken centuries of cultural evolution to build the societies we move through today—pubs and all.
Early examples of pubs can be split into three categories:
– Inns, Taverns and Alehouses.
Inns worked to provide a place of rest and nourishment for weary travellers, now almost entirely replaced by our modern day holiday inns and motorway service stations. Taverns were introduced to Great Britain by the Romans—once they’d provided us with roads and infrastructure the next obvious step was to introduce their tabernae. In Italy a taberna was a bar dedicated to serving local wine, but the Romans gladly adopted British beer instead, and taverns were born. Alehouses followed suit, places for the sale of beer and ale—as the name suggests—that sprung up throughout cities and towns providing third spaces for the workers and men of the community.
Illustrations by David Bailey, photos by Amelia Claudia and Matthew Curtis
A history of beer dispense
In the beginning there were no pubs.
It’s hard to believe, I know, but it has taken centuries of cultural evolution to build the societies we move through today—pubs and all.
Early examples of pubs can be split into three categories:
– Inns, Taverns and Alehouses.
Inns worked to provide a place of rest and nourishment for weary travellers, now almost entirely replaced by our modern day holiday inns and motorway service stations. Taverns were introduced to Great Britain by the Romans—once they’d provided us with roads and infrastructure the next obvious step was to introduce their tabernae. In Italy a taberna was a bar dedicated to serving local wine, but the Romans gladly adopted British beer instead, and taverns were born. Alehouses followed suit, places for the sale of beer and ale—as the name suggests—that sprung up throughout cities and towns providing third spaces for the workers and men of the community.
Illustrations by David Bailey, photos by Amelia Claudia and Matthew Curtis
Rachel Hendry
Rachel Hendry
A wine and cider writer, featured in Wine52’s Glug magazine, Pellicle magazine, Burum Collective and Two Belly. The mind behind wine newsletter J’adore le Plonk and an untiring advocate for spritzing every drink she can get her hands on.
What makes a pub – a pub?
Nowadays the pub works as a place for family and friends, regulars and newcomers, community and nostalgia, but more importantly, where you can (hopefully) get a pint of good quality beer. When you walk into your local, the architecture and aesthetics that you’re greeted with are as a result of endless innovation and invention. Those feelings of familiarity are no accident, pubs have been built and designed to invite you in, keep you there for a pint or three and make sure the whole experience is as seamless as possible, for you and the bartender.
So how have methods of beer dispensary evolved over the years to make serving pints easier for everyone? And how does the design of the bar work to inform the consumer about what kinds of beer are available to them? Well, let’s find out, shall we?
How was beer first served?
Beer, you have to remember, came before electricity and refrigeration. In those first instances of pubs there were no draught systems forming the mechanisms of the bar we know and love today. The bar was simply a barrier between customer and worker—separating and distinguishing one from another.
What makes a pub – a pub?
Nowadays the pub works as a place for family and friends, regulars and newcomers, community and nostalgia, but more importantly, where you can (hopefully) get a pint of good quality beer. When you walk into your local, the architecture and aesthetics that you’re greeted with are as a result of endless innovation and invention. Those feelings of familiarity are no accident, pubs have been built and designed to invite you in, keep you there for a pint or three and make sure the whole experience is as seamless as possible, for you and the bartender.
So how have methods of beer dispensary evolved over the years to make serving pints easier for everyone? And how does the design of the bar work to inform the consumer about what kinds of beer are available to them? Well, let’s find out, shall we?
“Gravity Dispense, as it is known, was the original dispensary method for taking beer from the cask, before draught systems were invented.“
— Rachel Hendry
“After just a year of formation the CIU had helped 13 clubs to begin, growing to 55 by its second.”
— Rachel Hendry
Beer, then, would have been served at room temperature—worth noting that without things like double glazing and insulation this would have been a few degrees colder than modern day room temperature and downright chilled in the months of winter. Beer was also served directly from the cask.
Casks are a vessel for transporting, storing and serving beer that are unpressurised—this lack of forced carbonation is an important factor that we’ll take a look at later. Gravity Dispense, as it is known, was the original dispensary method for taking beer from the cask, before draught systems were invented. Casks would be situated on the bar, behind the bar, or sometimes in another room altogether and the workers would turn on the tap and pour directly from the vessel into the
The method is simple, theoretically cheap and served with a sense of theatrics. However it came with its downsides. Imagine a busy Friday night at the pub, the queue is four deep at the bar, the bartender is having to run to the cellar every order to pour the beer directly from the cask, it’s taking time and everyone’s getting annoyed at the process. Surely, you’re all thinking, there’s an easier way to go about this?
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Invention of the beer engine
Luckily for everyone, the end of the 18th century brought with it the invention of the beer engine, also known as the hand pump. The device was designed to assist in the serving of these cask-conditioned beers that so far had been left to Mother Nature’s gravity and the physical exertion of bar staff—often referred to as “pot-boys”.
According to Garrett Oliver’s Oxford Companion to Beer, a beer engine is a “piston pump that allows the casks to be kept in a cooler cellar below the bar and the beer to be pulled or drawn up to the bar.” Finally! Gravity was out! Engineering was in!
Now this worked wonders in many ways. As mentioned, when beer was being drawn from the cask by hand this required a lot of manual labour and was therefore time consuming for the customer and expensive staffing wise for the publican. The design of the beer engine worked to ensure a balance between the temperature and the carbonation of the beer, maintaining the flavours associated with a well conditioned pint of cask all whilst seamlessly drawing beer up from the cellar without someone continuously going between the two.
The design was patented by a man called Joseph Bramah in 1797, but doesn’t necessarily mean that Bramah was the one to invent the device, more that he was smart enough to get to the patenting office first. Whoever it was that came up with the idea, we have a lot to thank them for, and beer engines were soon seen in every public house throughout the land.
Traditionally all parts of the beer engine were made from brass, but a British law passed in the early 1990s, linked with concerns around food hygiene, dictated that all parts of the beer engine that come in contact with the beer itself must be made from stainless steel or plastic and engines have been adapted as a result.
How was beer first served?
Beer, you have to remember, came before electricity and refrigeration. In those first instances of pubs there were no draught systems forming the mechanisms of the bar we know and love today. The bar was simply a barrier between customer and worker—separating and distinguishing one from another.
Beer, then, would have been served at room temperature—worth noting that without things like double glazing and insulation this would have been a few degrees colder than modern day room temperature and downright chilled in the months of winter. Beer was also served directly from the cask.
Casks are a vessel for transporting, storing and serving beer that are unpressurised—this lack of forced carbonation is an important factor that we’ll take a look at later. Gravity Dispense, as it is known, was the original dispensary method for taking beer from the cask, before draught systems were invented. Casks would be situated on the bar, behind the bar, or sometimes in another room altogether and the workers would turn on the tap and pour directly from the vessel into the .
The method is simple, theoretically cheap and served with a sense of theatrics. However it came with its downsides. Imagine a busy Friday night at the pub, the queue is four deep at the bar, the bartender is having to run to the cellar every order to pour the beer directly from the cask, it’s taking time and everyone’s getting annoyed at the process. Surely, you’re all thinking, there’s an easier way to go about this?
Invention of the beer engine
Luckily for everyone, the end of the 18th century brought with it the invention of the beer engine, also known as the hand pump. The device was designed to assist in the serving of these cask-conditioned beers that so far had been left to Mother Nature’s gravity and the physical exertion of bar staff—often referred to as “pot-boys”.
According to Garrett Oliver’s Oxford Companion to Beer, a beer engine is a “piston pump that allows the casks to be kept in a cooler cellar below the bar and the beer to be pulled or drawn up to the bar.” Finally! Gravity was out! Engineering was in!
Now this worked wonders in many ways. As mentioned, when beer was being drawn from the cask by hand this required a lot of manual labour and was therefore time consuming for the customer and expensive staffing wise for the publican. The design of the beer engine worked to ensure a balance between the temperature and the carbonation of the beer, maintaining the flavours associated with a well conditioned pint of cask all whilst seamlessly drawing beer up from the cellar without someone continuously going between the two.
The design was patented by a man called Joseph Bramah in 1797, but doesn’t necessarily mean that Bramah was the one to invent the device, more that he was smart enough to get to the patenting office first. Whoever it was that came up with the idea, we have a lot to thank them for, and beer engines were soon seen in every public house throughout the land.
Traditionally all parts of the beer engine were made from brass, but a British law passed in the early 1990s, linked with concerns around food hygiene, dictated that all parts of the beer engine that come in contact with the beer itself must be made from stainless steel or plastic and engines have been adapted as a result.
Cask vs keg or live beer vs bright beer
It’s at this point that we should probably take a look at the difference between cask and keg, or live beer and bright beer as they are also referred to.
CAMRA defines a cask conditioned beer as a live beer that continues to mature and condition in its (unpressurised) cask, with any excess of carbonation being vented such that it is served at atmospheric pressure.
A keg beer, on the other hand, is a pressurised container for dispensing carbonated draught beer. Kegs use what is called a coupler, a device that allows gas into the keg, forcing the beer out in the process.
Live beer, then, contains active yeast and is therefore a living, evolving product that needs care and consideration. Bright beer has had the yeast removed and requires no further settling—the beer is complete and ready to be served the minute it enters the cellar. Cask is often referred to as live beer and keg is often referred to as bright beer.
When I work behind a bar I notice the difference between the two in the physicality of my pouring. When I pour cask beer I become part of the dispensary mechanism, the strength of my arms work with the beer engine and the handpull to draw the beer from the cask. When I pour from a keg tap, my physical strength becomes less important, the reliance is more on the angle I hold my body and how I align myself with the rhythm of the carbonation.
Why is it important, then, that there is a distinction between the two? And how does the design of a bar work to highlight this difference?
Well, just as I can feel the difference in the way I serve the two, customers can also feel the difference in regards to the taste of the beers themself.
A live beer, something that is living, breathing and developing over time, will taste very different from a bright beer that has been sterilised and stabilised. Yeast plays a huge role in the flavour and formation of our beer and the choice to remove it or not changes the feel and taste of the drinks people opt for at the bar. It’s important, then, that when deciding which beer to order people know what is being persuaded from cask and what is being drawn from keg. This is when the aesthetics of the bar come into play.
Handpulls have a very distinct appearance. Majestic in the tradition of it all, they tend to be mounted onto the bar—the front displays the pump clip, whilst what is often referred to as the swan neck swoops from the back and the large upright handle looms above, ready to be pulled down by the server. Kegged beer taps tend to be sleeker in comparison and often have a more modern look, shiny in their stainless steel casing. The handle is much smaller as it relies on an open/close mechanism as opposed to a continuous pulling method and the keg badge tends to be situated higher up. These differences in appearances work so you, as a consumer, know exactly what kind of beer is being poured for you and aren’t misled by any difference in design.
But that’s not all that contributes to the quality control of your beer.
“When I pour cask beer I become part of the dispensary mechanism, the strength of my arms work with the beer engine and the handpull to draw the beer from the cask..”
— Rachel Hendry
“Arguments for and against the consumption of alcohol in Working Men’s Clubs went on for some time until 1865 when Solley decided, for the sake of the growth and popularisation of WMCs, to allow individual clubs to make their own decision about the sale of alcohol. “
— Rachel Hendry
The role of the cellar
Beer, as we’ve now established, needs to be drawn up to the bar, which means that the bar that we see when we enter the pub is only half of the dispensary system. The other half, arguably the more important half too, is the cellar and, unless you’re a member of staff, it’s rarely viewed, making it all the more mysterious.
So how does the cellar—the layout, upkeep and maintenance of it all—contribute to the dispense methods of a beer?
In beer’s gravity dispense era cellars were used as a method of storage. There was no room to house all the casks behind the bar so cellars acted as a temperature controlled room for housing the beer and workers would run to and from the cellar to empty the casks as the drinkers ordered. Beer engines were developed to make this movement easier for everyone involved, but the cellar still requires a lot of work to ensure the quality of the beer tastes good.
Now beer is technically classed as a food—what is beer if not liquid bread, after all—and as a result it has to be kept according to food safety legislations. The safety and quality of the food we consume is controlled by various government policies, regularly updated and tightened after national hygiene concerns.
Cask vs keg or live beer vs bright beer
It’s at this point that we should probably take a look at the difference between cask and keg, or live beer and bright beer as they are also referred to.
CAMRA defines a cask conditioned beer as a live beer that continues to mature and condition in its (unpressurised) cask, with any excess of carbonation being vented such that it is served at atmospheric pressure.
A keg beer, on the other hand, is a pressurised container for dispensing carbonated draught beer. Kegs use what is called a coupler, a device that allows gas into the keg, forcing the beer out in the process.
Live beer, then, contains active yeast and is therefore a living, evolving product that needs care and consideration. Bright beer has had the yeast removed and requires no further settling—the beer is complete and ready to be served the minute it enters the cellar. Cask is often referred to as live beer and keg is often referred to as bright beer.
The cleaning and maintenance of a cellar must be done regularly and recorded in accordance with government protocol, the aim being to ensure a consistency in cleanliness and quality across the board.
As long as the cellar is maintained and the lines are cleaned on a consistent and frequent basis kegged beer has little to worry about here, the very nature of kegged beer means that beer has a much longer shelf life than that of live beer. Cask, however, has a very delicate relationship with time. You see, live beer arrives at a pub still undergoing fermentation. A good cellar worker knows how long to wait for the cask to be at its best and that once it’s good to go, time is of the essence—cask only has about 2-3 days where it pours perfectly.
Whilst government policies work, in theory, to protect our food and drink that’s not always enough to ensure day to day quality. It’s never nice when you encounter a beer that’s past its best, or drawn through dirty lines, or dispensed poorly—thankfully there are groups of people working hard to change all of that.
When I work behind a bar I notice the difference between the two in the physicality of my pouring. When I pour cask beer I become part of the dispensary mechanism, the strength of my arms work with the beer engine and the handpull to draw the beer from the cask. When I pour from a keg tap, my physical strength becomes less important, the reliance is more on the angle I hold my body and how I align myself with the rhythm of the carbonation.
Why is it important, then, that there is a distinction between the two? And how does the design of a bar work to highlight this difference?
Well, just as I can feel the difference in the way I serve the two, customers can also feel the difference in regards to the taste of the beers themself.
Cask accreditation
CAMRA, as I hope you’d know if you’ve found your way onto their website, stands for the Campaign for Real Ale. By the 1970s a lot of pubs were favouring kegs over cask—for ease of service—and the little cask ale that was being served was done so carelessly, resulting in poor quality beer, giving cask a bad name in the process.
The result was a group of people coming together to help preserve and protect the art of well maintained cask dispensary systems. For over fifty years, CAMRA has worked tirelessly to educate people on the importance of real ale and the dispensary requirements it needs to ensure a good quality pint.
Not long after came Cask Marque, formed in 1988. You may have seen their emblem, the deep blue shadow of a handpull against a lemon yellow background in one of your favourite pubs. Cask Marque are a not for profit organisation whose members work via training and an accreditation scheme to improve the quality of cask beer being served in British pubs.
Quality control is very important, but there is another role these bodies and organisations play and that’s in ensuring that when people order a pint of live beer at the bar they’re not receiving a bright beer in disguise.
“For over fifty years, CAMRA has worked tirelessly to educate people on the importance of real ale and the dispensary requirements it needs to ensure a good quality pint. “
— Rachel Hendry
A live beer, something that is living, breathing and developing over time, will taste very different from a bright beer that has been sterilised and stabilised. Yeast plays a huge role in the flavour and formation of our beer and the choice to remove it or not changes the feel and taste of the drinks people opt for at the bar. It’s important, then, that when deciding which beer to order people know what is being persuaded from cask and what is being drawn from keg. This is when the aesthetics of the bar come into play.
Handpulls have a very distinct appearance. Majestic in the tradition of it all, they tend to be mounted onto the bar—the front displays the pump clip, whilst what is often referred to as the swan neck swoops from the back and the large upright handle looms above, ready to be pulled down by the server. Kegged beer taps tend to be sleeker in comparison and often have a more modern look, shiny in their stainless steel casing. The handle is much smaller as it relies on an open/close mechanism as opposed to a continuous pulling method and the keg badge tends to be situated higher up. These differences in appearances work so you, as a consumer, know exactly what kind of beer is being poured for you and aren’t misled by any difference in design.
But that’s not all that contributes to the quality control of your beer.
When does a cask become a keg?
By now you should get the idea that cask requires a lot more working knowledge to dispense than keg beer over a shorter shelf life and as a result sales of cask struggle against the sales of kegs. Lots of people have worked to preserve cask’s place in our pubs, but what happens when cask’s identity becomes threatened in the process?
Take Cask Breathers as an example. Cask Breather is the name for a process developed in the 1970s which introduces carbon dioxide into the cask as the beer leaves, forming a protective barrier between the beer left behind and the effects of oxygenation. When used correctly this can increase the shelf life of a cask to up to 6 days, which is great for those pubs who want to work with cask but don’t always have the consistency in sales required to keep the beer fresh. Whilst CAMRA currently takes a neutral position on cask breathers, they originally took a negative stance against this method with CAMRA’s 1982 AGM voting to remove any pubs which used this method from their Good Beer Guide.
With cask breathers failing to gain popularity as a method of cask preservation as a result other companies looked to solve the problems that come with cask’s limited shelf life, often causing bigger issues in the process.
The role of the cellar
Beer, as we’ve now established, needs to be drawn up to the bar, which means that the bar that we see when we enter the pub is only half of the dispensary system. The other half, arguably the more important half too, is the cellar and, unless you’re a member of staff, it’s rarely viewed, making it all the more mysterious.
So how does the cellar—the layout, upkeep and maintenance of it all—contribute to the dispense methods of a beer?
In beer’s gravity dispense era cellars were used as a method of storage. There was no room to house all the casks behind the bar so cellars acted as a temperature controlled room for housing the beer and workers would run to and from the cellar to empty the casks as the drinkers ordered. Beer engines were developed to make this movement easier for everyone involved, but the cellar still requires a lot of work to ensure the quality of the beer tastes good.
Now beer is technically classed as a food—what is beer if not liquid bread, after all—and as a result it has to be kept according to food safety legislations. The safety and quality of the food we consume is controlled by various government policies, regularly updated and tightened after national hygiene concerns. The cleaning and maintenance of a cellar must be done regularly and recorded in accordance with government protocol, the aim being to ensure a consistency in cleanliness and quality across the board.
In 2010, Martson’s brewery, currently owned by Carlsberg, launched a new product called Fast Cask. Fast Cask worked to replace the fermenting yeast with a processed yeast designed to create a bright beer in a very short amount of time and as a result their casks don’t need any further conditioning when they arrive at the pubs. Fast Cask failed to catch on, but that didn’t stop CMBC—Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company—from trying again.
In March 2024 CMBC announced another new product—this one called Fresh Ale—a concept originally developed by Otter Brewery. Fresh Ale aims to bridge the gap between live beer and bright beer, by beginning to brew a beer as a cask ale, but carbonating and kegging it as you would a bright beer, only to then serve the beer via a hand pump once it reaches the bar. Sounds confusing, right?
When pubs and bars have evolved over the centuries to rigidly distinguish the difference between the dispensary methods of bright beer and live beer, a new category that clumsily blends the two, misleading the consumer in the process, perhaps isn’t the best way to go about saving cask ale. Hand pumps, and the beer engines they’re attached to, are a brilliant piece of pub engineering that signify you’re about to drink something special. A piece of history as alive as the yeast that makes it taste so good.
As long as the cellar is maintained and the lines are cleaned on a consistent and frequent basis kegged beer has little to worry about here, the very nature of kegged beer means that beer has a much longer shelf life than that of live beer. Cask, however, has a very delicate relationship with time. You see, live beer arrives at a pub still undergoing fermentation. A good cellar worker knows how long to wait for the cask to be at its best and that once it’s good to go, time is of the essence—cask only has about 2-3 days where it pours perfectly.
Whilst government policies work, in theory, to protect our food and drink that’s not always enough to ensure day to day quality. It’s never nice when you encounter a beer that’s past its best, or drawn through dirty lines, or dispensed poorly—thankfully there are groups of people working hard to change all of that.
“The post-war boom led to the peak of the WMCs popularity“
— Rachel Hendry
Cask accreditation
CAMRA, as I hope you’d know if you’ve found your way onto their website, stands for the Campaign for Real Ale. By the 1970s a lot of pubs were favouring kegs over cask—for ease of service—and the little cask ale that was being served was done so carelessly, resulting in poor quality beer, giving cask a bad name in the process.
The result was a group of people coming together to help preserve and protect the art of well maintained cask dispensary systems. For over fifty years, CAMRA has worked tirelessly to educate people on the importance of real ale and the dispensary requirements it needs to ensure a good quality pint.
Not long after came Cask Marque, formed in 1988. You may have seen their emblem, the deep blue shadow of a handpull against a lemon yellow background in one of your favourite pubs. Cask Marque are a not for profit organisation whose members work via training and an accreditation scheme to improve the quality of cask beer being served in British pubs.
Quality control is very important, but there is another role these bodies and organisations play and that’s in ensuring that when people order a pint of live beer at the bar they’re not receiving a bright beer in disguise.
When does a cask become a keg?
By now you should get the idea that cask requires a lot more working knowledge to dispense than keg beer over a shorter shelf life and as a result sales of cask struggle against the sales of kegs. Lots of people have worked to preserve cask’s place in our pubs, but what happens when cask’s identity becomes threatened in the process?
Take Cask Breathers as an example. Cask Breather is the name for a process developed in the 1970s which introduces carbon dioxide into the cask as the beer leaves, forming a protective barrier between the beer left behind and the effects of oxygenation. When used correctly this can increase the shelf life of a cask to up to 6 days, which is great for those pubs who want to work with cask but don’t always have the consistency in sales required to keep the beer fresh. Whilst CAMRA currently takes a neutral position on cask breathers, they originally took a negative stance against this method with CAMRA’s 1982 AGM voting to remove any pubs which used this method from their Good Beer Guide.
With cask breathers failing to gain popularity as a method of cask preservation as a result other companies looked to solve the problems that come with cask’s limited shelf life, often causing bigger issues in the process.
In 2010, Martson’s brewery, currently owned by Carlsberg, launched a new product called Fast Cask. Fast Cask worked to replace the fermenting yeast with a processed yeast designed to create a bright beer in a very short amount of time and as a result their casks don’t need any further conditioning when they arrive at the pubs. Fast Cask failed to catch on, but that didn’t stop CMBC—Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company—from trying again.
In March 2024 CMBC announced another new product—this one called Fresh Ale—a concept originally developed by Otter Brewery. Fresh Ale aims to bridge the gap between live beer and bright beer, by beginning to brew a beer as a cask ale, but carbonating and kegging it as you would a bright beer, only to then serve the beer via a hand pump once it reaches the bar. Sounds confusing, right?
When pubs and bars have evolved over the centuries to rigidly distinguish the difference between the dispensary methods of bright beer and live beer, a new category that clumsily blends the two, misleading the consumer in the process, perhaps isn’t the best way to go about saving cask ale. Hand pumps, and the beer engines they’re attached to, are a brilliant piece of pub engineering that signify you’re about to drink something special. A piece of history as alive as the yeast that makes it taste so good.
