Plymouth cask ale fest on my horizon?

If everything breaks favorably, I'll be visiting the United Kingdom come early July. Of course, England means cask ale, and cask ale means the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) as handy local reference to which ales and pubs are best. Accordingly, I found the Plymouth CAMRA website, and am delighted to learn that their annual Beer Festival is running on July 12 and 13, 2013.

This makes me very happy. All I really want to do on holiday is drink cask ale in the company of steak and kidney pie, Cornish pasties, fish and chips, one good carvery, the occasional Vindaloo, and a custard tart now and again.

Following is a brief digression following my last journey to Devon and Cornwall, in 2009.

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In the modern era, beer enthusiasts the world over refer to different fermentation methods, and hence different fundamental types of beer, as ale (top fermented) and lager (bottom fermented). As is the case with two people divided by a common language, colloquial English usage in the UK confuses matters, because there, people say "beer" when they mean "ale," although "lager" remains "lager."

Beyond this, England remains a great place to experience "ale," primarily cask-conditioned "real" ale, so long as the visitor understands that not every pub plays the game the same way. It is absolutely essential to have a copy of "Good Beer Guide," the campaign for Real Ale's annual guidebook to the best pubs that serve the best cask ale. Without it, your beer hunting will be an expensive crap shoot.

After sampling at least 20 different cask-conditioned ales, the majority of them one shading or another of Bitter at around the 4% abv mark, I can say that the great triumph of English brewing methodology is producing richness of malt character in a low gravity quaff. It amazes me. Surely hop character is excellent, if restrained by American micro standards, but it's the malt that always impressed me in the best cask pints.