real ale

noun

Beer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide.

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Meanings

nounreal ale (countable and uncountable, plural real ales)

plural real ales

  1. countableuncountableBeer brewed from traditional ingredients, matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed, and served without the use of extraneous carbon dioxide.

    Camra’s campaign was about preserving a great British tradition. It focused, necessarily, on the past. It has been a success; more than 11,000 real ales are now brewed in the UK, accounting for more than 8% of a beer market that has shrunk by a third overall since 1980.

    2016 March 24, Jon Henley, “The aggressive, outrageous, infuriating (and ingenious) rise of BrewDog”, in The Guardian, →ISSN

Origin

Coined in 1973 by CAMRA.

Full word history & related roots →
Cite this entry
APA

real ale. (n.d.). In WatkinsX Dictionary. Retrieved November 4, 2026, from https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/real%20ale

MLA

“real ale.” WatkinsX Dictionary, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/real%20ale. Accessed November 4, 2026.

Chicago

WatkinsX Dictionary, s.v. “real ale,” accessed November 4, 2026, https://dictionary.watkinsx.com/word/real%20ale.

Source: real ale on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.