Tradition and 'traditionalists', and beer engines

The occasion
A meeting of the Chesapeake branch of the Society for the Preservation of Beer From the Wood (SPBW).

The setting
The upstairs bar at the Metropolitan, a combination of coffeehouse, restaurant, music spot, wine bar, and good beer bar in the Federal Hill neighborhood of Baltimore, Maryland.

The situation
The bartender asked the customer if she should pull a pint of cask-conditioned stout for him.

"Handpulling from a beer engine isn't traditional," the customer replied, "and I'm a traditionalist. The cask should be sitting on the bar."

Just at that moment, Bruce Dorsey, owner of the restaurant, happened to be walking past."No," he growled. "A beer engine is traditional."

Traditional since 1797, when Joseph Bramah —the inventor of the hydraulic press— created, what he called, a beer engine, a hand operated piston pump to pull beer from a cellar up to a bar. To this day, most 'real ale' pubs in the U.K. serve their cask ales via beer engines.


I was reminded of a scene in Woody Allen's film Annie Halll in which an officious man is pontificating about Marshall McLuhan and the global village. The man behind him announces that he is Marshal McLuhan, and that the other man has no idea what he's talking about. Woody Allen breaks character, faces the camera, and asks whether we wouldn't prefer real life to be like this.

"Oh ... but I prefer my cask ale pulled through a beer engine," the customer verbally backpedaled.

The bartender pulled the handle of the beer engine. She filled the pint glass with cask-conditioned Wolaver's Organic Oatmeal Stout. She gave the pint to the customer. He drank; he smiled; we all smiled. Was that a triumphant grin on Mr. Dorsey's face?

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• When this post was written, Metropolitan had only just re-opened after suffering damage from a fire.
• More about cask-conditioned ale: here.