Find a smooth sip of a classic ale at Greene King real ale pub near you
At Greene King, we firmly believe the pub provides the perfect spot for a perfectly poured pint. But the type of beer you desire is all about personal preference. While some crave a craft and others savour a stout, a classic ale is favoured for its rich and fruity notes and full-bodied flavour.
Steeped in tradition and leaning on classic brewing practices, an ale has been quenching thirsts for centuries. And at Greene King, we're proud of our vast selection of real ale pubs.
Looking for an real ale pub near you? With our wide selection of pubs scattered across the country, you're never far from a Greene King. Simply enter your location or postcode into our handy pub finder, and find your new local today.
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Ales brewed to perfection
While you may know Greene King as one of the biggest pub companies, we started life back in 1799 as a traditional brewery. And it's that commitment to quality products and brewing that has remained at the foundation of what we do, especially with our ales.Our Westgate Brewery is in the home of Greene King in Bury St. Edmunds. A location steeped in history, there has been a brewery on the site since 1700, and brewing can even be traced back in the town to the days of the Doomsday book in 1086.
Our Belhaven Brewery in Dunbar is Scotland’s oldest working brewery, proudly brewing since 1719. It’s nestled among the barley fields of East Lothian, and remains the home of the nation’s favourite ales and stouts.
To brew our ales, we use four simple ingredients. We extract water, or liquor, from the chalk wells that can be found 200ft beneath the brewery. This is the same method that was used by the Benedictine monks of St Edmund Great Abbey 1,000 years ago.
Next up is malted barley. Due to our prime location in Suffolk, we're lucky to have fertile soils and plenty of sunshine, so we can produce what we think is the best malting barley around.
While the malts give beer its distinctive colour, it’s the hops that create each unique character. Our hops, which come from across the world, also work as a preservative, as well as an antiseptic.
To make alcohol, we use the natural sugars that the malted barley produces and ferment them using yeast. You can get several strains of yeast, which determines the beer’s characteristics. We also sell any excess yeast to Marmite, so nothing goes to waste!
This is how we brew it
To brew our ales, we extract the pure water from the wells and pump it up to the brewhouse. We screen the malt to ensure the highest quality, and then crush it to produce grist.
We mix the grist with hot water to form a porridge-like paste, and then mash it to make a liquid called ‘sweet wort’. This gets transferred to copper, which acts like a kettle, and we add the hops before boiling for an hour and letting it cool.
Oxygen is added before yeast is pitched, which ferments the sugars into alcohol and fizz over five days. Finally, our beer is bottled or barrelled, labelled, and sent to pubs nationwide for you to enjoy.
One ale of a beer
At Greene King, our pubs stock all your favourites, with a wide selection of drinks to quench your thirst. And when it comes to our ales, we’ve got an exciting selection to sample.Greene King IPA
Greene King's flagship IPA, 3.4% ABV is an English ale that's loved for its balanced and hoppy flavour. It has a light amber hue and offers a smooth sip with notes of toffee and citrus.Abbot Ale
Abbot Ale is a 5% ABV traditional ale with a brewing process that has hardly changed over hundreds of years. Brewed for longer, the ale has masses of fruit character, malty richness, and a superb hop balance.Old Golden Hen
This beer is bright and golden in colour with mango and grapefruit notes, a sweet, malty backbone and a clean finish.Recognition meets reward
At Greene King, our dedication to crafting the finest quality ales stems from our passion to deliver the best to our customers. And we’re proud to have received a wealth of recognition for our real ale pubs.Both our breweries in Bury St. Edmunds and Dunbar have a grade ‘A’ British Retail Consortium Global Food Safety certification.
We were also the first UK-brewer to receive the Red Tractor certification for all our beers, which confirms we meet the strict standards for hygiene, food safety and traceability of our ingredients.
Plus, we work closely with the Campaign for Real Ale, or CAMRA, which works to promote real ale and cider in British pubs. If you're a member of CAMRA, you can even get 10% off our cask ales at a Greene King pub.
The Cask Marque independent accreditation scheme awards pubs and bars for serving high-quality cask ale. To earn such a certificate, venues have to face several inspections to ensure their cask beers are stored, handled and served to the best standard.