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“Filtered beers are always bright and clear, but cask-conditioned beers may not be so…*Yet is it necessary for a beer to be completely clear? Surely it is taste and not looks which really matters? Is it true that a heavy yeast suspension will give the beer an unpleasant, bitter taste, but a slight cloudiness caused by yeast will not affect the flavour…*[Demand]*for bright beer is a fairly new development… [A] booklet published in 1947 to celebrate the centenary of John Smith’s Brewery…*tells of the appointment of a new Head Brewer in 1889 who held the view that since glasses had by then come into common use for serving, the beer in them should be bright. It also says that his views were met with some suspicion by the consumer… Now, John Smith… brew only bright, filtered beer… and what was once a fine individual beer is now characterless. Perhaps if we were still drinking from pewter mugs and tankards then keg and bright beers might never have been invented, and CAMRA would never have needed to come into existence.”

Terence Foster,*Dr Foster’s Book of Beer, 1979,*pp.43-44.
QUOTE: Dr Foster on Clarity from Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog - Over-thinking beer, pubs and the meaning of craft since 2007


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