Yorkshire Square Brewery, Torrance’s newest craft brewery that opens its doors for the first time in a soft opening Wednesday, is on a mission to bring real ale to Southern California.

Real ale is a synonym for cask ale, something rarely seen in American breweries, but relatively common in Great Britain.

“Cask ale is one of the few things that can deliver a truly sublime beer experience in a world of jaded beer drinkers,” said brewer Andy Black. “Cask ale has a lot more variables that require skill from the bartender to feel how the beer is pouring throughout the day in order to really bring out what the magic of a cask is: a big, beautiful mouth feel and gorgeous tight head of foam.”

Rather than serve beer from a keg that’s under pressure and uses carbon dioxide to force the beer out of the container as is common, cask ale is pumped delicately by hand using suction or gravity to dispense it into a glass.

It’s served at about 50 to 54 degrees, rather than the usual chilled 38 to 40 degrees common in the U.S.

It’s usually lower in alcohol content than many American craft beers, which can increasingly pack a wallop.

And the beer is drawn through small holes that provide a degree of oxidation in lieu of carbon dioxide.

To some American palates, that produces a beer that’s perceived as warm and flat.

But Black, who was formerly at McLeod Ales in Van Nuys, just sees an educational curve ahead.

“This is subtle, it’s aromatic, it’s the right temperature, it has the right amount of carbonation,” Black said of the beer he creates. “You get a beer that’s cold, you can’t taste it as well.

“A beer served warmer is better appreciated for its subtleties and it has fewer flaws because it can be served warmer,” he added. “It’s not warm. It’s (served at) a warmer temperature in the same way you do not drink a red wine cold.”

Black points to his 3.8 percent alcohol by volume Early Doors Pub Bitter, a mild ale that exemplifies the English pub style Yorkshire Brewing seeks to emulate.

It’s no coincidence the Old Torrance brewery — it sits in the back of Tip’s Cadillac complex opposite the Honda headquarters on Van Ness Avenue — is owned by Palos Verdes Estates resident Gary Croft, a native Yorkshireman, who married an American woman and emigrated to the U.S. in the mid-1980s.

Croft had no background in the brewing industry, but knew what he liked to drink, yet couldn’t readily find.

English-pub atmosphere

So Croft set about creating the type of pub that served the type of beer he wanted to bend an elbow in on a regular basis.

“What we tried to do is give it a flavor of an English pub with a Southern California sensibility,” he said.

The result is a cozy 1,600-square-foot tasting room in a 1947-era structure that’s not as Spartan as many tasting rooms in a corner of a sprawling industrial warehouse.

Yorkshire Square boasts a brick fireplace and a long recycled pine wood bar, a real dart board on a wall, checkers and backgammon tables and a 1,200-square-foot sunny patio, a rarity for a South Bay production brewery.

The brewery will eventually include a full kitchen serving English-style pub food. But don’t call it a brewpub.

That would limit sales of the brewery to on site; instead, as a production brewery with a restaurant, it will eventually be able to distribute to bars and restaurants.

But the complexities of permitting and construction has delayed the kitchen’s arrival, for now, something that also played a factor in the brewery’s long-delayed opening.

Croft had originally hoped to be open in the summer of 2016 rather than May 6, when the official grand opening is planned.

“We should probably write a book on how not to open a brewery,” he said wryly.

Initially the brewery will open from 5-11 p.m. Wednesday through Friday and noon to 11 p.m. weekends. Longer hours are likely when the kitchen opens, but Croft is unwilling to put a firm timetable on that.

One thing you likely won’t find being served are high-octane, ultra hoppy India pale Ales with a floral or fruit bouquet that explodes in the mouth.

That’s the style of IPAs all the rage on the West Coast these days, but to Black it causes palate fatigue, overwhelming the taste buds to say nothing of the high-alcohol that rapidly gets the imbiber drunk.

At Yorkshire Square — which because of space limitations does not actually use a traditional Yorkshire Square brewing system, an old system not often seen even in England — the emphasis is on balanced, session brews.

Black and Croft instead want to make the kind of session beer one can linger over for hours with friends, without getting incapacitated by alcohol.

“Niche is a happy place to be,” Black said. “Sustainable success in this business is being the right size and finding your niche. We are the right size and we definitely have an identifiable niche. The relatively educated customer knows about British beer.”