Is it curtains for CAMRA?

The battle for CAMRA's soul

If you take any interest in the social history of beer in the UK then you'll be aware of CAMRA. One of the most successful consumer-led campaigns of modern times, it was set up in 1971. Its creators were four disgruntled Northern beer drinkers who were fed up with the quality of the beer in their local pubs and decided to do something about it.

They discovered that the main reason for the decline in quality had to do with two things. The first was the change from most beer being allowed to continue to ferment in the pub cellar, to beer being pasteurised before it even left the brewery. The second was the growing inability of landlords whose beer did mature in the cellar to look after it properly. Beer either tasted dull and fizzy - the keg version - or rank and sour - the badly kept cask version.

I was brought up on the dull and fizzy kind. I was a teenager in the late1960s and when I started sneaking into pubs, and going to parties, I quickly learned to hate beer. I drank lager through my A level years, and all through university. It wasn't until I was 21, and about to enter the world of work, that my older brother decided to show me what beer was supposed to taste like. Since then I've never looked back.

Because I grew up with CAMRA as a key presence in my life I have always supported their ideals even though I've only recently got around to joining as a member. But I've always been aware of the stereotypical CAMRA member: male, unkempt beard, beer belly, probably wearing check shorts and ready to bore for England on the subject of classic English bitters and now-deceased breweries that he used to support.

Great British Beer Festival 2017 - the Cat in the Hat

Things have changed over the years and you tend now to only see Beer Bore at beer festivals but I bet the CAMRA membership still has quite a few amongst its number. The letters pages of its in-house magazine What's Brewing certainly suggests as much and the continuing influence of Beer Bore did make me wonder what would happen when the 2018 AGM debated a number of changes to CAMRA's constitution. These had been put together with the help of comments made during the organisation's year-long Revitalisation Project and while there were other changes mooted the most significant was a proposed shift in focus, away from cask ale to include all ales, even keg.

The exact wording of the motion was as follows :

"[that CAMRA] act as the voice and represent the interests of all pub-goers and beer, cider and perry drinkers"

The distinction might seem subtle but the key word is "all" and it qualifies each and every noun that follows, including "beer". Up until this vote CAMRA's entire focus had been around "real" or "cask" ale. Had the motion received enough votes it would have mandated the organisation to campaign on behalf of cask and keg ale.

But it didn't. A 75% majority in favour of the motion was required. It got 72%.

Fair enough, you might think. That's pretty close. Give it another year and we can find that extra 3%. But there's no guarantee that that will happen, and the initial signs are not encouraging. Already one of the leading lights of the microbrewing scene, Newport's Tiny Rebel, have pulled out of the annual Great British Beer Festival over a dispute about the kind of kegging they were proposing to use to serve some of their beers. Unlike some craft brewers Tiny Rebel are staunch supporters of cask ale but they were understandably miffed at CAMRA's inflexibility. 

One of the most striking reactions to the vote came from one of Britain's best-loved beer writers, and a man known for his robust opinions, Pete Brown. He tweeted, immediately after hearing the result

"Bye bye CAMRA: 1971-2018. RIP ... What a shame you couldn't change to reflect the very revolution you hoped to bring about, and did."

The next day he apologised in his blog for being over-melodramatic but pointed out instead that craft naysayers seem to ignore the fact that cask ale sales are decreasing while the rest of the market is improving. Pete's argument, and I agree with him, is that the best way to save cask ale is to support all beer. At a time when many beer specialists are busily promoting the subtlety and flexibility of the modern brew is that so difficult?

The Bison goes from strength to strength

And to underline Pete Brown's argument, consider CAMRA's - nay, beer's - flagship publication the annual Good Beer Guide. It is way beyond frustrating to me that I, a CAMRA member for the Brighton and South Downs area, cannot vote for the inclusion of one of the city's best new bars, the Bison Craft House. Why? Because it doesn't serve cask ale. What it does do is serve six regularly changing kegs, some local, some national, all worth drinking. The bar also has staff who love the beers that they sell and can talk knowledgeably about them.

The Bison team first appeared in Brighton in 2015, when they opened a bottle shop in East Street. Not long afterwards they announced a crowdfunding scheme aimed at raising the money to convert a disused seafront building into a pub. That project did not come off but the team were not deterred and turned their attention instead to Hove. 

It comes as a real surprise to me to realise that it was only last October that the Hove bar opened. It feels like it's been there for ages, so effortlessly has it become a part of the local bar scene. It's a tiny one room establishment with fridges full of bottled goodies down one side, and benched seating for around 50. It also has a covered deck out front where you can watch the great and the good of Hove as they go about their business. 

The New Bison taking shape

Now there's news of a new Bison bar opening in Brighton's North Laine. If it's as good as the Hove establishment - and I have a hunch that it will be - then it will surely be a huge success.

New Faces

In the last blog post I mentioned the possibility of a new micropub opening in Portslade. The team behind the venture are still waiting for planning permission to be granted – (it’s a council planning department! What did you expect?) but they seem confident that it will go ahead.  Tommy Bowen, one of the team, introduced himself to me at the Watchmakers not too long ago and said that they hoped to open in September/October time.

There are no immediate plans to brew onsite but it is definitely on the agenda. If Tommy's first brew is anything to go by, the ales brewed onsite should be worth waiting for. His Dance Commander Imperial Stout was launched on Beer Day Britain at the Watchmakers Arms. It had won the pub's first ever home brew competition. This latest brew was created in collaboration with Top Notch, and was a wonderfully dry, licorice-and-dark-chocolatey treat.

When the Portslade team open their doors they won’t be the only new pub in the area. A couple of miles away in Southwick there will be another one-bar pub (they say that they’re not a micropub) called the Southwick Beer Engine. It’s in a former travel agents’, just next door to the Barclays Bank. The aim is for them to open on 5^th July, handily just after I get back from the States. Maybe see you down there?

And for my next trick ...

The next blog post will include a report on the trip that Charita and I are making to see her folks in America. Expect reports on beer and bars in Atlanta, Memphis, Nashville and Cincinnati.

See y’all on the other side!

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Pete Brown for permission to reference his blog!