CAMRA REVEALS PLAN TO SLIM DOWN GOOD BEER GUIDE

April brings baby lambs, the return of county cricket and the CAMRA AGM’s annual attempt to revitalise and make itself relevant to the under-70s.

Back to Dundee again this year, chosen mainly for its collection of great pubs to rival Sheffield in 2023.

The motions at Dundee include several aimed at making the Beer Guide easier to complete for BRAPA and Colin, whose liver I am starting to feel worried about. Do cauliflowers have livers ?

How do we get the Guide down from an unwieldy 4,500 entries to something more manageable ? That’s the challenge laid down by an esteemed former Scottish CAMRA Chairman to the delegates in April;

“This Conference agrees there are too many pubs in the Good Beer Guide and instructs the National Executive to implement the exact wording of Motion 9 passed in 2002 and reduce the number of entries to no more than 4,000 for the 2026 edition.” 4,000, eh ? Why stop there ?

Well, Swale CAMRA want to exclude ALL the pubs who won’t serve beer in oversized glasses that guarantee a pint (that’ll be 4,444 then). Here’s Tracey from Sheppey in Swale branch detonating the whole GBG, and CAMRA, in one foul move.

I don’t see that motion being successful. Sorry, Swale.

Another current discussion concerns the exclusion of pubs with “possibly (if you look hard enough) offensive material“, like the Nazi memorabilia at the Hole in the Wall in Bodmin, or the Guide entry in Ilfracombe that served me a cream tea with whipped cream.

This train of thought has more legs, if I’m not mixing metaphors. Let’s see what causes most offence to CAMRA members on Discourse, those who believe that only the work of independent breweries should feature in the GOOD beer guide, and sludgy brown beers do no favours for the UK’s position in world beer.

Why, it’s the nation’s favourite beer, its national day being celebrated today;

Ban pubs serving Doom Bar (or sludgy Bass, come to that), get the GBG down to half its current size, and surely everyone will be happy and beer will be great again.

Published by retiredmartin

Retired NHS, doing long walks around UK and the world to record the great bits. Focused on Good Beer Guide pubs and live music.

21 thoughts on “CAMRA REVEALS PLAN TO SLIM DOWN GOOD BEER GUIDE”

  1. I see no good reason to include pubs at all! It’s all about the beer after all, and only brewery tap rooms on unreachable industrial estates measure up in this regard. Just think of the number of steel warehouses and glorified lockups that ‘don’t’ have a taproom! Something worth campaigning for I’d have thought, ‘pubs’ have clearly had their day. Besides, the whole GBG ticking hobby is terribly non-exclusive, only accessible to retired folk, bus pass users, and freeloading stuffed vegetables. Hardly Woke is it!…
    (The Real) Mark

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      1. Disappointing to learn that. Taprooms have their place, even though that often means a souless industrial unit on an equally souless estate. ☹️

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      2. If we meet up soon I’ll tell you more; there are people who want CAMRA to be more about promoting beer they like, largely drunk in bottles and cans at home, and less about enjoying cask in pubs. I don’t drink at home, and am quite happy trying anything in pubs, but the writing-off of traditional beers like Bathams, Holdens, Banks’s and Bass does the Campaign no favours.

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    2. Sadly, Paul, the only April Fool is those who thought this was a joke. A former national chairman looking to reduce the size of the GBG, CAMRA (at some level) punishing a Cornish pub for an item of WWII memorabilia in a side room, and a continued belief on Discourse that CAMRA should define “good” beer and only support independent brewers.

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    1. Yes I can’ It’s available on The Wickingman website and comprises all 500 odd known outlets for Draught “sludgy” Bass. One esteemed former branch chairman just referred to it as “spawn”; I’m not sure if that’s better. Denigrating cask ale is definitely the way to revitalise the brand, for sure.

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      1. I thought you had actually come across some that was “sludgy”. If it’s not dreadful, why would people be denigrating it? 🤔

        I’ve been denigrating Ossett White Rat for years, but I had some today in a pub that was describing itself as a bistro, and it was a quite clear NBSS 4.

        We live and learn.

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      2. Most Bass I com across is crystal clear; I think the publicans who stock it, like it.

        Which bistro was this, Will ? Sounds a bit Skipton-ish so I look forward to hearing it was in Maltby. I think Simon and I have found good White Rat consistently in the last decade, often in the West Yorkshire micros. It’s OK in Sheffield’s SALT. Wasn’t it pretty good in the Old Queen’s Head last year ?

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  4. In the name of balance, we should now have an “All Clever Dick’s Day” I suppose, when we’re each entitled to go round asking friends and strangers alike a general knowledge question, and if they can answer then go “Huh-huh-huh-hu-UUUH!”

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  6. Mrs B and I spent a fair bit of the Easter weekend clearing out one of the spare bedrooms of stuff we unaccountably shipped up here from Bristol. Among the accumulated dross was a load of GBGs from the 90s, which proudly boasted 5,500 pubs.

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