h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

This started out as a reply to 2legs, but has turned into a ramble so I've stuck it here.


CAMRA unfortunately does have a lot of internal wranglings. More so at the moment than there has been for several years.

I think it's because a few years ago they started on a large revruitment drive to get new, younger members. This worked, probably better than they thought it would. The problem being, these new people have views.

The old school CAMRA bods worked to save real ale from disappearing from our bars, and they did a very good job at it. You can go into any decent pub these days and get a good beer. But where do you go from there?

The new style CAMRA that is emerging is wholely different. They've grown up with ale available in pubs, rather than having to fight to stop the decline, they've been used to the resurgence. So what are they members of CAMRA for? What does CAMRA mean to them?

It's no longer a case of fighting to make sure that they can get a pint. Although if they let their guard down ale may start to disappear again and they will have to fight for it. Even at the moment there are huge changes happening on the ale scene. Regional brewers such as Greene King are closing down smaller breweries. Since I've been an active member we've seen Greene King buy and close down Morrels, Morlands and recently Ridleys. Why do they do it? As far as I can see there are a few reasons. Although three main ones.
1) The pubs.
By buying smaller breweries a regional gets to take over the tied pub estate. That means that they get an amount of pubs that have to buy their beer. The pubs can't just go anywhere, they're owned by the brewery and have to buy that breweries beer.
Most of the large brewery/pub chains do allow a pub to buy in a "guest" beer from an approved guest list though, which leads us to point 2.
2) The portfolio.
If a regional brewer has 5 standard beers on their list, drinkers will get fed up of them. Or at least the drinkers who like something different occasionally. So brewery and pub chains have guest lists. It being better to make a small profit on someone else's beer than no profit on your own. But, if you have more beers in your portfolio then there's more chance than the drinkers will stick to your beers, giving you more money. Greene King now have something in the region of 16 beers in their portfolio. From their own branded IPA and Abbot Ale, to Morland Old Speckled Hen, Ridleys Rumpus, Ruddles Bitter, etc, etc. They can put these beers that may not seem like their own onto their approved guest list, and a landlord may only order those. To the uneducated drinker it seems like the pub it providing them with a range of beers from different sources, whereas in actual fact they're all from the same brewery, all produced on the same brewing plant, and all made from ingrediants from the same suppliers. It all comes down to point 3.
3) Money.
By buying up smaller breweries the regionals get more money. It's a business after all and we've got to accept that fact. These people are there to make money. Wether it be from limiting the choice available to a drinker to their own products, or by bulldozing a Victorian city centre brewery and selling the land for housing. These guys are after money.

That may sound like a rant again Greene King, but it's not. I personally don't like what they've done, but I can see why they have and I can accept that. It should be pointed out and remembered though that Greene King are not the only brewer doing this.

So what should the emerging CAMRA be doing?

Education is probably the most important thing in my mind.

We've got beer out there, but it's not got the best image on the market. Most breweries don't have a marketing budget at all, let alone a multi-million pound one needed to compete with the internationals pushing lagers and nitro-kegs. Seperately small brewers are up against a tough, competative opposition. CAMRA should be there to help them. To champion them to pub chains, encouraging licensees to stock the beers.
I'm currently living in Lancaster, and including Morecambe which is pretty much attached, there are two small breweries here. But it's not easy to get their beers. The first brewery, Lancaster Brewery, is owned by an investment company which takes a direct hand in running it, and also owns two pubs in the town. They are lucky. They have two guaranteed outlets for their beers. The second brewery, Brysons, isn't so lucky. When Lancaster Brewery started up, their own two pubs stopped stocking the Brysons beers in favour of their own, as you'd expect. This meant that Brysons lost a quarter of it's trade. Combined with a couple of other things the brewery had to close. Thankfully from a deal with a local wine, beer and spirit distributor Brysons is back. It doesn't handle it's distribution or sales though, but it is brewing again. It's not easy to get it though.
Most small breweries are in this dillema. They can set up and start brewing, but they've got to be able to sell their beers to be able to keep brewing.
I think that CAMRA needs to focus on this, to work with breweries and pubs to get the beers to the consumer.

The other aspect that needs to be concentrated on from my position is educating the drinkers. Real Ale is not what it seems. For a start it's not bitter. Bitter is a type of ale, not the be all and end all of it. A stout isn't a bitter, it's a stout. Sounds simple enough but you'd be suprised at the number of people who don't realise that. And why don't they? Mostly I'd say because of marketing by the competition. Real ale has a lot of jargon attached to it, stout, porter, ale, top-fermented, secondary conditioning, cask, firkin, head, sparkler, swan neck, breather, top pressure, etc infinitum. Most of it is just that though, jargon. When you go into a pub you don't really need to know the method of dispense, the particular strain of yeast used or even which field in which country the hops were grown in, or the name of the farmers dog. You want to know however that you will be getting a good pint of beer that is kept well and served to you as the brewer intending.
Some pubs will use methods of dispense that affect the taste of the beer, and these should be discouraged, but they should be discouraged to the publicans.
The people looking after the beer need to know what they are doing, and the people drinking the beer need to know what they are drinking.
I've seen too many managers sell bad pints of beer. And I've seen too many drinkers either not want to take a bad pint back and complain, or when they do, get told "It's supposed to be like that."
Drinkers need to know what a bad pint is, and they need to be able to complain about it. This sounds like it's going back to the old school of CAMRA, drunken bellies complaining all the time. It's not though. There is a new generation of drinkers who are coming through to a plethora of different drinks on the market. Next time you're in a pub just count the number of alcopops and bottled beers there are. A pub near here sells over 500 different alcoholic products. Nobody could be expected to know what they all taste like. There are hundreds of real ale breweries in the country, all brewing different beers. You don't need to know what every single one tastes like, but knowing what they shouldn't taste like means you can reply to the bad landlords with a very definate "No it's not supposed to taste like that." Too many people are being taken advantage of and that should stop. If you get a bad pint, you're not likely to try it again. And if it's the first time you've tried ale, you'll probably go back to bottled or keg lager. Both of which are a lot easier for the manager to look after.

A lot of the old CAMRA bods need to take a step back and let the new blood through. There are new ideas, new perspectives and new energy ready and waiting to make sure that we continue to have a good choice of drink. But how long will they wait?
Already in this branch I've had to calm worries and smooth fears about people feeling left out. Thinking that their voice doesn't count. It does, and it needs to be heard. People who've done something for several years tend to get in a rut, not always the case, but a lot of the time it's true.
People tend to get used to the idea of CAMRA as being a lot of old blokes with, and I quote a new member up here "David Bellamy beards you could lose a dead dog in." With dodgy, hairy jumpers and sandles (with socks). Recently I went around a lot of the pubs in Lancaster city centre with the branch chairman. We didn't introduce ourselves as CAMRA bods at first, we were testing the water to see what peoples thoughts of the branch were. In fairness and defence of the chairman, he's new to the role and has had no help from the outgoing chairman, or the resident (useless) secretary. The general feeling within the area was that CAMRA was useless, a relic from a bygone age, and that the members were a load of moaning idiots. When we did point out that we were the new people running it around here there was shock. Neither of us have beards and I only have a small gut (work in progress). The moaning idiots they were on about weren't even CAMRA members a lot of the time. CAMRA was merely getting the blame because someone who drinks ale and moans is obviously a CAMRA member. Thankfully in one month we seem to have turned things around a bit. The publicans know who we are, and they know how to get hold of us.

The AGM for this branch is next week, four days time in fact, and once that's done, and if the people we want on the committee get the roles, we can step up a gear. If we can turn around a branch that only has 140 members and no respect then it can be done anywhere, including on a national level.

Things need to happen, and a lot needs to change.
Why no CAMRA branch does beer tasting and training evenings I don't know. I'm sure that one or two branches must do it, but I've not heard about them. A lot of branches have universities or colleges in their area, and yet don't have much to do with them, after all what do students know about drinking? Train drinkers to know what they're drinking, and then let them choose what they want to drink. Don't force them to drink ale, it's not to everyone's taste. Simple as that. Give people a choice, and let them make the choice.

That's what CAMRA needs to focus on, making sure that people are able to choose and that they can choose.

It needs to get off it's high horse about a lot of things. It needs to make a decision and stick to it. An example being the recent smoking ban in pubs. CAMRA's policy documents state that it's for smoking to be allowed in seperate rooms. Some news articles on their website state this too. Others that they've released however side with the total ban. Others say that it should be the choice of the landlord.

Is this actually about real ale? After all it's the Campaign for Real Ale. Yes, this is an issue. Pubs are where we generally drink ale, and therefore this is something that CAMRA should know about, and campaign about.

But CAMRA needs to know to pick it's fights, and to fight them properly.

The two issues on the front page of their website at the moment are the "Save Gales Campaign" which encourages people to sign a petition to keep the Gales brewery in Horndean open, and stop Fullers closing it, and a "Save Hoegaarden" campaign, which encourages people to join a protest march against InBev's closure of the Hoegaarden brewery.

Two very similar things really. But let's see.
Fuller's bought the Gales brewery. Most likely for the three reasons I stated earlier. Whether 300 or 300,000 people sign a petition saying "please don't close our brewery", it's going to go. People don't really care about petitions in this day and age. Large companies don't mind ignoring the small consumer. It's down to money and public opinion. With the money aspect, it might well have been that if Fuller's were presented with a financially available alternative to closing hte brewery they'd have gone with it. If it had been suggested that rather than just close the brewery and move all production into London, they'd moved most of the Fuller's production out to Horndean, leaving a smaller craft style brewery in London and converting parts of the London brewery into money spinning conference facilities they might have gone for that. They may not have as it's just an idea. Where they presented with something other than "please don't close our brewery"? Doubtful. But it is that public opinion that they need to keep as well. Without a good public image, large companies soon become small companies. Petitions can raise public awareness, but the general CAMRA membership is already aware. Publicising the petition on the CAMRA websites, and in CAMRA publications doesn't get the message out to the more general public, which is what CAMRA should be trying to do.
There is a CAMRA investment club, a sort of stock market investment group that buys shares in breweries. This however has recently come under some stick because it owns shares in breweries like Greene King and does nothing about having a say in how they're run. The response was basically that the investment club is there to make money for it's members. Point 3 raises it's head once more. If this is the case, then I for one do not believe that it should carry the name of CAMRA Investment Club. If it was a CAMRA investment club then it would be using it's investments to promote the aims of CAMRA, not to make money for it's members.

The second story that their website is leading with, the Hoegaarden one, is a little weirder. To start with you think, "It's not even in this country!" And it's not, it's on the continent somewhere not many of us are likely to pop over to for a day marching in protest. But then, when you realise it's InBev, who used to be called InterBrew, you realise that this does affect the UK beer drinker. InBev, as InterBrew UK, recently closed the Boddingtons brewery in Manchester. Protest marches didn't work there. It's hard for a company to get a bad public name when you have to delve through paperwork to find out who the company actually are. InBev state "our brands are the foundation of the company, the cornerstone of our relationships with consumers, and the key to our long-term success." That's a direct quote from their website. It continues "Our brand portfolio, our enduring bonds with consumers, and our partnerships with customers are our most inportant assets." Then it goes into how it's there to look after the interest of it's shareholders (point 3 again). But who are it's consumers and it's customers. Do you even know what their brands are? Well, there's Stella Artois, Becks, Brahma and Leffe for a start as well as Hoegaarden and Julius, Orangeboom, Belle-Vue, Franziskaner, Staropramen, Tennent's, Castlemaine XXXX and Rolling Rock. In England they've got Bass and Boddingtons, neither of which are brewed in their original locations. They also market and distribute for Anheuser Busch, that American manufacturer of rice beer Budweiser alongside the Miller brands and the Canadian Labbatts beers. They have a portfolio that makes the likes of Greene King seem small fry. And they too are buying up and closing down small breweries.

To go up against large companies is near suicidal. The finaces involved in the modern day brewing industry are astronomical, in 2005 InBev had a profit of over 1000 million euros, that's £685,714,286! These figures are from their own financial reports, available freely on their website. How can you expect to compete with companies like this? It's all back to the public image and education. If more people knew that their favourite beers, be they ale or lager, spirit or wine, were all manufactured by the same company in large warehouse style factories rather than the craft breweries and distillaries that their marketing implies, they may think twice about buying them.

Anyway, enough rant for today, I've got a beer festival to go look after in a couple of hours, and I've not had breakfast yet, let alone dinner.

Nice rambling rant Perhaps you shuld polish it up a little and submit it to camra for inclusion in their monthly rag, or shorten it up for a letter in there.

Sounds like you're slowly getting there with sorting out the branch, keep up the good work!

Slowly is about right. Although, it's the branch AGM on Wednesday so hopefully the process will be speeding up after that.

An addition to the rant:

The outgoing secretary (he doesn't have a choice) is now seeming to do his best to scupper any plans to introduce new systems to look after the branch.
Currently every over branch meeting is held in a place called The Collegian. This is a working mens club, but it is very good and hte landlord there has been a great host to CAMRA for many years. However, having 6 of the 12 monthly meetings there means that we can only support 6 other pubs in the branch by having our meetings at them.
I've suggested that we introduce a cluster system which worked very well in another branch. This splits the rural area up into more managable sections, which a branch rep in each. Then, we alternate the branch meetings to Collegian, Cluster, Lancaster, Cluster. Repeat that three times over the year and we support more of the branch.
This was voted in by the committee, everyone thought it was good and would work. The outgoing secretary has now started being pesimistic and seems to be trying to convince everyone that it won't work and we shouldn't change what we already do. Muppet.
What they already do is nothing.

Ah well.

Ack, not good at all. Does this guy not get out of Lancaster at all and go out to other places in the branch area? Probably not from your comments earlier. Don't let him put you off (not that you would).

This is the thing, he does get out of the city to the rural pubs, more than most to be honest.

But the problem lies in that he's been using CAMRA as his own personal power trip for a few years. Especially this last year when he was the only member of the old committee to stay on, no-body else knew what they were supposed to be doing, and he made sure they didn't find out. That way, everything was done his way.

Kinda upset his plans a bit when I moved up here. "You're doing what!?!?!", "That's against CAMRA's rules" and the all time favourite... "You're talking out of your ar*e" were heard often to start with

Ah well, we've got disciplinary procedures going into the constitution now, if he plays up, he's out.