Good Beer Guide Tells All

These new breweries are all "micros".At the other end of the industry, the global brewers are turning their backs on real ale and editor Roger Protz lambasts them accordingly. "The Globals - Scottish and Newcastle, Coors, In Bev and Carlsberg - have lost interest in the cask beer sector in order to make bigger profits from processed beers" he says. "S&N has closed both its ale breweries in Edinburgh and Newcastle to concentrate on Kronenbourg. It owns John Smith's in Tadcaster but produces most beer in nitro-keg or smooth form. Coors (who now own the former Bass breweries) has dumped all its cask brands and has them brewed under licence by smaller regional breweries. In Bev has similarly off-loaded Draught Bass and Boddingtons to smaller brewers. In Bev's interest in the cask sector can be measured by the sad decline in sales of Draught Bass, once worth two million barrels a year but now below 100,000."

The Guide also contains features on:

• CAMRA's National Inventory of historic pub interiors
• our campaign to reintroduce the rights of licensees to a guest beer of their own choice
• the continuing loss of regional breweries
• high profile chefs who have gone into the pub food business.

The Guide is £14.99 from CAMRA at www.camra.org.uk/books or by calling 01727 867201.