The 2022 CAMRA Good Beer Guide. Still essential but not comprehensive
The 2022 CAMRA Good Beer Guide is now available, a little later than usual but understandably so.
It remains a unique guide because it is consumer driven. Not like Trip Advisor but in the framework of a consumer movement the Campaign for Real Ale.
Its not a Guide where commercial enterprises pay for entries. Rather all the pubs included are visited and checked by local CAMRA members.
Inevitably there will be unevenness. For areas which the pub drinker is familiar with they probably already have a view where the best beer is to be found. For areas which the reader doesn’t know or rarely visits the Guide remains indispensable.
That said it is a guide to good cask beer. I’ve been a CAMRA member since 1975 and I do regard well brewed and well served cask as the pinnacle of the brewers art. The Guide points the reader to where some of the best can be found.
However in 2021 Good Beer is rather more than that. CAMRA spent a great deal of time discussing beer served from what most reading this would call a keykeg- unpasteurised beer served from a plastic container where gas is used but doesn’t interact with the beer- and agreed it was real ale. The Guide has a symbol for it at the beginning. I haven’t scrutinised every entry but it doesn’t look as if it’s been used.
That means some pubs that sell excellent beer are not included. Further they are likely to be frequented by younger drinkers who are not CAMRA members and don’t understand the importance of a consumer organisation of drinkers. This is clearly work in progress.
I’ve commented elsewhere about the inclusion of Wetherspoons pubs. Its Good Beer Guide not a guide to good businesses but I do wonder why individual Spoons pubs are included. Nearly every Spoons sells cask beer, some good, some average. Why not just say that if there is a Spoons in the area its worth a look (if that’s your thing) and leave more space for indy bars?
Finally it is unfortunate at best that given the last year there is no mention of racism and Black Lives Matter. CAMRA has a good policy on this and noting that good beer served in good pubs doesn’t include discrimination wouldn’t have gone amiss.
Still, all that said, if you want to know where to find a good pint of cask beer the Good Beer Guide is as I say above, essential
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