[Closed] CAMRA - We've won, haven't we?

Not that I get to pubs all that much but at my local I haven’t really noticed the arms race in ABV...

...When I started going to pubs it wouldn’t be unusual to see something like London Pride, but also an awful lot of Waddingtons

So less of an arms race and more Top Trumps?

So your saying for the authentic IPA we should ask for half a pint of a new world ale in a pint glass and fill up with tap?

It’s a bit more nuanced than that, but if you want IPA as brewed for the Indian based troops, then yes, knock yourself out. It’ll taste bloody awful, which is why the troops always clamoured after the pre-knocked back “officers” brew.

Greenking IPA is fairly accurate as an example of original IPA. It’s bloody awful.

Sorry @bigblackshed but that's furphy. And it's been perpetuated by many.

Read some of Martyn Cornell's (Britain's preeminent beer historian) work:

Myth 2: “IPAs started life as a British export to their troops stationed out in India back in the 1800s.”

Fact: Pale ale was around from at least the 17th century and pale ales were being exported to India from at least the 1780s, if not before. And they weren’t drunk by the troops, either those of the East India Company’s forces or the later British Army forces in India, who much preferred porter, and continued drinking porter in India right through to the end of the 19th century. The pale ales exported by Hodgson, Bass, Allsopp and others were drunk by the middle and upper classes among the Europeans in India, the military officers and the “civil servants”, the civilians who worked for the East India Company, trading, administrating and collecting taxes.

https://zythophile.co.uk/2011/08/04/four-ipa-myths-that-need-to-be-stamped-out-for-ipaday/

They wouldn't taste like the new world ales because the ingredients are different. High alpha hops, etc.

I’ve noticed a big drift towards hazy beers, dropping using isinglass to accommodate vegans and maybe a welcome cut in costs

It's not just a reduction in findings, but an intentional style. New England Pale Ale, Hazy Pales, Juicy Pale Ales.
If you cram a shit-tonne of hops into a beer towards the end/after the boil it's virtually impossible to clarify it. But it gives huge flavour. It's expensive though.
Rather than avoid it brewers have embraced it as a style.

Some interesting stuff. I'm no connoisseur, don't drink a lot, but like to try different beers. Memory is crap though, so forget what I like and dislike, or like it one time and dislike another or vice-versa. There's a few local micro breweries near me. The selection boxes they do are good for finding what I like and dislike. For example, I really disliked the flavours to the 'Figgy Pudding' Winter ale. Currently drinking 'Cold Turkey' ale. My second while dismantling the vacuum cleaner and blowing out the dust and re-assembling it. The first (a different beer I've forgotten the name of) was good, but the flavour of this has somehow strongly associated itself with vacuum cleaner dust and sparking electric motors.

the best selling beer from around these parts is Wye Valley HPA

Ooh that's a beautiful pint.

Every pub should sell a beer like that.

As the owner of a pub…

I’ve found a decline in young people (<40) drinking real ale. We’ve gone from 5 to 2 lines while increasing our craft lines. My guess is it’s younger drinkers who are drawn to flavour finding they’d rather have cold, fizzy craft products than room temperature, flat ales. Initially they went from generic mass produced tasteless lagers to real ales for flavour & local reasons. Now it’s ales to craft beers. Industry wide the decline in real ale sales is huge.

Some of it is self inflicted. There was a price war on cask years ago that led to many breweries producing the cheapest, blandest, real ales possible, brought on in part by older drinkers being horrified about paying anything for a pint of bitter. Young people tend to not mind paying £6/7 for a great craft beer, but older soaks tend to tut if it goes over £4.

Not sure where cask goes from here, as it really needs volume in a pub to work well as it’s not a sealed dispense system. Lots of sales equals fresh beer that is quickly sold, but ale hanging around in the beer lines is awful.

Specialist ale houses again perhaps? There’s some cracking craft real ales around.

The bigger issue now is the pub buildings though. They’re worth far far more as flats/residential property these days and the buildings owners usually know it. So every time one fails it’s gets converted. I would add them to the listing system, automatically adding most.

Before, I used to go out into Leeds and try a different drink in each pub, none of them actually being the taste I was looking for.

Now, with the advent of Craft beer I can get a different flavour each time I go to the bar. And yes, occasionally its not that nice but I've not met many I can't drink.

As for strength, I have never been a great drinker so moved to halves years ago, so have adapted to 6-7% IPA's no bother. If I'm out for a sesh I start off under 5% and work my way up, slipping in the odd glass of water.

Can't find anything to moan about, we live in glorious times from a choice point of view.

I’ve always been under the impression that the Campaign For Real Ale was mainly formed to stop the breweries going over to KEG bitters in the ‘70s, so yes we/they have won.

The real fight now is keeping the British pub alive.

I wouldn't, out of choice, go to a pub if you paid me. Why would I spend any time or money in a place where they refer to food or drink as FMCG, and have a Regional Business Manager running the place via a monthly P&L on his laptop? I wouldn't let people like that suggest a night out for me, would you?

The commodification and financification of the food and drink industry makes a huge number of pubs a genuinely terrible place to be, souless and boring, with Sky in one corner, fake chalk written menu, and a bazillion flashing lights of the slot machines in the other. A entire row of craft beer won't change that.