News here that CAMRA are to have an official Keykeg bar at the Great British Beer Festival. It's worth pointing out that several of their regional festivals have been doing this for a couple of years now, but I guess that this is news in that the GBBF is symbolically the Last Great Citadel of Cask.
Anyway, on a basic level this is a sensible step in the right direction. Embracing a wider range of good beer at their flagship festival makes the organisation seem more pragmatic and modern, while they can still keep cask ale at the front and centre of the event.
It does have a weird catch though: keykeg beer is only to be served if it's keykeg conditioned and not force carbonated. This distinction of real vs not-real keg is something that most normal drinkers don't seem to give two hoots about - people who want a pint of cask bitter won't suddenly tolerate something cold and fizzy because the carbonation is natural, while people who want a keg DIPA or a sour are unlikely to care where the fizz in it came from. But according to CAMRA's definitions, being conditioned in the keykeg makes it Real Ale not Evil Keg, and this is what makes it acceptable for them to serve. To me this means that the news seems... less good than it could be.
With that in mind, and since nobody asked, here's the official Brewing In A Bedsitter position statement on Where I Think CAMRA Should Be At In Relation To Real Ale And Dispense.
- CAMRA should have a specific objective to protect and promote cask conditioned ale. It's a weird, unique and distinctive tradition that will always be at risk in a world that prefers to simplify and streamline things, and it should always be part of CAMRA's business to look out for it.
- CAMRA should stop worrying about the realness or otherwise of beers coming from other forms of dispense (keykeg, RIAB etc) - in most cases where their realness or otherwise is worth caring about they aren't particularly under threat.
- CAMRA should be happy to celebrate and promote beers that aren't cask ale, regardless of whether they consider them to Real Ale or not; this will make them more effective at defending cask ale, because this makes them look like open-minded beer enthusiasts whose opinions on cask ale are worth taking seriously.
- CAMRA should stop asserting as a matter of fact that Real Ale (or cask ale) is Objectively Better rather than just being Important and Good, because this makes them look like a bunch of religious fanatics whose opinions on cask ale can be safely ignored. It's fine if individual members have an overall preference for cask ale, but belief in (and assertion of) its absolute superiority shouldn't be a matter of policy.
In all honesty, I don't do that much for CAMRA beyond the odd bit of beer festival volunteering, so I don't expect them to pay that much attention to my opinions about what they should do. But for the record, there they are.
