THE GIST
A contentious topic of the price of real ale has once again reared its head as members of the U.K. brewing scene accused the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) of being in the pocket of large pub companies.
Last week, an open letter was sent to CAMRA from Phil Saltonstall of Brass Castle Brewing, asking the consumer organization to stop offering discount vouchers for members. Every year, paying CAMRA supporters receive 60 vouchers for £0.50 off cask beers at large chains such as JD Wetherspoon, Stonegate, Brains, Castle Rock, and Amber Taverns.
The letter follows a motion by Saltonstall’s local Scarborough CAMRA branch to debate the issue, which was rejected for debate at the CAMRA annual conference at Yorkshire University this coming April. According to the authors, the vouchers reinforce the idea that real ale should be the cheapest option on the bar, a decades-long issue that directly reduces the price pubs are willing to pay brewers for their beer. It has been co-signed by 110 breweries and in its most biting paragraph says:
“It is dangerously inconsistent for CAMRA to promote real ale as the pinnacle of the brewer’s art while simultaneously making it the cheapest beer on the bar … The policy also undermines CAMRA’s public image, as it promotes that which it was established to overhaul: a limited range of beers from large breweries, served-up cheaply by pub chains.”
Saltonstall also took to Twitter to suggest the reason the motion was rejected might be that Wetherspoon is sponsoring T-shirts created for the conference, and added that CAMRA’s deference to big business was “institutionally ingrained.” CAMRA, however, says it dismissed the Scarborough chapter’s motion to debate the voucher program because it didn’t follow proper procedure.
Every motion at a CAMRA conference has to be discussed with the Conference Procedures Committee during the preceding year, to ensure time isn’t used to debate internal actions that are already in motion, already on the bill, or previously debated and dismissed. Scarborough CAMRA’s motion was put directly to the conference, so it falls foul of the system.
Saltonstall and Scarborough CAMRA will have the opportunity to appeal the decision the night before the conference on April 3, but Saltonstall has decided he wants the CAMRA discounts debated before then in public.
WHY IT MATTERS
According to the 2019 Cask Ale Report, real ale is in decline. Volumes shrank 4.9% in the 12 months from July 2018 to July 2019, the latest year results are available, despite the on-trade beer market seeing growth overall.
The reason for this decline, as also noted in the Cask Ale Report, is widely accepted to be the wild variation in beer quality. The cause of those quality issues, however, is fiercely debated.
“The whole industry has to work together to improve the consistency and quality of cask,” says Cask Report editor Matt Eley. “This will enable it to be positioned in a more premium manner on the bar, reignite wider interest, and ultimately bring cask back to growth.”
One major factor could be cask beer’s low price point, which has been driven down by breweries that are happy to sell 40-liter casks for as little as £50 in order to achieve volume sales. Most of those deals are done with larger pub companies such as Wetherspoon and Stonegate, the same companies that also accept CAMRA vouchers for further discount. With over 5,000 pubs between them, their pricing sets a low bar for the rest of the industry to compete with—the 2019 Cask Report found that beers on cask were typically 32% cheaper than their keg equivalents. That means a slim margin for the brewers, distributors and pubs.
The result is that brewers who refuse to compromise on price—and who therefore won’t skimp on ingredients, maturation time, and ABV—struggle to get space on the bar, and publicans are less able to invest in good cellars, equipment, and training to ensure the delicate live beer is well stored. The fact that cask beer is priced significantly lower than both craft keg and budget Lagers is also seen as part of its image as a non-premium product. Saltonstall believes that CAMRA’s vouchers help to enforce both low pricing and real ale’s poor image, and that by accommodating price discounts, some pub companies are pushing real ale costs at “a crazily low price” that can’t be absorbed by most brewers.
“CAMRA is diminishing the real ale market and either harming small breweries or forcing them to produce something other than real ale,” Saltonstall says. “It is a direct effect of price discounting that more breweries are turning to the production of keg beers and discontinuing cask beer production.”
CAMRA chief executive Tom Stainer denies that the vouchers contribute to the issue, and says the scheme is regularly reviewed to ensure it is positive for the industry. He hopes the £50 or £60 firkin of cask ale can be part of a more sustainable pricing system that takes into account the wide variety of real ale produced in the U.K.
“The question about the perceived value of beer is extremely important, with many expecting it to be the cheapest on the bar regardless of quality or provenance,” says Stainer. “This has been the case since long before our discount offers existed. Most other drinks in pubs have an accepted ‘price ladder’ with customers comfortable with paying a range of prices for different wines, or Lager brands, for example—and the same should be true of [cask] beer.”
Stainer says that CAMRA will discuss the wider issue of pricing and what it means for members at an upcoming meeting in April.
With his public push, however, Saltonstall hopes his open letter will encourage CAMRA to take its industry members more seriously, and with the weight of over 100 brewers behind him it will certainly drive debate. Meanwhile, cask ale’s decline continues and, with the vouchers or not, drinkers enjoy real ale at a significant discount—all while still claiming it is the pinnacle of brewing excellence.
Words by Jonny Garrett