GBBF: Ale and hearty?

It's the biggest volunteer-run beer festival in the world, but what message is theGreat British Beer Festival really giving out? Marketing consultant Pete Brown recounts his view­ and Camra's Mike Benner replies Brown: A miserable stridency casts a cloud over the event' You're attacking Camra? Good luck to you. You're a brave man." "You're doing what? Do you want a career in this industry?" I'd love to say these quotes are an exaggeration, or in some way atypical of the reaction I received when I told people in the beer business I was thinking of criticising the Campaign for Real Ale in print. Sadly, they are both accurate and representative. My original intention was to level some constructive criticism at the Great British Beer Festival. But as the bloke from Adnam's proved a couple of years ago when he said Olympia looked a bit shabby, if you want to level criticism you'd better be prepared for a storm of invective thrown back at you. The response he got, and the response I expect for this, shows that the real issue with the GBBF is not cosmetic. Sadly, Camra is increasingly guilty of the kind of bullying behaviour it originally fought against, throwing its weight around and stamping on dissenting voices rather than responding to them. But why criticise the GBBF at all? It's the biggest event in the British beer-drinking calendar, the largest volunteer-run beer festival in the world. Every year, Camra uses the event to issue press releases claiming that real ale is growing, that it is attracting new drinkers ­ namely women and youngpeople ­ and that the image of the bearded, beer-bellied, sandal wearing geek is entirely unrepresentative of the modern real-ale drinker. The problem is that, each year, the truth is very different. My wife is one of the bright, curious young women Camra claims to be trying to attract, and she won't be visiting the GBBF again after this year. After experiencing extraordinary and uncalled-for rudeness from the volunteer door staff, she approached one brewer to ask if they had any light summer ales. The server sneered at her for asking such a stupid question, pointed to the beers and said: "That's what we've got. Which do you want?" Later, another of my mates went to a different stall. He didn't get a sneer, perhaps because he's a big lad, but the experience was similar. "What do you want?" asked the server. "Well, what do you suggest?" asked Chris. "What's a nice, light, summery beer?" "What do you want?" repeated the server impatiently. On further probing, he revealed that they did have a variety of different beers: strong ones that will get you pissed quickly, and weaker ones. Our problem, which was particularly frustrating given the current problems with the image of beer and the climate surrounding responsible drinking, was that we weren't looking to get pissed. We were just hoping to try some new and interesting beers. The problem is that if you staff your event with volunteers, you have to take your pick from whoever comes forward. It's very difficult to ensure they'll be "on message". Camra's insistence about the decline of the beer-bellied geek doesn't hold much water when the biggest beards and beer bellies at Olympia belong to people serving behind the bars, running the breweriana auctions on stage, or stalking the hall in their luminous orange steward T-shirts. This is the moment when these guys get to wield a bit of power, and they seem more interested in this than in helping people who, it seems, they feel don't really belong there. To be fair, the GBBF programme has made moves to be more inclusive. For the last few years it has included tasting notes. This year they were even written in a way that beer novices could make some sense of. But the bars are still organised by geographic region, because that's how Camra is organised. However, it's not how people think about beer. How would I know if I fancy a beer from the East Midlands over one from the north-west? Olympia's grimness was more noticeable this year because I'd recently returned from the Oregon Brewfest in Portland, USA. This event runs for three days, but attracts more people than the GBBF, despite being held in a much more sparsely populated area. It's easy to see why. Long marquees run down the middle of a riverside park, with the beer and food stalls lining the sides. There are all kinds of people, more women than men. The atmosphere is electric. This is in part due to the overt welcome given to festival virgins. "We try to encourage people into the craft beer scene by offering a huge variety of beers," Chris Crabb, one of the organisers, told me. "Out of 72 beers we've got more than 20 different styles. We let the brewers provide whatever beer they want, but we encourage lighter styles, simply because it's summer and it's hot. And these are also the beers that appeal to a newbie. We design our programme to make them feel more at ease as well. We include the technical info for the beer geeks, through to a colour chart for people who just want a lighter or darker coloured beer." The GBBF wasn't without its own attempts to broaden beer's appeal. The Beer Academy organised a talk by Garrett Oliver on Tuesday, and one by me on Wednesday. (Garrett's was matching beer with cheese, while I spoke about the history of beer.) Although these events were arranged months ago, there was no mention of them in the GBBF programme, no signage to them in the venue, in fact no acknowledgement whatsoever that they were happening. The explanation given was that they "were not Camra-organised events". Yet Camra claims to want to broaden the appeal of real ale, which both these talks were designed to do. This attitude is indicative of a miserable stridency that, each year, casts a grim cloud over the whole event. "We keep thinking of pulling out of this," one large regional brewer said to me, on the trade day. "Us and one or two of the other big regionals have talked about setting up an alternative event. But that would piss Camra off and we're scared of what they'd do to us." And this is where we get to the real problem with Camra. They may represent a small and declining niche of the beer market, but within that niche they really know how to get their way. I discovered this for myself when my book, Man Walks into a Pub, was released last year. I got decent reviews from many national newspapers and magazines that normally ignore beer, and thought this would be seen as a good thing. Camra begged to differ. They slated the book and refused to stock it, citing the fact that I used to do the ads for Stella as a reason for ignoring anything I had to say on beer years later. If this cultural apartheid wasn't offensive enough, people who asked about the book at the GBBF were told that they weren't stocking it "because it was shit". One senior figure in the industry who had been supportive of the book was taken aside by a very influential Camra member and told "not to get too close" to me. Because I "used to work on Stella" I was not "Camra friendly" and, therefore, he should keep away from me. Such threats, intimidation and smear tactics will be familiar to any brewer who has dared to use cask breathers on their beers. This technical issue has led to the bizarre and depressing spectacle of Camra organising boycotts and campaigns against the kind of small craft brewer it claims to champion, for the sole reason that they are using a piece of technology which, had it been available 100 years ago, every brewer would no doubt have used to maintain the quality of their beer. If you care about your beer and you want to stay in business, you do it Camra's way or not at all. In the early '70s, the Campaign for the Revitalisation of Ale was a necessary and welcome force at a time when the standard of ale was dire and plummeting. When the group changed its name to the Campaign for Real Ale, it was a simple equation: real ale mostly tasted great, keg ale almost always tasted much worse. The modern beer market is very different. There are many fantastic beers that are not real ales. The championing of great-tasting beer and the pre