The dark side of Camra

Not everyone likes the new blondes', but that just shows what a mixed bunch beer drinkers are, says Andrew Jefford

The letters page of Camra's newspaper, What's Brewing, provides some of my favourite reading each month. Camra members (and I am proud to be one) are a prodigiously-touchy and irascible bunch.

No matter how good an item of news, how soundly argued an editorial or how thoroughly researched a feature, there will always be some member or other hunched over a pint of Mauldons Moletrap or Ossett Excelsior, the steam hissing from their ears, ready to scribble out a riposte pointing out just how bad the good news really is, how far the editorial has deviated from the conference line, or how the feature has no place in the paper to start with.

The latest incendiary correspondent of this sort is a Mr Paul Bates of Sheffield, who said (in the November edition) how fed up he was with what we could broadly call the new blondes. Beers, for example, like Caledonian Deuchars IPA (Champion Beer of Britain in 2002), or from breweries like Rooster, Hopback or Oakham, which concentrate on virtuoso hop-work over a base line of delicate, super-pale malt. Bates had had enough of them, and urged the return of the soundly and often darkly malty pint.

Editor Ted Bruning appended a plaintive little exclamation to Bates' letter to the effect that Camra was truly a broad church. Bruning was no doubt mindful of the fact that the new blondes have been highly successful in winning over wavering lager drinkers (the two pints look very similar), as well as enchanting most ale lovers by vastly extending the aesthetic repertoire of their beloved pints.

Naturally this in itself was construed by the ever-vigilant readership as a red rag and, in the latest edition, Mr Tony Laverick of Glasgow weighs in to add his own castigation of "pale, over-hopped, dry, sour-tasting modern beers". "Fellow malt lovers," apostrophises the refulgent Laverick, "come out of the closet and start campaigning before these New Age beers make nettle-licking a more enjoyable experience than going to the pub!"

Wonderful stuff, you must admit. I have particularly enjoyed this correspondence because I, too, have from time to time given in to the Bates/Laverick heresy myself. I am a huge admirer of Hopback, Rooster and Oakham, yet not every brewery working in this tradition has quite as much skill in weaving aroma and flavour into a pint as they do. My last pint of Deuchars IPA did indeed leave me a little unsatisfied, and even if I start the evening with a great pint of Oakham JHB or the RCH Pitchfork, I want to move on to something else afterwards.

If Camra ever institutes its own radio station and launches a programme called Desert Island Pints, I can guarantee that at least seven out of my eight will be malt-structured masterpieces like Timothy Taylor's Landlord, Black Sheep Bitter, Adnams Bitter, Harvey's Sussex Best Bitter (a beer which seems to get better every time I taste it), Brakspears Bitter and others of that ilk. Hops enchant and divert, but it is malt that satisfies. The really great ales bring massed ranks of both together to orchestral effect.

All of this came to mind, as it happened, the morning after I had sampled my first 2004 pint of Harvey's Old Ale, a glowingly dark 4.3% abv treasurehouse available during the winter months each year. Normally I think of myself as a bit of a hophead, which means that I tend to steer clear of the sweeter, softer Milds and Olds, but this pint made me realise how stupid a strategy that was. It was a wonderfully broad, welcoming, relaxing mouthful in which all the components came together to succulent effect, but without any of them obtruding; it was just plain good fun to drink, especially on a dark autumn night as I looked out onto the sodden streets of Lewes. Why didn't I try ales like this more often?

That, in the end, is probably the most important lesson of all. The full range of aromas and flavours offered by great British beer has never been wider, more seductive or more diverse than at the moment, and holding a narrow aesthetic line as one drinks one's way around this world has never been more foolish.

I might sometimes indulge in a little Bates/Laverick heresy, but I quickly snap out of it and, before long, my nose begins twitching at the prospect of a pint of Rooster. It is the variety itself, as much as the precise aromas and flavours, which brings me joy ­ which is why I weep for those miserable souls condemned to spend an entire lifetime never drinking anything but pint after pint after pint of Guinness, Carling or Stella. Oh, the horror of sensual self-imprisonment.