Lager brewery battles CAMRA

A lager brewery has been left furious after the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) banned its products from a beer festival this weekend.

Freedom Brewery had set up its stand ready to pour lager at the Burton-Upon-Trent beer festival following approval from the local CAMRA branch. However, according to Freedom, CAMRA's head office called on the morning of Thursday, September 17, ordering it to withdraw from the event.

CAMRA has a long-standing policy of favouring cask beer over keg at its festivals.

Edward Mayman, director of the Freedom Brewery, which lost out on sales of its beers because of the last-minute withdrawal, said: "Having had support from Burton CAMRA, it is disappointing that national CAMRA then banned us, the reason they gave being that we use C02 to push the product from the keg to the glass, which infringes CAMRA's rules."

He added that, since the festival, which would have been Freedom's first time at a CAMRA event, "I have had no correspondence from head office CAMRA, but numerous emails from CAMRA members showing their support.

"Resoundingly, people can not believe that CAMRA are being so fickle, when all they are trying to do as an organisation is promote quality, hand-crafted produce, which is exactly what we at Freedom do."

CAMRA director Nik Antona said: "It was a real shame that we had to reverse the decision to have Freedom Brewery beers present at the Burton Beer Festival.

"Unfortunately there seemed to be a communication error, but the dispensing methods that the brewery uses do not comply with CAMRA policy. If in the future Freedom brews cask-conditioned real ale then we would be delighted to revisit having their beer at next year's festival."