The guide, which features 4,500 pubs, 1,700 brewers and 5,000 beers across the UK, features 812 new entries selected through CAMRA’s volunteer-led judging process.
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Alongside the new listings, data from the guide highlighted the pressures still facing independent brewers.
CAMRA reported 137 breweries closed over the past year while 57 new breweries opened, though the consumer group said the rate of closures had slowed.
Fiercely independent
CAMRA chairman Ash Corbett-Collins said the guide remained an important showcase for both quality cask beer and independently brewed products.
He said: “The Good Beer Guide is fiercely independent, just like the brewers making the best beer. It is the result of the time and effort of our volunteers across the UK to find the pubs serving the best kept cask beer.
“In a year where independent brewery closures have slowed, but not returned to growth, the guide remains the go-to source for finding choice and quality in pubs.”
Corbett-Collins also used the launch to renew CAMRA’s calls for a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation into the UK’s on-trade beer market.
The trade body has argued that global brewers have too much influence over the sector, limiting opportunities for independent producers and reducing choice for consumers.
Perfect pub
“This year, we released our flagship report, Beer in the UK, alongside our campaign to expose how ‘Big Beer’ is dominating the UK beer market, and how ordinary drinkers and independent brewers lose out as a result,” Corbett-Collins added.
The 2027 edition also features a foreword by crime writer Sir Ian Rankin, whose fictional detective Rebus is known for frequenting Edinburgh’s Oxford Bar, which appears on this year’s cover.
“What makes the perfect pub? Ask fifty people and you might get fifty different answers,” Rankin wrote.
“My preferences might not be yours, but there are a few things we can probably agree on. We want the beer to be good and the welcome to be friendly. We want to see signs that the bar represents the best of its community or neighbourhood. We want to feel like we fit in.”
The guide is sponsored by Midland Snacks Traditional Pork Scratchings and endorsed by Cask Marque.
