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Editorial
London Drinker is published on behalf of the
Greater London branches of CAMRA, the
Campaign for Real Ale, and is edited by Tony
Hedger. It is printed by Cliffe Enterprise,
Eastbourne, BN22 8TR.
CAMRA is a not-for-profit company limited by
guarantee and registered in England; company
No. 1270286. Registered office:
230 Hatfield Road, St. Albans,
Hertfordshire AL1 4LW.
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The deadline for the next edition,
June/July, is Monday
9 May
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The views expressed in this magazine are those of
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endorsed by the editor or CAMRA.
© copyright the London Branches of the
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CONTENTS
Branch diaries 4
CAMRA events 10
A clear winner in Cheltenham 14
SPBW Pub of the Year 14
News round-up – General 16
– Health and welfare 26
– Pub and brewery trade news 46
CAMRA’s champion winter beer 22
Fair prices for half pints 22
Cider redefined 24
Tottenham revival crawl 28
Brussels Beer Project 30
Norwich City of Ale 32
The Ant and Bee crawl 34
London brewery news 38
Matters of taste 44
The London beer challenge 45
Pub campaigning 50
Letters 54
WhatPub? update 55
Book reviews 61
The pub saving toolkit 62
Obituaries 67
Idle Moments 68
Crossword 70
OUR REVITALISATION
ur national Members’ Weekend
Oconvenes this year in Liverpool a
few days after the usual ‘last
Wednesday’ publication date of this
magazine. More members have
registered in advance to attend than
ever before. Perhaps the attraction is
cheaper beer: at CAMRA’s Liverpool
Beer Festival last month a pint of any
beer below 4% ABV cost just £2.
Or perhaps the level of interest
relates to the varied agenda of AGM
business, conference motions and
‘workshop’ discussions on several
campaigning themes. If so, this is most
welcome. Over two years as Regional
Director for Greater London I have
appreciated how much CAMRA has
come to depend on small teams of
aging volunteers at branch level, some
of us fulfilling several active roles.
However, the London Drinker
readership survey we conducted at the
end of last year attracted more than
1700 responses, a staggering 98% of
them from CAMRA members. More
on this later; besides the predictable
calls for larger print, there were several
suggestions for other things we could
do better but also many who
cautioned strongly against changing
the balance or the feel of our
magazine.
One or two of the motions for
debate in Liverpool touch on the
Good Beer Guide. Our annual
flagship publication now combines a
chronically restricted selection of the
many pubs and clubs that reliably
serve an excellent pint with a
comprehensive index of breweries, a
lot of them very new and some not yet
necessarily making anything
consistently good. Not that all pubs
serve cask beers at their best; indeed
another conference motion proposes
‘Improving the quality of real ale at the
point of dispense’ as a Key Campaign.
But this year’s conference also sees
the launch of a project to refresh our
campaign with renewed purpose and
a more effective structure for pursuing
it. We have enlisted Michael
Hardman, one of the four founder
members of the Campaign for the
Revitalisation of Ale, as it started back
in 1971, to lead this project and he will
be one of two main speakers at
Liverpool, the other being Tim Martin
of Wetherspoons.
All members will be receiving a
consultation document, including
details of an online survey. We shall
also be holding almost 50 consultative
meetings nationwide in the coming
months, including three in London.
The first of these takes place at 7pm
on Wednesday 13 April at Southwark
Brewing, 46 Druid Street, SE1,
finishing at 9pm. Would members –
yes, do join up first – please sign up at
www.camra.org.uk/revitalisation (live
from 1 April) to attend this event or
any of the later ones. Here is an
opportunity for you to influence the
whole direction of our campaign.
Let us drink to the revitalisation of
CAMRA!
Geoff Strawbridge
A complete collection of London Drinker
magazines is available on our website:
www.london.camra.org.uk.
You can use the website version to read
London Drinker in larger print.
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