Boak & Bailey's Beer Blog
We’ll have a few books to sign and sell but we’ll also be delighted to sign copies people bring with them, whether well-read, or brand new and intended as Christmas gifts.
If you’re a reader of the blog, whether you want a book signing or not, we’d love the chance to say hello and chat over a pint, so please do drop by if you’re in the area.
Simon Webster, co-founder of Thornbridge, from an interview we conducted in 2013. This is an extended version of a quotation given on p.199 of Brew Britannia.
From fairly early on in its existence, the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) has shown a concern with the purity of beer, almost as much as with the method of dispense, and arguably more than with the quality of its flavour.
This has been on our mind lately, since Yvan Seth asked when all this began. (UPDATE 27/04/2022: the original Tweet has disappeared so we’ve paraphrased from memory.)
We’ve previously touched upon the hippy whole-food influence on CAMRA’s language and approach, not only here on the blog, but also in chapter four of Brew Britannia.
Richard Harvey, PR for Allied Breweries in the 1970s, from an interview conducted for Brew Britannia.
Jeff Alworth at Beervana, for example, highlights trans-Atlantic confusion over the meanings and cultural values implied by ‘craft’ and cask. In the US, cask-conditioned beer is considered the height of ‘craft’-ness, while in the UK, as we argue in the book, one of the many simultaneously-live meanings of ‘craft’ has been, since c.1997, ‘the antidote to real ale’. There is much potential for crossed wires here.
Jeff also ponders on why North America didn’t develop a powerful beer consumer group along the lines of the Campaign for Real Ale. It’s not as if the US doesn’t have a culture of clubs, though anything that even remotely resembled a union (CAMRA was nearly called ‘the Beer Drinkers’ Union at one point) would probably have raised hackles.
Derrick Peterman picks up the same thread and offers one possible answer: “Boak and Bailey’s history documents a similar revolution, but a demand driven one rather than the American revolution driven by new supply… That whole idea seems somehow un-American.” In America, capitalism is activism?
At any rate, we look forward to seeing if an answer emerges in discussion.
Finally, both Derrick and Jeff make a point that we hope potential reader will hear: you don’t need to be British to enjoy this book!
(There’ll be a proper blog post, i.e. one that isn’t about us and our book, along later today…)