Camra launches new Good Bottled Beer Guide

The Campaign for Real Ale (Camra) has launched the new edition of its Good Bottled Beer Guide, which features over 1,800 bottle-conditioned beers.

This guide showcases beers from across the UK in a range of styles, from golden ales to aromatic and citrusy India pale ales as well as stouts and porters.

Jeff Evans, who wrote the guide, says the book shows there has never been a better time to be a beer drinker in the UK.

He said: “The Good Bottled Beer Guide highlights the breadth of fantastic beer now being produced in the UK – as well as traditional British beer styles such as bitter and stout, we are now very lucky to have international beer styles such as American-style pale ales and German-inspired wheat beers being brewed on these shores.”

“From world famous brews such as Fuller’s Vintage Ale and Worthington’s White Shield, to beers that use hops from New Zealand and America such as Buxton Brewery’s Axe Edge IPA, the range of beers is so great that there’s never been a better time to be a beer drinker in the UK.”

This is the eighth edition of the Good Bottled Beer Guide, which features some relatively new breweries that have quickly made a name for themselves in the beer world – the likes of The Kernel, Red Willow, and Rebel. It also features bottle-conditioned beers from some of the UK’s biggest brewers such as Thwaites, Wells & Young’s and Shepherd Neame.

The guide contains beers from 342 different breweries, with detailed profiles and tasting notes on 583 beers.

Other features include star awards for the best beers, rosettes for the best breweries, a comprehensive listing of specialist beer shops and full details of how to buy, store and serve bottled beer.

Evans added: “The number of breweries producing bottle-conditioned beer, or ‘Real Ale in a Bottle’ has grown massively in recent years thanks to an explosion in microbreweries across the UK.

“With more and more small breweries looking to bottle their beers both for local sales and in order to reach further markets, the traditional method of bottle conditioning – where live yeast is used to give the beer light carbonation via a secondary fermentation in the bottle – is proving a popular approach.”