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These are the results of my poll on CAMRA and keg beers. As you can see, the voting is far from conclusive, with a pretty much even split between those supporting and opposing some kind of embrace of keg. I’ve already extensively discussed this issue here, but feel free to comment further...
It’s been claimed in some quarters that CAMRA has now officially accepted keg-conditioned beers as “real ale”, but I don’t see that things have gone anywhere near that far. What has been done is to give CAMRA-run beer festivals sanction to serve keg-conditioned keykeg beers if they so choose. I think the Technical Committee has still to make a definitive pronouncement.
And to fully accept it as real ale would need quite a few more steps to be taken, such as (in no particular order):
  • Allow the inclusion of keg-conditioned beers (KCBs, maybe?) in pub listings in the Good Beer Guide and on What Pub?
  • List permanent KCBs in the brewery section of the Good Beer Guide
  • Allow pubs serving only KCBs and no cask to be included in the Good Beer Guide
  • Provide a distinctive dispense symbol for KCBs – K, maybe?
  • Agree with the industry a clear method of indicating at the point of sale that a keg beer is a KCB
    Encourage the industry to develop a unique form of bar mounting to identify KCBs

All of that would need an AGM motion, possibly several. Which I imagine would only be passed over a sea of dead bodies.


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