Now, however, a new generation of British craft brewers is challenging the CAMRA orthodoxy, and its claim to ownership of proper beer in Britain:
The Scotsman believes Camra holds back innovation in the UK; he takes his inspiration from the US, where a wildly innovative new breed of brewers have revolutionised American beer.
Watt prefers to see his beers served from a keg than a cask, an approach that brings him into conflict with many of the craft brewers who have sprung up across the UK in recent years. "We want to get beyond the people who currently drink good beers in the UK," he explains. "We want to convert fizzy yellow lager drinkers into craft beer aficionados. The easiest way to do that is with keg – if you give them a cask ale, it's so alien, it's much warmer and it doesn't have the nice mouth feel. Keg is much better for the beers we produce."More power to them; in the USA and Australia, where traditions are less entrenched, there is a lot of mass-market swill, but also a lot of superb craft breweries. Perhaps, in adopting the idea of Real Ale as the sole bulwark against homogeneous corporate lager, Britain is erring too much on the side of conservatism.
I yearn for another 'proper' English Ale, drunk in the crisp cool air of Castleton.