About Us

The micro breweries and independent breweries need regular outlets for their product where they can be paid a fair price for their beer. At present, the vast majority of pubs are either pub-co or brewery owned, as part of large portfolios of tied or owned pubs, or are tied into a particular brewery which prevents them from ordering any beers from other than the breweries’/pub-co’s own list. These large breweries negotiate big discounts from regional breweries in order to make only certain regional beers available in their pubs; the choice to the consumer is therefore severely limited.

By excluding the smaller independents and micro breweries from being able to sell their beers through these tied pubs, not only is the consumer disadvantaged, but these independents and micro breweries often find it hard to find sufficient regular outlets for their beers. Whilst the Chancellor, Gordon Brown, has in recent budgets announced tax measures to aid them, this needs to be reinforced by an opening up of freedom for a licensee to order some of his beer from local independent and micro breweries (on a regular or rotating basis), and this is something which CAMRA are actively campaigning for at the moment.

Real ale festivals such as this Galtres Festival all help to both foster an appreciation of our vast range of real ales in this country, and provide continued customers for the independent and micro breweries: they benefit in terms of both advertising/promotion and of course, sales.