17/09/2026
Cask beer nearly didn't survive the 1970s. This is the story of how one volunteer’s list of pubs started pushing back, and why the same fight is still on in 2026. 🍺
By the late 1960s, six national brewers controlled most of what went on the bar. They'd spent two decades replacing cask-conditioned beer, with bland, pasteurised, keg bee. By 1972, cask was disappearing from pubs. If you wanted the genuine article, you needed to know exactly where to look.
Andrew Cunningham had been keeping a personal diary of the pints he'd drunk, and where, since 1968. A group of fellow CAMRA volunteers took that list and built on it, and in 1972 they put together a guide to pubs in Britain still serving the real thing. 298 pubs. 18 pages. Stapled together and posted to members. It cost 25p. That was the first Good Beer Guide.
Two years later came the first commercially printed edition, 1,500 pubs for 75p, published by Waddington's. The entry for Watney's, the brewer most aggressively pushing keg beer, read simply: "Avoid like the plague." Waddington's recalled the entire print run and had the back cover replaced with a softer line, "Avoid at all costs." A small number of the original copies escaped the recall. They're considered a collector's items now.
Fifty-four editions on, the details have changed but the shape of the problem hasn't. Four global corporations now make 80% of UK beer, and independent brewers can't get into 62% of pubs through tied supply agreements. Different names, same structural fight. The Good Beer Guide still works exactly the way it did in 1972. No pub pays to appear. No advertiser has any say over a listing.
Colin Keegan bought his first Good Beer Guide on Good Friday 1975. That summer he drove 3,476 miles round Britain finding out what was in it. The Guide is used the very same way today to find pubs serving quality cask beer around the UK, allowing you to drink like a local away from home.
The Good Beer Guide 2027 is the 54th edition. It covers 4,500 recommended pubs, 1,700 breweries and 5,000 beers, with taproom information so you can track a pint back to its source. The foreword is written by Sir Ian Rankin, and the cover is an illustration of The Oxford Bar in Edinburgh, home to his fictional detective Inspector Rebus, the first Scottish pub to feature on the front cover, illustrated by artist David Wardle.
It launches on 24 September, right in the middle of National Cask Ale Week (17 to 27 September). Pre-order your copy at member price, £13.99, at shop1.camra.org.uk.
Find a Cask Ale Week event near you at caskaleweek.co.uk. And if you visit a Good Beer Guide pub this month, score the beer before you leave. Those scores build the 2028 edition.
What was the first pub you ever visited from the Good Beer Guide? Tell us in the comments. 🔗
