Why Cask Ale Matters: Insights from CAMRA's Chairman

In this episode of The Beer Rep Chats With, Martin speaks with Ash Corbett-Collins, the chairman of CAMRA, about the significance of cask ale in British culture, the challenges it faces, and the ongoing campaigns to promote and preserve it. They discuss the importance of choice in pubs, the role of beer festivals, and the value independent breweries bring to local communities. Ash shares insights on engaging younger audiences and the future of CAMRA, emphasising the community aspect of beer culture and the need for more local independence in the brewing industry.

Following the UK’s ratification of UNESCO's Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage, we call on the Government to recognise production and serving of traditional British cask ale as Intangible Cultural Heritage. 

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CAMRA Website

GBBF (Great British Beer Festival)

Chapters

• 0:00 Ash Introduction
• 1:24 The Iconic Nature of Cask Beer
• 3:58 Challenges Facing Independent Beer
• 7:09 The Impact of Global Brands on Local Pubs
• 8:49 Balancing Tradition with New Beer Styles
• 11:28 The Role of Beer Festivals
• 15:18 The Value Independent Breweries Bring to Local Communities
• 16:41 The Great British Beer Festival's Relocation
• 19:51 Engaging Audiences in Beer Culture
• 22:40 CAMRA's Appeal to Younger Generations
• 28:34 Why Join CAMRA?
• 30:50 Final Words & Outro

Transcript

Martin (00:00)
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Beer Rep Chats with. Today I'm joined by Ash, the chairman of CAMRA Ash, thanks for coming on the show.

Ash Corbett-Collins (00:07)
Thanks for having me.

Martin (00:08)
Great. So quick intro about yourself and your role as chairman. What does that involve?

Ash Corbett-Collins (00:13)
Sure, so yeah, so as said, I'm chairman of CAMRA, which is kind of everything and anything. It's one of those roles that really involves a lot. So I've been a member of CAMRA for going on about 10, 15 years now. I joined the board, so we have like an elected board. I joined that about seven years ago. And then, yeah, about six months ago, I was elected to be our national chairman. And it involves, you know, gruntly kind of being the...

the spokesperson for the organization, ⁓ kind of put myself out there doing things like this and trying to really kind of promote CAMRA and our campaigning and our membership to people. And then on the other side, it's a lot of ⁓ administrative work, you know, it's running a multimillion pound business and having board meetings and going away and having kind of strategy days and that sort of thing.

Martin (01:02)
to fun stuff.

Ash Corbett-Collins (01:02)
It's a really

exciting role, it's as much as I want to make it as well. It's really interesting. There's no kind of job description. I just kind of find pies to stick my fingers in and get involved in.

Martin (01:12)
Yeah, definitely. I mean, obviously CAMRAs all about real ale ⁓ But you know, we all know that cask can be a bit of a diva, needs a bit looking after, can get a bit grumpy sometimes when it's disturbed. So what's the whole, you know, traditional of UK people, beer drinkers love cask ale mean, why do we still love it after all these years?

Ash Corbett-Collins (01:32)
think because it's, as you said, it's so traditional, it is so kind of iconic, think, is the word I'd use. We have thousands and millions of tourists come to this country and they always, I think, top of their list of them visiting Buckingham Palace and some of the kind of the big sites is they want to go to a British pub and have a pint of cask beer. It is the quintessential kind of British product. So yeah, it's iconic, it's historic, and I think it is still one of the best formats for beer.

⁓ You can have absolutely fantastic, fantastic cask beers. There's still a really exciting range of different beers being produced by brewers of all sizes in cask. And ⁓ for me personally, I'm going to do that kind cliche saying I like that it's not quite as cold and not quite as fizzy as some keg beers. I love keg beers as well, but that pint of cask for me just goes down that a little bit easier.

Martin (02:25)
Yeah,

a hundred percent. mean, I've been drinking cask for many, many years myself and yeah, there's something, it's just something different about it. It doesn't really, it's not, it's not carbonate. It's not over carbonated. It's not too cold. And it's just so easy drinking. Um, I mean, if you get a really nice fresh cask, you know, when you get the middle of the cask and it's the freshest, is, it's, it's amazing. It's a lovely, and obviously, you know, with

You've got ⁓ Jonny Garrett doing a massive campaign at the moment for getting cask ale to be part of British heritage. And how's that all going? What have you been doing to help support that?

Ash Corbett-Collins (03:01)
It's going really well. So I know it a threshold the other day that the government kind of responded and said, yes, they're interested and they'd like some representation to them to understand it. And CAMRA and Jonny and everyone else were still pushing for more signatures. Yes, we've had a bit of a response from the government, but what we want next is getting that debate in parliament when I think it's 100,000 signatures you need or something like that. If we can keep rushing and showing that there is a huge market out there and a huge interest in Cask beer

Martin (03:24)
Yeah.

Ash Corbett-Collins (03:30)
would be fantastic. Yeah, so we're really excited and it's such a fantastic campaign

Martin (03:34)
Yeah, it's going really well. And yeah, obviously, like you said, need a hundred thousand signatures. So yeah, jump on board with the signatures. We gonna add the description down below and sign up because it's big cause and a worthy one as well. What do you think the biggest hurdles cask ale facing right now? what, you know, what, what hope do you have for its future?

Ash Corbett-Collins (03:55)
think the biggest thing and what we've been engaging in a lot on at the minute is access to market. At the moment we know, and we've been working with SIBA on this, that so many independent brewers are just not getting the access to market that they need. And this is why, know, said SIBA's launched that Indie Beer campaign. We know that drinkers want to try and drink independent beer, local beer, something that they can understand where it's come from and who's made it. But at the minute...

Consumers and drinkers aren't getting choice. They're giving the illusion of choice. They go into a pub and they see X amount of pump clips and different brands, but they're not different breweries. They are often made in some mega factory somewhere or owned by some global conglomerates. That isn't giving them that choice. And when they're not given choice, they're not given quality as well. They're not given the ability to have what they want.

What we don't want is a world where every pub is, you know, identikit and there are all these big chain pubs and there's about five beers to choose across the whole country. That would be terrible. We want a world where everyone can drink and choose exactly what they want and whether that's keg or cask, it's stout, it's IPAs, whatever it is, there is choice and local independence as well.

Martin (05:03)
Yeah. I do you think there's like a big change going on with the whole pub culture? I mean, you know, most pubs are owned by global brands or, you know, locked into a contract with say, for instance, Heineken, for example, where obviously they're providing them with all this equipment and in return that they stock their beers. Do you think there's like a shift where...

a lot of, you see a lot of micro pubs that are opening where they're, you know, they're a hundred percent, they're supporting UK independent breweries. Do you think there's a kind of a shift from people go into pubs more, they're going more towards micro pubs where they can support independent breweries?

Ash Corbett-Collins (05:42)
think people want to. I think the real shame is there isn't a shift because there isn't an option as much as there should be because the market is so dominated by these global players and these certain chains that aren't given the choice and things like that. I think what we're seeing is people starting to understand there's a problem and I want CAMRA to be the forefront of helping people to understand what that problem is and how we can change it. But I think unfortunately we're still in a world where, you know,

You can be in some of the major city centers and you might want to drink independent and go to a micro pub, but you just can't. You can't have that choice because it is dominated in that market by ⁓ a lack of choice.

Martin (06:20)
Yeah, exactly. mean, that's what kind of stops me from going to a pub because you could have like 10 pubs in a town or city and you go into each one of them pubs and you'll see the same cask ale on like have Doom Bar or, you know London Pride.

And no matter what one you go into, that's the only options you get. And that's, that's, that's the big problem, isn't it? Is where, you know, independent breweries are not getting access to market. not being allowed to, to sell their beer in, in these pubs because of they're being owned by the big global players. And that's the...

a big problem and hence the downfall I think of the pubs at the moment where so many are closing down because you can get the same beers in the same pubs. You have 10 pubs in the area, five are closed down because they've all got the same beer on. Who wants that?

Ash Corbett-Collins (07:04)
Yeah, absolutely.

Republicans are being allowed to survive and thrive by understanding and giving their consumers and customers what they want. Most landlords and landladies know what the locals want. They might want to stock a local beer or do something interesting in their pub. And they're being told, no, no, you have to run it exactly as we tell you and that'll be fine. And then we'll make that minimal margin profit and take that away. the global players are happy with that because across their estate, that adds up to a good number.

Martin (07:14)
Yeah.

Ash Corbett-Collins (07:33)
But for the publican it is not a living and it's not good for the community who aren't being given exactly what they want.

Martin (07:34)
Of course.

Yeah, exactly. They want something niche, something different in their pubs to attract new customers. And if they're not getting that because they're not allowed to, it's, you know, it's not helping them at all.

Ash Corbett-Collins (07:47)
Yeah, and it's

not an argument against, you know, you said Doom Bar and London Pride and things like that. know, my nan has become a convert to Doom Bar recently. She calls it Dom Bar, which I find hilarious. I don't correct that. I'm just like, yeah, I'll go get you a pint of Dom Bar. But in the last couple of years, she's, you know, she's moved back to Burton on Trent That is the beer she always wants. She always has a little half a Dom Bar shandy is what she gets when we go out for a meal or something. ⁓

Martin (08:11)
Yeah.

Ash Corbett-Collins (08:12)
I want a world where my nan can go get her Doom Bar and she's very happy. But on the bar, is also then, you know, if you take Burton as the example a Burton Bridge Beer on next to it or something like that, as well as your national brands or, you know, the pub owner has choice. it's an ecosystem we want to see where everyone gets a share of the market.

Martin (08:30)
Yeah. and not feel like they're being pushed out by the big globals. Yeah. A hundred percent.

So CAMRA, you've expanded your, your network.

recently, How do you balance the tradition of cask with newer beer styles that are hitting the scene? You know, obviously that we're probably talking more about the keg style beers. How do you come up with a balance?

Ash Corbett-Collins (08:51)
It's interesting because I think, as I joined CAMRA about 10 odd years ago, and I never joined the CAMRA as a purely cask organization or a light beer, real ale whatever certain people want to use. But you do get traditional members who say, you know, that is what they're interested in. They just want to promote and campaign for cask beer And that's totally fine. We've always said we're a broad church. And what's important actually is that we just achieve all our aims. And I've spoke to the founders. I used to see quite often Michael Hardman.

one of the four who set up CAMRA back in 1971. And he's always said to me, you know, he didn't promote CAMRA to just do cask beer. What they understood was there was a danger in 1971 that the beer scene was going to become monotonous. It was just going to be kegged lagers from the continent that weren't, not very good, not very interesting, no particular kind of cellarmenship or craft to making that beer.

and then just cheap cheerful and on the bar everywhere. That's what they wanted to get against. They want to make sure, they appreciate it, that cask was being muscled out and they want to keep that quality and choice on the bar. And I think that's what we kind of use as our ethos now, which is quality and choice. So whether it is cask or if it's craft or if it's keg or key keg or cans, bottles, the important thing for us is that people have that ability to go to the pub.

and make a choice and have what they want. I want to see pubs that stock as much as possible because that's how you get more people in and spending money. There is also venues where they go, know what we're focusing only be cask or only be bottles or something like that. And that's great. People go there because they seek those out. But for the most part, if you're out with a few friends or family, whatever it is, people are going to be drinking different things. You want to go to venues where people can have that choice and that ability. So yeah, what we're pushing against, I think over the next few years is

again, this danger of, I think, choice being taken away, quality being taken away, because what we're seeing is big global brands coming and buying up craft breweries, ⁓ mainly to get the pump clips and the marketing and then say, yes, people like, know, Beavertown Town or whatever it is, and isn't it great? Beavertown in every pub now in the country, but it's not a quality, it's not a local independent beer that people think they're getting. And so what we're pushing against now is, you

Martin (10:55)
Yeah.

Ash Corbett-Collins (11:05)
Hopefully people go and have a cask beer but we also want to make sure people can go and have independent keg. That is quality as well.

Martin (11:12)
Yeah, definitely. You've got the craft beer festival, your CAMRA beer festival coming up in Birmingham soon. ⁓ How important do you think festivals play a role in Cask and obviously Keg as well?

Ash Corbett-Collins (11:26)
They're huge, yeah. Festivals are still kind of the thing that CAMRA does outside of kind of boots on the ground campaigning. That's our other kind of stick that we have to shake at the world. So I don't think we're now in a world where people don't know what cask is. I think we're, you know, in the 70s, 80s, 90s, when we were doing beer festivals, it was very much like, come discover cask. You know, it's new. It was not new, but it's, you know, it's not that lager you've been drinking that, you know, come try something different. I think most people now know what cask is. They understand it. They appreciate it.

But I think people are still apprehensive about cask and you asked earlier some of the threats against cask. Bad cask is the other big threat. I would rather cask wasn't served in pubs that can't sell it or won't sell it or won't look after it properly. You just don't have the cask. And I hate that again, these tide models where they force them to have a really sad hand pull at the end of the bar with cobwebs on it and you go in and you order it and it's horrible.

Martin (12:03)
Yeah.

Ash Corbett-Collins (12:21)
People try that and that's it. They will never have cask again because they don't realize it was so badly looked after. So think festivals are still really important for demonstrating good quality cask and then saying actually it's served right it's cellared right, then you can get a good product. And then the other thing is I think what they're really good for, going back to that access to market thing is, yes, if we're saying the market is dominated and pubs are unfortunately not allowed to sell all these wonderful small independent breweries across the UK, festivals can.

Martin (12:24)
Exactly,

Ash Corbett-Collins (12:49)
And that's what's great. You can go to a festival. I discovered one of my favorite beers is from Colchester Brewery, I think and they do a Brazilian coffee porter or something like that. Absolutely fantastic. I've never seen it on any pub ever, because I don't live near Colchester where I hope they get into local pubs. And frankly, I said, access to market is a problem. But I had it at a beer festival. It was an amazing beer. I kept going back and having more of it. And that was my opportunity to try something new and independent and really enjoy it. So.

I think festivals are super important for showcasing and allowing breweries to get out there. They win the awards, they might get beer at the festival or if they go through our Champion Beer of Britain judging and goes on to win awards. That can again be a lifeline and a really good marketing tool for these breweries. they get to say, oh, know, little thing on the hand pull, a pump clip that says we won CAMRA awards.

So yeah, I think it's really good for showcasing independent brewers as well.

Martin (13:44)
Yeah, it's definitely it's brilliant. What would you say? Oh, yeah, what would you say is your most favourite brewery that's going to be at the Great British Beer Festival this year in Birmingham?

Ash Corbett-Collins (13:56)
I'm going to be incredibly biased and I'm going to say it's Attic Brewery, which is from Birmingham. I I used to live two streets away from Attic. having that at the end, basically the end of my road was fantastic. know, finish work, go down, a couple of beers in their brewery tap. And I know they're really excited. They're really keen. They've got in touch with me, they got in touch with the festival and said, yes, we really want to get involved. We want to showcase Birmingham. So they're not only wanting to sell their beers.

Martin (14:00)
pretty

Ash Corbett-Collins (14:19)
I know when I was speaking to Catherine from there, she was saying they want to put Birmingham on the map. Now we're moving the Great British Beer Festival to Birmingham, which I think is a fantastic opportunity and definitely not just because it's going to be really easy for me to get to. yeah, this is the opportunity we say, you know, people, Birmingham has a reputation, not helped by the bin strikes now at the minute of being a bit of a downtrodden city, of having its issues, of people doing the accent when anyone mentions Birmingham. I want people to understand that actually it's a really exciting city with

great beer, great food, lots of stuff to do. You can go and have a day out once you've gone to GBBF just get a train 10 minutes back into the city centre. And I'm really happy that Attic are pushing that as well and fighting the fight for Birmingham.

The bad thing was Attic and the others did so well that it put the house prices up quite a lot in the area. It's now a really kind of desirable place to live in Birmingham. So I had to move away to be to afford to buy a house.

Martin (15:07)
Yeah.

Exactly. It's been proven that wherever there's a brewery set up, it improves ⁓ creates more jobs, house prices do go up. So it's beneficial for the government to support independent breweries.

Ash Corbett-Collins (15:23)
That's

a really, really good point actually about the jobs and the economy. And this is what we've been pushing really hard, is labor ran on a manifesto of they wanted to do growth. And our argument is then why are you trying to punish pubs? These national insurance contributions going up, which are hitting small employers much harder than big employers. And the duty, we've got our asks on that, or they promised in their manifesto they were going to look at business rates of pubs.

And we're still not seeing that and we're pushing going, well, when is this going to happen? And this, you know, this access to market review and making sure that, you know, don't just pay lip service, do a proper review. You know, there is a problem. You need to recognize that because I think someone did a bit of research recently and this is kind of pint for pint. Small brewers employ more people than big brewers because these big brewers, know, these big massive factories where it's all push of a button and then it's just machines that basically make the beer. There's not a lot of people involved in those.

Martin (16:13)
Yeah.

Ash Corbett-Collins (16:18)
whereas Attic and the like, it is a team of people crafting that beer together, which is really important. So they're employing more people per pint than these big brewers.

Martin (16:26)
Yeah, exactly. And obviously bar staff and tap rooms as well, ⁓ if they have an tap room.

Just a quick one on the reason why you decided to move the Great British Beer Festival from London to Birmingham this year. What was the main reasoning behind that?

Ash Corbett-Collins (16:40)
So the main reason we had the, so we weren't able to hold it in 2024. Unfortunately, so Olympia, the venue would traditionally use for a number of years. They've had a lot of extensive work being done. They're refurbishing it. They're wanting to, think, pivot it to be a much more, their own sort of space. I think they're putting in their own hospitality stuff. I've seen pictures of rooftop bars and stuff they're putting in there. a lot of work, a lot of building work. And I think, unfortunately, last year it got to the point during negotiations where they couldn't guarantee, I think,

the sort of size and space we needed to do a good job. it was changing each week. they'd say, no, now it's going be this, now you're to have that, no, you're not going to have that bit of it, the whole of things like that. And we just couldn't, in good faith, take the risk of having our festival there and potentially the risks of that of it changing and not being what we wanted it be. But that was also really good opportunity because the trouble is, when we cancelled it, people kept saying, oh, we'll move it here, move it there.

which is great but actually people don't maybe appreciate how hard it is to plan one of the UK's biggest beer festivals. You can't just pick it up and go great let's have it on the other side of the country in three weeks time instead. ⁓ The army of volunteers that we have involved, how do you get the accommodation for people? We put hundreds of people up in student digs across London during it normally. But that meant that you know rather than always just focus on how we're doing the next one, next one, next one, we had a year where we go great.

Martin (17:44)
Yeah.

Ash Corbett-Collins (17:59)
let's have a think about what GBBF is, what do we want to achieve with it. So we took the time out, had a big think, and yeah, we found the opportunity really to reinvent GBBF. So it's not going to be as big, you know the NEC space just isn't as big as Olympia is so there is going to be a reduction in the beers, but what we're hoping to be is much more focused. So it's still going be really exciting festival. We're still going to have, you know, lots of different beers around the country and really showcase all those brilliant brewers.

but we also want it to be a much more interactive festival and people to not just drink beers but come away learning things, getting involved, going to have much more of our learning discovery platform there. That's really exciting. And then I think just the fact that we get to move it somewhere as much as we, when we first announced it, all the Londoners on Facebook said, we're not coming to Birmingham, it's too far. And they didn't really appreciate all those people that have been coming to London all these years and making the trek, but they couldn't possibly leave London obviously. But.

Conversely, once that had died down, the amount of people who said, oh, you know what, Birmingham's a lot easier to get to from Leeds or York or wherever it might be because it's on the main train line. And they're saying, you know what, I can make a day out of it. So we're hoping for a new audience as well. I think we'll get plenty of the people from London who still, you know, it's an hour and a half train straight into the NEC. It's not the end of the world. So think most of them will still come. But I'm hoping we'll get a new exciting audience of people who maybe felt that getting down to London was a bit too much.

Martin (19:11)
Of course.

Yeah, definitely. mean, yeah, it's not far from London at all. It's an hour and half, like you said, and yeah, it's more accessible for the rest of the country to get to Birmingham from further up north, like you say. ⁓ CAMRA membership is quite big. How many members do have now? Is it roughly 170,000?

Ash Corbett-Collins (19:38)
140ish thousand, 140,

something like that yeah.

Martin (19:41)
So how do you keep it fresh and modern and appealing to someone who's just discovered hazy pales and doesn't even know what a hand pull is yet? How do you keep it?

Ash Corbett-Collins (19:52)
⁓ Well, yeah, I think what we're trying to do is position ourselves as that friendly face that can help you discover more and learn more and get involved. You know, I joined CAMRA because I, a mate's dad, I was at university and a mate's dad said, come out with me and I'll show you what proper beer is like. And I discovered Cask Beer and I was like, this is what I've been looking for this entire time. I've been struggling to drink fosters for one pound 20 or whatever in the Student Union. Actually, what I really wanted was, it was Enville Ale.

It was fantastic, I loved it. And yeah, and I joined and then I, so I did that and then a couple of weeks later, couple of months later, I went to a Burton Beer Festival and joined CAMRA. I thought, you know what, these are the chaps and ladies who seem to get it. And I frankly just wanted to give them bit of money and hope they did all the good work they did. And then for a few years, I was a little bit scared of getting involved. I kept getting emails and I'll come on to a branch meeting and get involved. And I thought it was going to be a room full of...

proper beer experts, and here's me in my early 20s, just knew that I liked drinking beer, going to pubs, and I thought, no, no, this isn't for me. It took a little while to go and then actually discovered, in the nicest possible way, it is just like-minded people. There people who love beer. You get a whole range of people. get people who are absolute experts, I will never claim to be. I've been on plenty of brewery tours, but unfortunately it kind goes in one ear and out the other. What I like about beer is the glass and...

putting it to my mouth, that's the hang-eye side of beer I most enjoy. But we have people, know, they know all about the science of it and they can talk about the millions of parts of yeast and what makes this and that and all that sort of thing. You've got people who are pub experts and they can tell you all about the planning regulations and they're really passionate about changing legislation to support pubs and everything in between and probably a wide range of people are just passionate beer drinkers and pub goers and want to learn a bit more of that. And so, yeah, I think what we're trying to do is position ourselves as

that organisation you can go to to learn more, to get involved more. There's always a fight. You know, we talked earlier about access to market. The other one is just talk about planning legislation, which is not great in some parts of the country still in Wales. The planning legislation is not as strong as it is in England and actually they're losing so many more pubs

Or you've got, for example, in Northern Ireland where the surrender principle means actually opening a new venue is so incredibly hard, it's a closed shop. So there is always something somewhere in the country to fight about and that's what we're ourselves as the people that will give you the time, the resource to do it. And with our learning discovery platforms and all the of passionate volunteers we've got that we're also the organization that if you just want to learn more, you can come and get involved and then hopefully make a difference.

Martin (22:11)
Yeah.

Yeah, definitely.

If CAMRA had a Tinder profile, would Gen Z swipe to the right? Is it attractive enough to younger drinkers or do we have to wait for them to grow another 10 years, 10 years older?

Ash Corbett-Collins (22:43)
I'm going to be brutally

honest and say, no, they would not swipe right. And I don't think, as said, do you wait a bit? I don't think that's the biggest problem in the world. One of the questions I always get as being a younger member of CAMRA is, oh, how do we get young members? How do we get these 18 to 20 year olds that are all doing X and Y and Z? And I don't think actually getting 18, 25 year olds is a silver bullet. When CAMRA started, most of our membership was in their 20s and 30s. It was people my sort of age who were passionate.

and then they've grown up with CAMRA. So the members we still have are, you know, 60s and 70s years old is because they joined when they were 25. But the world has changed. I think it's really hard to get young people to be passionate about an organization like CAMRA because what we really focus on is locality and community. you know people love the pub because it's their local. And when you are in your, you know, your twenties, unfortunately the way the world is now, you don't really get to set roots. You know, people...

Renting and have to move house every twelve months they don't have a job that's maybe secure so they're changing job but they've not settled their career yet so just the way their life works isn't conducive with becoming part of an organization that is all I to campaign for pubs in Birmingham City Center because they might not live in Birmingham City Center in twelve months time so they're not going to get involved in that and that's just something we have to accept we can't change that world so I don't think we're get a huge amount of that and I think as well the way CAMRA is we're probably not

the organization you want to join when you're in your 20s. We do have thousands of members who are under 30 years old and it's fantastic. We've got some really good young members which hopefully doesn't come across as patronizing because I don't want them to feel they're a separate part of organization but there are councillors who are 18 to 30 who are a young member and they just had a big get-together in Blackpool. Young members from around the country came up to Blackpool and they had a big day out and I they do other stuff around the country but I think that's more the exception than the rule.

Most of our membership and where we're targeting is people when they get into their 30s and 40s, ⁓ maybe have settled down, bought their first house, hopefully, if they can afford it in this economy. Careers are settled. Maybe they've had children who are starting to get a little bit older, so they've got some spare time. And frankly, they've got a little bit of spare money to get involved in doing this sort of organization. Buying pints isn't free. We support pubs by going and buying pints when we have our meetings. So that is the sort of cohort where people say, you know what?

I want something to do with my Tuesday evenings, my Wednesday evenings, and then get out and get involved. So 30s to 40s I think is the first cohort we're aiming for. And then actually there's another cohort of people who of 50, 60, 70 years old who either their careers are very, very settled or they're thinking about retirement and they want to use that experience they've had over their careers and how they give back. have tons of people who have had really high up jobs. It always surprises me.

And then I think the other, there's another cohort right at the end, which I think for a few years, we were a little bit ashamed about, or people tried to shame us where they said, oh, it's just an old man's drinking club, Camrys. You know, they just get together and have a beer and it's just old men. And I think, yes, frankly, I'm not ashamed of that. I'm actually really proud that Camrys, an organization.

is there for people who, know, in the later years of their life and maybe, you know, they've retired, they don't have work friends as much anymore, or unfortunately, maybe a spouse has passed away or their friends, you know, sort of stripped away or unfortunately passed on and CAMRA provide that space for them

Martin (25:57)
Yeah, it becomes It becomes like

a community for them people who are retired and decide, I want to keep on a hobby still, enjoy drinking beer. And it gets them out of the house and interacting with people still. And yeah, it becomes a community, which is great. On regards to the younger people, you said obviously,

they're not staying in one place for too long. So they're not really going to be getting involved with supporting local pubs, et cetera, et cetera. Could we kind of get them to be more focused on supporting independent breweries as a whole ⁓ and, and Indie beer as a whole, ⁓ instead of just a certain area.

Ash Corbett-Collins (26:35)
I think so. think where we come in is we're probably pushing to say, actually, the pub is still a place to socialise. think there is. And so my wife's siblings are range from about 18 through to 30, once just in their first year of finishing at university. And they're not pub goers. And I think it's because they don't see the pub as a place for them. And so, I think CAMRA's role is to say, actually, the pub is a place for all people, all ages, and you can go and socialise in there. And then, yeah, and

weird and wonderful beers that you can get, know, push to get more access to market for good quality local beers. Hopefully we can get them excited and say, I want to go try some different beers and hang out in the pub and socialise that way. So hopefully in 10, 15 years time, when they've been drinking all this beer, they go, I'm going to join CAMRA because it's fantastic. And they've been pushing this a long time. And I've seen the awards on the wall at the pub and I've seen them pushing these independent breweries and giving them awards on their pump clips and things like that. CAMRA clearly is the organization for me, but

Yeah, the other one is we've really got to push. It's the price, it's the cost. I think young people, you know every generation when you're your 20s and stuff like that, you have to think about where you're spending the money, as people of all ages do, but particularly when you're younger, your pounds don't stretch as far. So you've got to think about that. And so, you know, this is where our campaigning comes in to say, actually that careful balance of how do we make sure that beer is affordable?

but also that publicans and brewers are making enough from it to be able to live and find that balance. Because if I get why beer is more expensive and no one in CAMRA is trying to argue that brewers shouldn't be able to make a living or publicans shouldn't be able to make a living, but there is the whole, you know, the duty, your business rates, as we talked about, national insurance, all these different other factors that then add on top of just the price of making the beer and making a profit that are making pints unaffordable. And so, yeah, younger people are just not seeing that as a viable option.

Martin (28:21)
So yeah, so the folks for folks that, you know, watching who haven't joined CAMRA yet, give us your best Dragon's Den pitch and, and tell them, explain to them why they should be joining CAMRA.

Ash Corbett-Collins (28:31)
think people should be joining CAMRA if you are anywhere from passionate to just interested in pubs and breweries and how this is all made and how we support them because as I said it is a massive broad church 140,000 like-minded people who have all these different passions you know not everyone shares all the same passions but there is something for everyone cider, Perry, you know real ale, pubs, clubs all this sort of thing and as an organization it is the

best opportunity to get more involved in that. I've always myself been a pub goer, but I'm now much more, my social life is around CAMRA. I've got friends that I would have never have met otherwise, being involved in CAMRA. It gives me opportunity to go around the whole country, getting involved, being a volunteer at every level means you can do pub judging for awards or beer judging for awards and you get all these weird and wonderful places. I've been to all four corners of the country. I've been to...

wonderful pubs around the country that I would again would never have had an opportunity to get to otherwise or even thought of going to. And I think, you know, it's something that once you're involved in, it's, you know, it's an organization you're in for life. Like these are people I'm going to know for the rest of my life. These are publicans I've met and brewers I've met I'm going to know for the rest of my life. can ring someone on the other side of the country and they'll go, oh, hey, you know, how are things. And, you know, it's such a big social network and a learning opportunity and a campaigning opportunity that it's.

It's incredibly exciting and it is as well, you get what you put into it. It's an opportunity that you can just pay your subs and hope someone else does some campaigning. We've got plenty of members who do that and it's great because that is what bankrolls all the other work. But for the people who get involved, we will never stop people trying to get involved. we love it. It's the only organization where frankly I was given the ability to almost run a communications ⁓ committee and department of a business.

in my 20s, which has been fantastic for my career. But, you know, I've been able to put that on my CV and no other business gives you that. he says, oh yeah, great. What are your ideas for how we contact 140,000 people? We'd love you to take a project and lead that. Like it is, you know, we're an open book, we're an open organization. We'll happily let people grab whatever they want and really get involved in the organization, which I think is fantastic.

Martin (30:40)
Yeah, that's brilliant ⁓

So any any final words to our watchers, listeners ⁓ about CAMRA? Anything you want to add on to what we've been talking about today?

Ash Corbett-Collins (30:55)
join. Join now because the subs are going up in July so you're never going to get a better price than if you join today. If something has been on your mind, really want people to go on the website, have a look. We've got a database of every pub in the country, we've got all our educational materials on there, we've got campaigning tools. Just go on the website, have a look. If it's the organisation that you think that's something for them, then yeah.

Martin (31:01)
They get a free point.

Ash Corbett-Collins (31:20)
just to join and get involved. And if people are members but have been apprehensive as I was to get involved, because think, oh, know, it's a bit of a closed shop but, you know, I'm not quite part of that team. Just go on to the local meeting and get involved. The amount of people I've met who said, you know, they spent years not going because they thought CAMRA was one thing, went to a local meeting, were welcomed with kind of open arms, and now they're running the local beer festival. It's so many people. So yeah, join up, get involved, because we want

to help utilise all these people. We're 140,000 members so far, if another 5,000 passionate beer lovers joined and became members and volunteers, that's going to strengthen us so much more. We'll put all our power behind you to go and campaign to make a difference.

Martin (32:04)
Brilliant. Ash, it's been absolutely amazing to talk to you. Yeah, thanks for coming on the show. No worries. Our next episode, we'll be chatting with Danny from Beak. That had to be rescheduled. It was supposed to be this week, but is now next week. So yeah, until then, we'll catch you then. Catch you later. Bye bye.

Ash Corbett-Collins (32:10)
Yeah, thanks for having me.