CAMRA launches the Good Beer Guide 2027

CAMRA has published the 2027 Good Beer Guide, while renewing calls for a formal competition investigation into the global brewers that dominate the UK beer market, and continuing their quest to get independently brewed beers on as many bars as possible.

The Guide, seen as a definitive guidebook to outlets that serve great cask beer across the UK, uses an independent, volunteer-led selection process to make it an authoritative, trusted voice of cask beer drinkers. It features 4,500 pubs, clubs and real ale outlets, 1,700 brewers and 5,000 beers.

This year, data from the Guide shows:

137 breweries have closed, with 57 new breweries opening
There are 812 new entries in the 2027 Guide.

 Ash Corbett-Collins, CAMRA Chairman, said: “The Good Beer Guide is fiercely independent, just like the brewers making the best beer. It is the result of the time and effort of our volunteers across the UK to find the pubs serving the best kept cask beer.

“This year, we released our flagship report, ‘Beer in the UK', alongside our campaign to expose how ‘Big Beer’ is dominating the UK beer market, and how ordinary drinkers and independent brewers lose out as a result. Because of that, we need the Competition and Markets Authority to start a formal investigation of the UK on-trade beer market. If you agree with us, please join CAMRA, buy the Guide, and find amazing independently brewed beers for yourself.”

Sir Ian Rankin, writing in the foreword of the Guide, said: “What makes the perfect pub?  Ask fifty people and you might get fifty different answers… My preferences might not be yours, but there are a few things we can probably agree on. We want the beer to be good and the welcome to be friendly. We want to see signs that the bar represents the best of its community or neighbourhood. We want to feel like we fit in.”