"CAMRA officially breaks 140,000 members! 12.9% growth in the last year."
Tweet from @tonyjerome CAMRA's Head of Marketing.
It's seems that as many beer bloggers have predicted CAMRA is indeed in terminal decline.
No, hang on a minute that's not right. I mean CAMRA is bigger than it's ever been and is still growing.
Spoons tokens, discounts into pong festivals, opportunities for free grog and piss ups. CAMRA is great, everyone should join.
ReplyDeleteCAMRA are still next to useless unless they can harness the power of those 140,000 people though. If they can't managed to get the 100,000 signatures on the Beer Duty Escalator petition, then they need to have a long hard look at themselves.
ReplyDeleteThey're certainly putting effort into it, for all the good petitions do. But Cooking Lager has got a point, I suspect most members aren't really into the political campaigning side.
Deleteanother 30,000 odd have signed since CAMRA put its weight behind it, and I understand the petition is to be the front page story on the next issue of What's Brewing.
DeleteHa. Yeah, we noticed that. We're still concerned about its long-term future, but maybe we're wrong and there are more single-minded young casketeers out there than we've appreciated.
ReplyDeleteThough, thinking about it, and attractive membership package and a general positive buzz about beer at the moment is probably behind it. Good news, anyway... I think.
ReplyDeleteIn what world would it be bad news? Actually that's an interesting question - what would the beer landscape have to look like in order for a growth in CAMRA membership to be a bad sign? Hmmmm.
DeleteI heard another ripple of excitement around the Hobgoblin at my local the other night; somebody overheard the barmaid mentioning it and reacted as if Courage Imperial Russian Stout had just come back on ("you've got Hobgoblin? I didn't realise - I'll have a pint of that next time!"). This, in a pub that almost always has Landlord and usually has something pale and interesting as well. I wonder if the growth of 'craft' is actually a side-effect of a much bigger move towards interesting beer, some of which - or rather, in volume terms, most of which - isn't all that challenging; you can visualise 'craft' as the long thin right tail of a right-skewed distribution.
Yes, I tend to think in terms of bell curves, must be my biologist background. I suspect most beer geeks are a couple of standard deviations from the mean.
ReplyDelete