You have to queue for half an hour: OK, this is Britain and you expect that. You expect to not have street entertainers or any razzamatazz take place unless you count drunks fighting and throwing up when it's over.
They charge you =A35 to sell you beer. OK, it's beer but if it isn't in a pub..... It might be real ale but it won't be what you are used to. (Unless you brew your own.)
Five quid -less a beer token and a glass that normally only a woman would use: They sell you a beer glass that holds half a pint and you get a token worth a quid. That's the entrance fee.
Real ale needs to be conditioned: It is kept in a cool cellar for a reason and has normally to be left on the stillage for as much as 3 days. Not in a beer dfestival hall. Those imitation beer tents are adverts for chemically settled keg lagers.
Real ale goes flat: There are rows of differet beers on offer. But you will be used to it coming out of the cellar with gas in it. Beer engines or not, you expect cool beer with an head.
You use the same glass for each sample: That's all they are, samples. Good job too as you can't just leave the glass to the barmaids and try something else, you have to hand the thing over to the barman and get him to tip it for you. He then sniffs the glass and wonders why you don't like it.
You don't know what you are drinking: But you have to get an half of it to find out. The problem is that though it qualifies as real ale, it isn't the stuff of your dreams back in the good old days. In the good old days, real ale was all they had and it came in proofs of 3.1 to 3.5. Nowadays even mild if you can find it (there were two on offer) is stronger than that.
CAMRA is not about culture: Unless you count yeast molds that is. They are just piss-ups geared to modern trends and have nothing to do with the way things were when you worked hard and drank hard. Today one shirks hard and drink hard stuff.
Well that's me shrieked out.
I wasted 5 quid and an hour of my time in which I paid for 1 1/2 pints. One glass I forced down my neck, one I gave back for ditching and one I drank half of before cutting my losses and heading home to spend a more profitable evening watching nothing on the TV.
I used to brew my own beer but gave it up as a bad job. I didn't expect to be reminded why in such a miserly way. I want to start a campaign for unreal ale. Only of course there is no need. Real men already drink it. That's why only ex-hippy types and hippie wannabies support CAMRA.
No one with any taste buys the stuff.
9: You get to keep the glass and it will remind you of a wasted evening the like of which you don't recall since the time you went to an accoustic only folk club and found it was held away from the bar, in a room unheated and devoid of tables.Imagine wasting two evenings in one lifetime drinking beer. You wouldn't think it possible, would you?