Real Ale on Rise in UK

More real ales - 2,000 different ones
- are being brewed than at any time
since 1971, according to the
Campaign for Real Ale (Camra).
In the past year, about 80 new
breweries began producing real ale -
twice as many as in
the previous year.

Britain now has more small breweries
per head than any other country.
Each of about 500 "micro
breweries" across Britain produce up
to 30,000 barrels of real ale every
year. That means one out of every
five barrels of cask beer is now made
by micro breweries - up from 14%
in 2006. Real ale contains live yeast
and improves in the cellar.
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Hundreds of pubs are serving
real ale which is too warm to be
refreshing, an inspection has
revealed. The recommended
temperature for a hand-pulled pint is
from 11C to 13C but assessors
found 44% of pints bought in 2,000
UK pubs exceeded 13C.
Publicans in London, Essex,
Middlesex, Cambridgeshire and the
West Midlands all pulled pints
measuring between 25.9C and
28.1C, said Cask Marque.
Cheating Bartenders

After doing a three-year survey, the Campaign for Real Ale is calling for the
British government to require that a pint glass of beer be completely filled.
The survey showed that 26.6 percent of pints served in local pub
were under-filled by at least 5 percent!

CAMRA claims the missing beer costs patrons a total of about $957 million
each year and is now calling on the government to impose legislation requiring
licensees to serve full pints.CAMRA did 25 surveys between the 2004 and 2007
of different council areas before releasing their findings.
CAMRA Chief Executive Mike Benner called it a disgrace that up
to a quarter of all pints served in Britain are less than 95 percent liquid
when the consumer is paying for a full pint every time.

Studies in the US have shown that bartenders generally under-fill a pint by 4.5%
Sadly for American drinkers there is no CAMRA like organization to help
consumer to demand a full pint.
Feature News  from  beernexus.com
Ethanol Hurts Beer Drinkers

We witnessed the tens of thousands of demonstrators
decrying the rapidly (and exorbitantly) rising price of corn
in the "tortilla protests" in Mexico City earlier this year.
The protests came about as a result of the growing
demand for corn-based ethanol, the Bush administration's
biofuel of choice. But now there appears to be a new
dietary staple under threat from the rising demand for
ethanol: German beer.

Der Spiegel Online reports that a 2007 barley shortage
will raise the wholesale price of German beer beginning
this May. Many brewing industry lobbyists attribute the
price rise to farmers forgoing barley for corn in order to
satisfy the global demand for biofuels, especially from the
United States. In the past year, the price of barley has
doubled on the German market.

But it's not just Germany that is set to see soaring beer
prices. The chief executive of Heineken (the Dutch
brewer) warned in February that the expanding biofuel
sector was starting to cause a "structural shift" in
European and U.S. agricultural markets, which could
precipitate a long-term upward shift in the price of beer.
Already, futures prices for European malting barley have
risen since last May by 85 percent and barley production
in the United States has fallen to 180.05 million bushels to
the lowest level since 1936. Global stockpiles of barley
have shrunk by a third in the last two years. All of this
augurs ill for beer drinkers, who may soon be paying
significantly more for their pints.