The average beer drinker in the U.K. is doing just that, drinking average beer. Like our very own Homer Simpson, the English are lapping up flavorless macro-lagers faster than a fleet of Chevy Suburbans drinking petrol. Cyclops is the latest marketing and information campaign set on an odyssey to reverse this trend.

The British Isles have a proud beer history, known for originating many styles of ale that we drink today. Bitter, pale ale, porter and stout are just a few great British styles brewed around the world and which have always been brewed best in the Isles. Traditionally, these ales are served at cellar temperatures from barrels. The beer is lightly carbonated and is dispensed either by gravity or pumped up from the cellar by hand. Brits and beer geeks refer to this beer as “Real Ale.”

Marketing is a powerful thing. Over the years, large Euro-brewers like Heineken and Interbrew (now Inbev), along with many British brewers have slowly and methodically convinced the British beer drinker that “flavorless yellow fizzy beer” is good. In recent years even our very own Bud and Bud Light have become standards in the typical London pub. The reasons why this is so are too numerous to cover in this article.

In the 1970’s, a group of British beer traditionalists formed a consumer organization called “The Campaign for Real Ale” or CAMRA for short. I’d liken them to The NRA of beer. They were able to influence legislation that stemmed the tide of large breweries being able to monopolize the pub industry, thus preserving the real ale tradition. Most folks in the U.K over age 35 have probably heard of CAMRA. They are known well enough to have had a song written about them (taking the piss out of them) called “CAMRA Man”.

In the past, the threat to real ale was supply based. Today, its demand based. The demand of course, is being bolstered by relentless marketing; No crime here. CAMRA has turned to crafty marketing, as well. Along with leading real ale brewers, the group has developed a communications campaign called Cyclops that is set to de-mystify real ale. A very simple standardized set of descriptors make it easy for the consumer to choose ale that they would most likely enjoy. CAMRA has become the trusted third party.

CAMRA work with the brewer to classify the beer to Cyclops guidelines. Otherwise, all of the brewers would all claim their beers to be smooth, well balanced Zythos, nectar of the Gods! So far, only 14 out of the 600 or so, real ale breweries in the U.K. have signed on to the program. 25 more are slated to participate in the coming months.

I have included an actual Cyclops rating chart (printed on a coaster– click it to enlarge) from Everards Brewery. Although simplistic, it does seem like it would even help Homer Simpson make an informed choice. I wonder if there’s room in Moe’s cellar to put a few firkins?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 23rd, 2007 at 10:02 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.