Welcome to the Furness Branch of CAMRA You can scroll text in each box if there is more than you can see! Cask Ale Week 2026 Cask Ale Week is upon us again - why not get down to your local and try out some of the excellent cask ales during this week. Be careful though to make sure that the ale you are drinking is live from a handpump and not 'Fresh Ale' which is not live but can be served though a 'pretend' handpump (see Handpump Hijack below). For example, The White Lion in Barrow has: 17th–21st September – a different cask ale reduced to £2.50 a pint each day Tuesday 22nd – Logan Beck Tap Takeover, with the handpulls dedicated to beers from our local brewery Friday 25th & Saturday 26th – our Mini Cask Ale Festival, with 9 different real ales to work your way through over the weekend Sunday 27th – we finish the week with a Real Ale themed Sunday Quiz at 5pm Others to look our for are: Broughton and Kirkby Festival of Beer (18th to 20th September) The Manor Arms Broughton Old Kings Head Broughton The Black Cock Broughton The Commercial Kirkby The Ship Kirkby Beer Scoring has changed! From June 1st 2026, how you score your beer for CAMRA has changed - gone are the half-scores and the old 0 to 5 (where 0 was 'No Real Ale'). Now, if a pub has no Cask Ale then there is a 'tick box' (not shown on this graphic) for that so if there is cask ale but it is poor then that is where the zero score is used now. There is a lot more information on CAMRA's website about beer scoring if you want to get the full picture but in the meantime, here is a simple chart for scorting. The Swan, Ulverston is Cumbria Pub of the Year! Previous and current winners of the Furness Pub of the Year, The Swan Ulverston has now become the Cumbria Pub of the Year 2026. PoTY winners from Furness, West Cumbria and Solway are judged to see which one will represent Cumbria in the next round on the way to the CAMRA national PoTY award later in the year. Competition is always strong so it is good to see The Swan coming out top this time. The presentation will be made sometime in June, more information once we have the details. Indie Beer CAMRA is supporting IndieBeer which is focussed on Independent Breweries rather than the global players. If you want to know if your beer is produced by an independent brewery rather than a Global Corporation then this is the site that you need. Find out if the beer you are drinking is produced by an Indie or not by going to their website on Indie Beer. Support your local independent breweries - we need them! Real Cider Producers CAMRA has a definition of what is real cider (you can find this and more information on the main CAMRA website - the link is at the bottom of our Cider and Perry Page) but as a helper, this is what we have as a list as of February 2025. Have a look and see if the cider in your pub conforms to the definition Real Cider Producers Feb 2025. Branch Presentations See the latest presentations for CAMRA awards for Furness pubs and breweries on the Presentations page. IMPORTANT - Handpump Hijack CAMRA has launched a campaign to raise awareness of Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company’s (CMBC) Fresh Ale concept, which sells keg versions of three of its cask beers through handpumps – long associated with real ales. We need all members to get involved in helping CAMRA with the campaign to identify pubs where this 'Fresh' ale fake handpump is used as it has a major impact on whether that pub can be considered for inclusion in the next Good Beer Guide, or even remain in the current Guide. 'Misleading Dispense' is one of the areas that CAMRA takes very seriously. To read more about this, visit CAMRA's dedicated page here
