Who are Trafford & Hulme CAMRA?

The Campaign for Real Ale - popularly known as CAMRA - was founded in 1971 as a consumer movement to protect Britain's brewing heritage. At the time, brewery takeovers and closures were commonplace and traditional British beer was on its way out. As the giant breweries were closing down small producers across the country, choice was diminishing and, in place of beers brewed for local palates, nationally advertised keg beers were finding their way on to the bar.

Unlike traditional beer (or real ale, as CAMRA christened it), keg beer at the time was a dead product, filtered and pasteurised to remove all life-giving yeast. While much "mass market" keg beer of today is similar in nature to those that CAMRA's founders were fighting against, thankfully the new millenium has seen a new breed of brewers who produce cask conditioned beers but also brew keg beers designed to be served colder and with higher carbonation but while retaining live yeast in the keg for more flavour.

Continuous fermentation, or cask conditioning, creates its own effervescence as well as a good, fresh taste. Producing cask ale takes skill and craftsmanship, which is reflected in the products of many of our local traditional breweries. Looking after cask ale in a pub cellar is an equally important skill - otherwise, the fine beer that leaves the brewery gate can be an insipid disappointment when it arrives in your glass.

CAMRA campaigns to promote the use of the nations pubs, whether they be traditional ones with one or two well kept cask ales or modern café-bars and bistros that offer choice of cask or keg-conditioned beers with a wide range of innovative beers. To keep on spreading the word, CAMRA needs new members. If you enjoy beer and you want others to enjoy it too - join us!

There are several active CAMRA branches in Greater Manchester. Trafford & Hulme branch was formed back in October 1977. It covers the whole of the Borough of Trafford - that's places like Altrincham, Sale, Stretford and Urmston - plus Hulme in Manchester (west of Princess Road and South or the M57 Mancunian Way), Chorlton-cum-Hardy & Whalley Range and some bits of north east Cheshire. Early on in its history the Branch also took on responsibility for part of Manchester city centre but in 2016 this passed to new Central Manchester Branch. See our "Branch Area" section for more details of the area we cover.

The Trafford & Hulme Branch is one of the Campaign's larger branches with over 800 members (November 2023). We have regular monthly meetings on the first Tuesday or first Thursday of the month plus a varied programme of social events (basically variations on a theme of pub crawling). Please see Branch Diary for a full list of all our forthcoming events.