Sadly, there's no such thing as an on-line Good Beer Guide - yet. In the meantime, here's the next best thing.
This is just a list of links to other folks' sites. It came about after some discussion in the uk.food+drink.real-ale newsgroup. Most of us rely on guide books like CAMRA's Good Beer Guide to help us find decent beer and decent pubs around the country, but it takes a long time to compile and publish printed guide books. Their information is usually six months old before the book reaches the shops. Each edition is supposedly valid for a year, so the information can be 18 months old before it's updated. One alternative would be an on-line GBG but that doesn't exist yet. On the other hand, many CAMRA branches, and some individual members and non-members of the Campaign for Real Ale, produce and update their own local Guides. This page is to help you find them on the Web.
Meanwhile, CAMRA has launched an amendments page for the GBG, where you can at least find details of corrections and deletions for the current (2005) Good Beer Guide.
Suggestions for new entries to this list are welcome, but please note that it is primarily about finding real ale - Britain's traditional beer. Food, music, the quality of the darts players and the charms of the barmaids are all secondary considerations. You'll find a definition of real ale on the Ask if it's Cask website.
Bedfordshire
Berkshire
Buckinghamshire (but not
many)
Cambridge
Chelmsford
Crawley
Didcot and surrounding villages
Doncaster
East London
Essex
Exeter
Glamorgan
Gloucestershire (a very detailed list by the local CAMRA branch)
Greater Manchester
Gwent
Hertfordshire (but not many)
Horsham, West Sussex
Hull
Ipswich.
North Lancashire and Lunesdale
Leicester, or if you prefer, Leicester
For Leicestershire, go to Rugby CAMRA and navigate through the mysteries of Macromedia to "GBG Tasters"
Liverpool,
or alternatively, Liverpool
Llantrisant
London,
or alternatively, London
plus a very old one, London, oh, and yet another one, London
East London
North London
Manchester and, to a limited extent, Manchester
Marple
Merseyside
Downloadable guide to Newark
Newcastle-on-Tyne
Newcastle-under-Lyme
For Northamptonshire, go to Rugby CAMRA and navigate through the mysteries of Macromedia to "GBG Tasters"
North London
Stockport
Sussex, or alternatively, Sussex
Warwickshire, or alternatively, Rugby CAMRA and navigate through the mysteries of Macromedia to "GBG Tasters"
West Midlands (guides to pubs along major bus routes - a CAMRA/Travel West Midlands co-production)
West Midlands Country Pubs (focus on pub food)
Wharfedale
(well, Upper Wharfedale actually, in Yorkshire - Grassington, Kettlewell,
Cray, places like that)
the Wirral or the Wirral
York
The following are not local guides but you may find them helpful.
Pub Search, a demonstration page for Microsoft MapPoint. It searches the pubs recommended by the Good Pub Guide (not to be confused with CAMRA's Good Beer Guide) and also those pubs suggested by its readers. There is also a search facility run by the GPG itself.
The Real Ale And A Bed site includes a search facility. Graham Mason runs a Beer Festival site, as do the people at Onlyfinebeer.
If you like German beer, check out The British Guide to German Beer. There's also a London Guide to Belgian Beer which has limited coverage of Belgian beer outlets beyond the metropolis.
All About Pubs is a very useful guide to the pub business, with an extensive search facility.
The Beer in the Evening site is a good database of pubs, easily searchable, with comments and ratings submitted by drinkers all over the country.
You can even browse the on-line version of the Good Pub Guide.
Finally, Craig Cockburn publishes a very useful list of Scottish pubs with smoke free areas.
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