The 'Cyclops' generic real ale campaign is an initiative that has been created to help and educate pub goers that are interested in giving real ale a try for the very first time, or have only tried a few pints and want to find out more!
Real ale can be a complicated subject as a lot of craft goes in to the brewing of our national alcoholic drink. Some beer experts in the past have used very 'flowery' language to describe a beer and some consumers have found this hard to understand.
The new 'Cyclops' campaign has been designed to inform new real ale drinkers of what style of beer they are drinking, what its alcohol content is, what the beer should look like, what it should smell like and of course, what it should taste like using very simple but informative language.
CAMRA and 14 real ale brewers launched this campaign in August 2006 at the Great British Beer Festival to help more people understand what different real ales taste like. There are over 2,500 different real ale being brewed in Britain by over 600 breweries. Nobody can know what they all taste like and this campaign will inform consumers of what the beer is like on beer mats, posters and other point of sale material. The imagery will also be placed on the back of beer pumps to educate pub staff and hopefully this will encourage more people to try real ale and understand why thousands of people are so passionate about the best style of drink in the world!
Below is a sample of the Cyclops notes. These are from the Everards Brewery in Leicester as there are no local brewerys Yet in the scheme. But as soon as a local brewery does, these will change.
Just click on any of the above images to see the larger picture.
CAMRA only supports the Cyclops scheme for draught and bottled-conditioned real ales. The scheme also covers keg products.
