Eighteen Staffordshire pubs have become new entries in CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide, with 88 venues across the county making the 2027 edition.
The Good Beer Guide 2027 has been launched featuring 4,500 pubs – including 812 new entries – and 5,000 beers.
The Guide is described as being ’the definitive guidebook to pubs that serve great cask beer across the UK.’ It uses an independent, volunteer-led selection process that has made it the authoritative and trusted voice of cask beer drinkers.
Among the new pubs featured in Staffordshire are The Cobblers in Leek, The Arnold Machin in Newcastle-under-Lyme and The Bridge Tavern in Lichfield, with the latter reopening in 2025 after an extensive refurbishment.
Three new pubs in Burton also make the list – micropub the Arches, Burton Bridge Inn, described as being a ‘cosy 17th-century pub’ and the Dog Inn, which is praised for its impressive range of cask ales.
CAMRA also complimented the Black Lion pub in Cheddleton, a family-run, multi award-winning free house which has been the local CAMRA Pub of the Year four times.
And the ever-successful Tamworth Tap – CAMRA’s only three-times winner of National Pub of the Year and a finalist in the 2026 competition – also makes an appearance as one of four Tamworth-listed pubs.
Stoke-on-Trent has 10 pubs featured in the Guide including Unicorn Inn in Hanley, and The Greyhound in Hartshill.
Twenty-five Staffordshire real ale breweries also get a mention in the Guide.
CAMRA has used the launch of the Guide to renew calls for a formal competition investigation into the global brewers that dominate the UK beer market, continuing their quest to get independently brewed beers on as many bars as possible.
This year, data from the Guide shows 137 breweries have closed, and only 57 new breweries have opened.
CAMRA Chairman Ash Corbett-Collins said: “The Good Beer Guide is fiercely independent, just like the brewers making the best beer. It is the result of the time and effort of our volunteers across the UK to find the pubs serving the best kept cask beer.
“This year, we released our flagship report, ‘Beer in the UK‘, alongside our campaign to expose how ‘Big Beer’ is dominating the UK beer market, and how ordinary drinkers and independent brewers lose out as a result. Because of that, we need the Competition and Markets Authority to start a formal investigation of the UK on-trade beer market.”
The Guide can be purchased for £15.99 from CAMRA’s website here.
