That crisp Spanish lager you’re drinking might have travelled considerably less distance than you did to get to the pub. In fact, there’s a good chance it was brewed in Yorkshire, Manchester, Northampton or South Wales.
That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But a growing number of beer campaigners are asking a more interesting question: should drinkers be told more clearly what they are actually buying?
When a world lager is surprisingly local
Walk up to almost any UK bar and you’ll see a line-up that looks impressively international.
Belgian lager. Italian lager. Spanish cerveza. French bière. Mexican beer.
The branding often transports us somewhere warmer, more glamorous or simply a little further from home. And there’s nothing particularly unusual about that. Beer brands have always sold stories as well as drinks.
The surprise comes when you look at where some of those beers are actually made.
CAMRA's Beer in the UK consumer report, published in July 2026, drew attention to the number of apparently continental or international lagers sold in Britain that are in fact brewed here. CAMRA describes many of the UK's big-name "foreign" lagers as being produced domestically rather than imported.
Among the examples highlighted by CAMRA are:
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Stella Artois, associated firmly with Belgium but brewed for the UK market in Magor, South Wales.
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Birra Moretti, whose Italian identity stretches back to Udine in 1859, but which is brewed in the UK by Heineken, including at its Manchester brewery.
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Kronenbourg 1664, the unmistakably French-branded lager brewed in Northampton.
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Cruzcampo, the Spanish beer brewed by Heineken in Manchester.
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Sol, the Mexican brand whose UK product is labelled as brewed in Britain.
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Other brands highlighted in the debate include San Miguel, Cobra and Kingfisher.
Then there is perhaps the best-known example of all: Madrí Excepcional.
Madrí: Madrid by way of Tadcaster
Few beer brands have embraced their geographical personality quite as enthusiastically as Madrí.
Its website describes the beer using the phrase "El Alma de Madrid" – "The Soul of Madrid", complete with the red Madrí branding and its distinctive Chulapo character inspired by Madrid culture.
The same website also states that the beer is "Brewed in UK".
For British drinkers, Madrí Excepcional is brewed by Molson Coors, with Tadcaster in North Yorkshire among the sites producing the brand. Molson Coors itself lists Madrí alongside Carling, Coors and other beers brewed at its Tadcaster brewery.
There is, however, a genuine Spanish connection.
Madrí was developed as a collaboration between Molson Coors and the brewers of La Sagra, a brewery based near Madrid. Molson Coors describes it as a modern European lager created through that partnership rather than simply claiming it is a beer imported directly from Spain.
So is Madrí Spanish? British? Both?
That depends on whether we're talking about inspiration, brand identity, recipe, ownership or where the liquid in your pint was physically brewed.
And that ambiguity sits right at the heart of the current debate.
CAMRA's argument: tell drinkers what they're buying
CAMRA's objection isn't simply that international beer brands are being brewed in Britain.
Brewing under licence or producing a global brand in different countries isn't unusual. It happens across the food and drink industry.
The concern is transparency.
If a beer's name, advertising, imagery and story strongly suggest one country, while the product itself has been brewed somewhere else, CAMRA believes drinkers should be able to discover that easily.
Its 2026 Beer in the UK report goes much further than the lager issue. It also argues that Britain's beer market has become heavily concentrated: CAMRA says four foreign-owned corporations now produce around 80% of UK beer and that seven of the ten biggest-selling beers marketed as "craft" are produced by major global brewing groups.
Its recommendations include greater visibility over where beer is brewed, clearer information about brand ownership and a Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) investigation into the UK beer market.
CAMRA's public call for a CMA market investigation was formally issued on 6 July 2026, arguing that the current structure limits opportunities for smaller independent breweries and ultimately reduces consumer choice.
At its simplest, the principle is difficult to argue with.
If your beer is brewed in Yorkshire, why shouldn't the tap tell you?
You may still choose exactly the same pint. But you would be choosing it with better information.
But brewing those beers in Britain has real benefits
There is an important other side to this conversation.
It would be very easy to reduce the argument to: big foreign brewer = bad, small British brewer = good. The reality is more complicated.
If millions of pints consumed in Britain are going to be sold anyway, having them brewed here rather than shipping every bottle, can or keg from another country supports British manufacturing.
Those breweries employ real people.
Molson Coors says its UK and Ireland operations employ around 2,000 people. Its Tadcaster brewery alone lists around 100 employees, while its much larger Burton brewery employs around 550 people.
These aren't simply anonymous production lines either. They are often breweries with deep roots in Britain's brewing history.
Heineken's Manchester brewery, for example, celebrated 150 years of brewing in 2025. It now produces millions of pints each day, including Birra Moretti, Cruzcampo, Foster's, Heineken and Red Stripe.
There is investment involved too.
Molson Coors announced a £10 million investment in its Tadcaster brewery to increase capacity, improve efficiency and reduce emissions. More recently, it has been carrying out a much wider £100 million programme to modernise its UK production network.
Heineken has similarly invested in major energy-efficiency improvements at its Manchester brewery, including a heat-pump network designed to reduce reliance on natural gas.
And the wider beer and pub economy is substantial. It is estimated that Britain's beer and pub sector supports more than one million jobs across brewing, pubs and the wider supply chain.
There is therefore nothing inherently undesirable about a lager with Italian, Belgian or Spanish origins being brewed in Britain.
Quite the opposite.
The question is whether British production should be something to hide behind Mediterranean imagery – or something to be proud of alongside it.
Perhaps "Brewed in Britain" should be a selling point
There is an odd contradiction here.
At a time when consumers are regularly encouraged to buy British, support manufacturing jobs and choose locally produced goods, some enormously successful beer brands appear happier emphasising Milan, Madrid or Mexico than Manchester or Tadcaster.
Perhaps there is another way.
Imagine ordering a pint and seeing:
Inspired by Madrid. Brewed in Yorkshire.
Or:
Italian heritage. Brewed in Manchester.
Neither statement destroys the brand story. Arguably, it makes it more interesting.
Today's drinkers are used to complicated global supply chains. Chocolate brands aren't necessarily made in Switzerland. Cars associated with Germany might be assembled in Britain. Fashion brands manufacture products all over the world.
People don't necessarily object to that.
What tends to cause frustration is discovering that the story they thought they were buying wasn't quite the whole story.
Then there's another question: who actually owns your beer?
Where a beer is brewed is only part of the transparency debate.
There is another increasingly important question:
Who owns the brewery?
That's where SIBA's Indie Beer campaign comes in.
Launched by the Society of Independent Brewers and Associates in October 2024, Indie Beer gives qualifying independent brewers a recognisable mark that can appear on cans, bottles and pump clips.
Drinkers can also use the campaign's online Brewery Checker to find out whether a brewery is genuinely independent or owned by a larger global company.
Why does that matter?
Because a brewery's branding can survive long after its ownership changes.
Beavertown, Camden Town and Fuller's all retain distinctive identities and heritage, but are now connected to Heineken, AB InBev and Asahi respectively.
Research commissioned for the Indie Beer campaign found that when people were told formerly independent breweries were now owned by global companies, 75% believed consumers were being misled, rising to 81% among beer drinkers surveyed.
The idea isn't necessarily that beer made by a multinational brewer is poor beer.
It is simply that if someone actively wants to spend their money with an independent brewery, they should be able to tell the difference.
Interestingly, the two campaigns have increasingly converged.
CAMRA supported the Indie Beer initiative when it launched in 2024 and strengthened that relationship in January 2026 by incorporating Indie Beer information more prominently into its own brewery and pub searches.
SIBA, in turn, publicly backed CAMRA's Beer in the UK report in July 2026, supporting its calls for greater choice and transparency over brewery ownership.
Independent brewing is about choice, not telling people what to drink
This is perhaps the most important point: transparency shouldn't be about telling someone that their favourite pint is somehow wrong.
Like Madrí? Drink Madrí.
Love Moretti? Enjoy it.
Want a pint of Stella every Friday evening because it's been your usual for twenty years? Nobody needs to confiscate the glass.
The argument being made by CAMRA and SIBA is really about giving the drinker enough information to decide. Someone might actively prefer a beer brewed in Britain because they want to support UK manufacturing, while another person may specifically want a genuinely imported Belgian lager. Someone else might want their money to support an independently owned local brewery; and plenty of people will simply choose whichever beer they enjoy most.
All of those are perfectly reasonable decisions.
But meaningful choice depends on knowing what the choices actually are.
So what should we look for at the bar?
You don't need to turn ordering a pint into a research project.
But if provenance matters to you, a few seconds of curiosity can be revealing. Look at the smaller print on bottles and cans. Check where the beer says it was brewed rather than relying solely on the imagery on the front.
If independence matters to you, look for the Indie Beer mark or use SIBA's Brewery Checker. And don't be afraid to ask your pub what local or independently brewed beer it has available.
You might discover something brilliant.
Better information makes beer more interesting
The debate over Britain's "foreign" lagers doesn't need to become an argument over whether Madrí is really Spanish enough or whether an Italian lager brewed in Manchester somehow becomes less enjoyable.
Britain should be proud that we still have major breweries capable of producing beer on an enormous scale. Those breweries create jobs, invest in equipment, support supply chains and maintain brewing traditions in places including Manchester, Tadcaster, Burton and Magor.
At the same time, drinkers deserve a clear picture of the beer in front of them: where it was brewed, who brewed it and who ultimately owns the brand.
And alongside those global brands sits another extraordinary part of British brewing: hundreds of smaller independent breweries producing beers whose identity really is rooted in the communities where they're made.
There's room at the bar for all of them. We'd simply rather know who's pouring what.
So next time you're choosing a pint, think about what matters most to you: where the beer was inspired, where it was brewed, who owns the brewery – or simply how good it tastes?
