Wharfedale breweries are helping to boost a boom in British beer production.

West Yorkshire has been named top in a league table of counties by CAMRA, with 43 companies making a total of 276 beers – nearly 30 more than second-place Derbyshire.

The statistics have been gathered for the Good Beer Guide 2012 and show that more than 5,500 beers are now in regular production in Britain.

The increase includes young firms such as the award-winning Ilkley Brewery Company and WharfeBank Brewery, which was set up just 15 months ago.

Chris Ives, joint owner of Ilkley Brewery, said competition was tight but that it was all good news for microbreweries.

“It’s not unexpected as we have seen growth in our sales and smaller breweries in Yorkshire and the north of England are having great success,” he said. “People want to try handmade real ale full of flavour.

“Of course the pub trade is seeing a bit of a down-turn but the sale of real ale by microbreweries is continuing to grow, so we are bucking a national trend.”

Martin Kellaway, managing director of WharfeBank Brewery, said consumers wanted products that were locally sourced and they were creating innovative beers people could really savour. Smaller breweries had also been helped by a progressive beer duty as they could not enjoy economies of scale, he added.

“Tetleys could make more in a day than we could brew in a year,” he said. “We are all relatively small and people just can’t grasp the scale.

“We are very pleased with how things are going but we are in it for the long-haul and want to be a successful business, grow steadily and keep five or six people in employment.

“Every single person that works here is absolutely passionate without a doubt.”

Guide editor Roger Protz said Yorkshire now had six times more brewers in the region than when the publication was first produced in the 1970s.

“Not only are there an exploding number of breweries operating in Britain, but also the quality of real ale has never been better,” he said. “Speciality brewers are using the finest raw materials – malt and hops – to make their ales.”