The Cask Quandary

A real ale ad outside outside The Garrick Inn in Stratford-upon-Avon, England / Chris Hellier-Alamy Stock Photo

The classic English pour has certainly had its ups and downs, but with renewed respect and repositioning, the future of cask-conditioned “real ale” could be bright.

WORDS Stephen Beaumont

“Pint of bitter, please.”

It is possible there is no phrase in the English lexicon more utterly, unequivocally and iconically British, spoken by millions of pub-goers each and every day for decades. And judging by recent developments, it may also be among the most endangered.

Which is not to say that the beer known as bitter, best bitter or sometimes just best is in danger of vanishing, at least not as it is popularly styled today. But the archetypal British pint, drawn by handpump from the pub cellar or poured directly from a cask behind the bar, well, that might well be in peril.

Sales of cask-conditioned ale, as such beer is known, are down 25 percent since pre-pandemic levels notes Pete Brown, the prolific English drinks writer, consultant and nine-time author of the keynote industry Cask Report. “It’s also the only segment of the beer market that hasn’t returned to anything like 2019 sales,” he adds.

Cask has faced and overcome such a threat before. In the 1970s, the growing popularity of a new breed of keg ales like John Smith’s Yorkshire Bitter and Double Diamond Burton Pale Ale, coupled with the emergence of keg lagers, threatened to squeeze cask out of the market entirely. It was only through a convergence of factors, not least of which being the formation of the beer consumer group, the Campaign for Real Ale, or CAMRA, that cask not only survived, but was able to make a comeback.

A real ale / Adobe Stock

This time, however, cask’s plight is coupled with an overall decline in British pub culture that has seen more than 10,000 pubs close since 2006, according to the U.K.-based Institute of Economic Affairs. The reasons behind the closures are myriad—taxation, regulation and a general change in British drinking culture among them—but as cask ale is almost exclusively consumed in pubs, their effect on its sales has been significant.

Furthering the problem, according to Brown, is the rising popularity of pseudo-Mediterranean lager.

“It’s a subset of keg lager which originates or pretends to originate from Spain or Italy that is hoovering up demand from everywhere else, [reaching] one in five pints poured in pubs this year,” says Brown. Further, he points to research by the Scottish brewer Innis & Gunn which shows that British beer consumers are drawn by default to continental lagers, even if they have no idea where the beer originated or what it might taste like.

The irony of this rather remarkable trend away from British beer is that Great Britain possesses what is unarguably one of the greatest beer cultures on the planet, and at the very heart of that culture is cask.

THE ALLURE OF REAL ALE

While most popularly associated with best bitter, cask-conditioning does not denote a style of beer, but rather a method of fermentation and dispense in which the beer, typically an ale of three to five percent alcohol-by-volume (abv), will undergo its final fermentation with live yeast in the cask, ideally in the cellar of the pub where it will be poured. It is then served unfiltered and uncarbonated either via a handpump or directly from the cask rather than forced through the line by external gas, as is the case with conventional modern draught beer.

Also known as “real ale,” cask-conditioned ale is not, as per the oft-repeated myth, warm and flat, but rather should be served cool at about 50–55° Fahrenheit and possess a gentle effervescence.

“Historically, there was a period, from the emergence of mild ale in the early-to-mid-19th century to the modernisation of the industry in the 1960s, when the vast majority of beer brewed and drunk in Britain was cask ale,” says Des De Moor, author of CASK: The Real Story of Britain’s Unique Beer Culture. “Cask dispense also brought out the best in the subtle, low-gravity styles of ale that became the norm from World War I, and so long as turnover remained high and shipping distances relatively short, it was easily manageable.”

Great British Beer Festival attendees supporting CAMRA in London / Courtesy CAMRA

Bringing out the best in beers like ordinary and best bitter—styles largely differentiated by alcohol content, best bitter being generally above four-percent abv and ordinary bitter below—was certainly a major factor in the former dominance of cask-conditioning, and the drop in popularity of the styles key to its decline.

Citing a decline in cask of 7.3 percent over the past year, Paul Nunny, director of the draught quality accreditation organization Cask Marque, points to several contributing factors, including the growth in lager sales observed by Brown. Another element he notes, however, is the role of the publican in the presentation of cask-conditioned ale.

“The delivery of great cask beer means pubs and bars need to use best practice, both in the cellar and the bar,” says Nunny, adding that proper education is key in this regard. “Great pubs have this as a priority, but sadly there are many licensees who do not have the passion or the skill to dictate the time to this important element of the business.”

Where cask is properly kept and managed, however, Nunny insists that it continues to perform admirably.

Cask pumps at The Bailey Head

A cask ale promo at The Anchor – Bankside in London / markobe-Adobe Stock

“While we’d like to see larger producers step up and act as responsible custodians of the cask brands they buy, the innovation and tenacity of independent brewers shows that the sector has the potential for a bright future.”

One surprising element that may be a factor in holding back the growth of cask is price, with pints of cask-conditioned ale regularly selling for less than keg ales and lagers.

“While the average pint of cask bitter cost £3.57 [around $4.36] in January 2023, the average pint of standard lager was 18.5 percent more expensive at £4.23 [around $5.17],” notes De Moor. “Cask is a fragile product typically made in small batches at labor-intensive breweries and requiring time and skill to serve at its best. If it is to have a sustainably healthy future, its average price will have to rise in comparison to the pub prices of other drinks.”

De Moor admits that his is not the most popular position, particularly among pub-goers, but he gets support from at least one producer of cask ale: Darron Anley, founder of Berkshire-based Siren Craft Brew.

“I love cask, I love drinking it and making it, but I hate it from a business perspective,” says Anley. “It’s not treated with the respect that it’s due and publicans and consumers expect a price point that has no relation to the product. We know we’re not going to get the same value per litre from beer in cask as compared to keg, but the impact on the margin is tough to bear.”

In the end, for as much as many North American beer aficionados view cask-conditioned ale as a desired specialty when visiting the United Kingdom, British beer drinkers tend to see it more as an old-fashioned drink rather than something to be celebrated.

But that perception, too, may thankfully be on the cusp of change.

“Independent craft brewers who have been shut out of the keg market have found that, because the big guys don’t give a crap about cask anymore, they can get their beers into pubs in cask where they can’t in keg,” says Brown. “So we’re seeing hip, young brewers of hazy pales and their acolytes now leaning onto cask, when once they were responsible for a major leakage from cask to keg.”

“The market is contracting, but it’s also changing shape,” he continues. “After the current bloodbath is over, it’s going to be an interesting segment.”