Best Cask Pub of the year

Wadworth is sponsoring this award, which recognises the pub that has best promoted and sold real beer in the past year

North: Brewery Arms

Keighley, West Yorkshire

Licensee Peter Quirk runs what he proudly boasts as a permanent beer festival at the Brewery Arms. With never fewer than 10 real ales always available, it is easy to see why serious beer drinkers make a beeline for the Keighley town-centre pub.

Peter, and wife Cea, have established an enviable reputation as a quality beer venue in a remarkably short space of time since their arrival just four years ago.

The main draw for ale lovers is that there is always something different on the bar top because few days go by when the same beers are on sale. Only four brands are permanently stocked, which means six are constantly rotated to give customers the very best in quality and choice.

The Brewery Arms will bank on stocking up to 800 different beers in a year ­ an amazing achievement even in today's ever-increasing cask beer market.

Peter comments: "Our aim is to keep our customers on their toes by constantly changing our offering. We want to maintain the interest of drinkers at the bar so that they will keep coming back." He adds: "Beer sales are up more than 21% this year, so we are more than happy."

The permanent beers are all local ones, from the nearby Goose Eye Brewery and Timothy Taylor. The famous Timothy Taylor brewery at Knowle Spring is just two miles up the road from the pub and it is mainly the brewery's reputation that has led to Keighley having no shortage of real beer venues.

However, the Brewery Arms has built a unique reputation for the strength of its late afternoon trade. As soon as its doors are opened at 4pm on weekdays, customers start to pour in from all sociological and economic groups ­ pinstripe-suited executives to factory workers, shop assistants to office staff.

Peter tends to source many of his beers direct from small independent breweries. He notes: "There is a flourishing grapevine within the independent brewing sector and most brewers ring me to ask if they can go on our list."

Official beer festivals are also held which might comprise beers from Manchester breweries or a selection from Cumbrian brewer Jennings Brothers.

Earlier last year, Peter and Cea opened a new first floor, silver-service restaurant to extend their business interests and so far the results are encouraging. However, there are certainly no plans to let that interfere with the pub's real beer business.

Central:

Strugglers Inn Westgate, Lincoln

Experience is plentiful at the Strugglers Inn, where lessee Simon Davey, pub manager Alan Watts and cellarman Dave Walker can claim a total of 64 years' service in the licensed trade.

It means traditional habits are alive at the popular real ale pub, which nestles close to Lincoln Cathedral on one of main gateways of the historic city.

Cask beer is still maintained and served up to drinkers in the same time-honoured way to ensure customers get the perfect pint every time. This is a pub where old-fashioned line cleaning still rules the roost and all talk of modern-day cask breathers is banned.

The Strugglers has a cask ale history going back to the mid-1950s when the pub was owned by Bass and then run by the same family for generations until the line came to an end in the early 1990s. "The pub was well known for its beer even in those early days," recalls Alan, who has been working in pubs around Lincoln for more years than he cares to remember.

Alan is delighted to see the Strugglers re-gaining its old claim to fame as the best cask ale house in the city.

Today, the pub offers seven different cask beers to customers that include six permanent brands and one rotating, guest ale, which has been made possible by landlord Avebury Taverns and its link with the Society of Independent Brewers. The deal has enabled a rich variety of different beers to be sourced from small independent brewers across the UK ­ a move that has delighted customers.

Two special events form the highlights of the Strugglers' activity calendar. One is the pub's two-week beer festival in October, which sees a total of 48 different real beers on sale.

The other big occasion comes in December when Lincoln stages its famous Christmas Market, which attracts upwards of 50,000 visitors to the city. The Strugglers entered the festive mood last year by taking delivery of three tons of beer.

In recent years, the pub has invested more than £10,000 in the cellar of the pub, part of the cash spent on double deck stillages to increase stock level capacity.

A new marquee erected in the pub's beer garden is also giving valuable extra customer space during the winter months.

The pub is accredited under the Cask Marque quality scheme and a recent audit saw it gain an almost perfect score. "It was disappointing to lose one mark, so we were obviously having a bad day," jokes Alan.

Home Counties: Falkland Arms

Great Tew, Oxfordshire

The list of guest ales that have made an appearance at the bar of the Falkland Arms over the past year is not far removed from an A-to-Z of cask ale producers. Virtually all the regional brewers are included, together with a very long list of smaller brewers and microbrewers. Even in the quiet months of January and February, customers of the 16th-century limestone and ivy-clad pub have never had fewer than 14 guest ales to choose from. The figure hit 39 during July, when the pub held its three-day beer festival.

Even more remarkable is that the Oxfordshire pub is a managed house owned by Wadworth. Such was the reputation of the Falkland Arms for its cask ales that, when the Devizes brewer acquired it in the early 1990s, the decision was taken to let it have a relatively free reign over beer selection.

Generally, there are three of Wadworth's brews on hand pull, while the other five are devoted to those chosen by Sarah-Jane Courage and husband Paul Batlow-Heal, who are about to celebrate their fifth year at the pub.

The cellar is Sarah-Jane's domain, while Paul's training as a chef sees him running the kitchen. The cask ales are supplied via Beer Seller and the choice of which to stock each month is mainly Sarah-Jane's responsibility. She explains: "We try and go across the board and mix some old favourites with some that we have never heard of."

She also relies on requests and recommendations made by locals, as well as checking out the Campaign for Real Ale's Good Beer Guide.

At the July beer festival, the Falkland Arms was stocked with 24 guest ales and three real ciders. Paul recalls: "They were six deep at the bar and, at times, it looked as if there was a real danger of running out of beer. Some casks were gone within an hour-and-a-half of being opened."

Sarah-Jane and Paul are mooting holding a mini-beer festival sometime later in the year perhaps November. But as Sarah-Jane notes: "We put a lot of time and effort into the three-day festival and it is very successful, so perhaps customers might be a bit disappointed if we held a mini-festival. After all, we are almost holding a mini-festival every week with up to 10 real ales to choose from."

The Falkland Arms harks back to cask ale's heyday ­ there is no jukebox, no pool table, no TV let alone a big screen, and mobile phones are banned. In their place are a log fire, regular live music nights, quizzes and good pub fare, which also includes the unusual like rook pie and squirrel for regulars to sample free of charge.

West: New Inn

Halse, Somerset

A bit like the old Remington razor advert with Victor Kiam, Mark Leadenham loved real ale so much he bought the New Inn three years ago to indulge in his passion. In October 2003, and after a crash course in brewing, he converted part of the cellar into a four-barrel microbrewery and started making his own ales.

Success has come pretty quickly for Mark and partner Maggie because the New Inn is currently the Campaign for Real Ale's South West England Pub of the Y