Cask Ale: The cask conversion

The renaissance in cask ale is no longer news. Everyone close to the beer and pub industry is now familiar with the headlines: cask outperforming the rest of the beer sector, adding value to pubs, and so on.

But as this revolution matures, anxieties surface and questions are asked: is it just a fad? Can growth be sustained? Can cask ale survive pubs that don't keep it well? Is it, essentially, just a bit of desperate hype?

As the author of four annual Cask Reports, I've written a great deal on cask ale. Each year I believe it's going to be difficult to find something new to say without spinning a bit too hard. But each year, new stories and insights have emerged.

At the start of a new year then, what else is there to say about cask ale?

To answer that question, I went on Twitter and sent one simple tweet (with 140 characters there's no other option really): "Are you or do you know a pub who recently started doing cask ale, or a lot more of it? Fancy being in a trade press piece?"

Within 30 minutes, I had responses from 26 different pubs around the country that have introduced cask ale within the last 12 months and are seeing soaring business as a result.

Their stories are in many ways quite similar. And apart from anything else, the explanation for the rapid Twitter response soon emerged.

Point of difference

Steve Coxshall took over the Barnsbury pub in Islington, North London, in July. It had what he describes as two 'mediocre' ales on the bar, which had low throughput.

He increased the range to six, as well as stocking a range of bottled ales. Cask ale is now one of the biggest drivers of the business. Despite the food offering being emphatically gastro and widely acclaimed, the business is now 65 per cent wet, from a 50-50 split when Coxshall took over.

"Cask ale gives us a point of difference," he says. "There are a lot of very good pubs in Islington, but not many of them stock a decent range of cask ales."

When Derbyshire's Thornbridge Brewery acquired the Greystones pub in Sheffield last November, it was competing not with other pubs, but the lure of staying at home.

This was a rundown pub in a suburban, middle class, residential area, far away from any circuit or destination. It served a generic range of lagers and smoothflow beers and the occasional single cask ale, from a handpump whose badge usually faced the back-bar.

After installing 11 handpumps - six of which are active all the time - the pub sold 25,000 pints of cask ale in two months. Cask is responsible for 50 per cent of the entire turnover.

Thornbridge is of course something of a brewing star, and people have been known to travel long distances to craft beer pubs that offer its range. But Thornbridge managing director Simon Webster is adamant that it's not beer geeks making the pub a success.

"This is all about the local community," he claims. "These are middle class, professional people, 25 to 50 years old. They're not the acolytes of the cask ale revolution - they don't even know about it. But they're coming back to their local pub and almost without exception they're drinking cask ale."

Keeping up with the neighbours

When Phil Hardwick took over the Crown in Southwark, South London, in November 2009, he found that cask - rather than setting him apart from other pubs - was necessary to keep up with the neighbours.

"Southwark has a lot of good beer pubs," he says, "and we just had one tap next to the glass washing machine selling warm Flowers IPA. It was there just for the sake of being there really.

"We did a good lunchtime trade with people from the local offices, but they'd go elsewhere in the evening, and they told us that they went there for the beer."

The Crown duly installed an extra hand pump, ditched the Flowers for something more interesting, and added a third pump in August 2010.

"We did seven casks on three pumps last week. Cask drinkers here are professional guys, 25 to 45 years old, and we're converting lager drinkers," says Hardwick.

Dependable workhorses or rotating range?

Whenever anyone surveys the total beer market, or offers licensees a fantasy choice of any beer they want, it's established regional ales such as Greene King IPA, London Pride or Bombardier that come top.

These are the dependable workhorses of cask ale: solid, reliable, known and trusted. It's important to remember that for most pubs, most of the time, these beers have a fundamental role to play.

But the growth in cask ale, the momentum in the category, seems now to be being driven by a new wave of young brewers, creating beers with eclectic influences and a wide range of flavour - brands like Thornbridge, Dark Star and Marble are in constant demand from pubs which have recently revamped their cask offering.

But more than individual brands themselves, the point seems to be that the new generation of drinkers is demanding constant change and variety. In cask ale, any pub that offers the same selection year in, year out is seen as dull. And this problem is worsened for brewers because it is these brands, while present in many great pubs, that are also most likely to be chosen by pubs who make only a tokenistic effort in cask, where quality is likely to be dubious.

"Drinkers in Islington are affluent and intelligent. They demand variety and they have the confidence to try new things," says the Barnsbury's Coxshall. "They're not beer geeks but they do like to be a bit eclectic."

And it's this search for novelty that leads us to why so many cask ale pubs responded to my Twitter request. "We had the 'MyGreystones' Facebook page up and running before we opened the pub," says Webster.

"Twitter has been phenomenal for us," says the Crown's Hardwick. "We don't do any generic beer, and we update our beer selection online all the time. People come from all across London if there's a beer they want to try."

A rotating range means there is always news for a pub to broadcast, a real reason to engage with drinkers and persuade them to come to the pub. In each pub I spoke to, this professional, affluent, cask ale-seeking audience uses social media habitually. As the new cask ale revolution reaches maturity, the audience for cask becomes more multi-faceted. Traditional drinkers provide the bulk of volume, but the new drinkers providing momentum look for different things.

British craft lager, quality keg ale and bottled ales from overseas are the emerging competitors - or perhaps bedfellows - of cask ale. Among the new converts, cask has little to do with live yeast in the barrel, and everything to do with broader perceptions of quality.

"Anyone can serve the same bog standard lagers well. Our drinkers choose cask because they know they're going to get a quality drink, and that's why I can charge more for it," says Coxshall.

"But that means you've got to do it well. There's no point otherwise. The quality simply has to be there."

And if it is there? Webster enjoys telling two stories from the early days of the Greystones. The first - inevitably - concerns Facebook. When Webster announced that the Greystones aimed to be a community pub, he received a response that told him in no uncertain terms that the community in question wouldn't welcome the idea.

The woman who sent that message recently got in touch again to say that she and her husband were both regulars. "I can't tell you how wonderful it is to have this great venue on our doorstep," she wrote.

One of her neighbours agrees. "I was talking to a bloke in here, said he's just been to the estate agent," says Webster. "I asked him if he was selling his house - he said 'No, I've just taken it off the market. I don't need to move now.'"

Proof, if any were needed, that pubs continue to be community hubs. And somehow, this job just seems to work much better when it has cask ale at its heart.