Hand-crafted, traditional cask beer is enjoying a revival, helped by drinkers’ interest in the origins and provenance of beers. A recent survey of the Independent Family Brewers of Britain’s 29 members revealed that, while overall beer sales are falling, our cask volumes grew by 2% in 2012.
For pubs, the key to a successful cask business lies in stocking the optimum number and styles of cask beer, keeping them well, and promoting them effectively to encourage existing customers to drink more and bring new drinkers into the category. Most cask-beer drinkers feel at home with known brands but also like to see something a bit different and/or local.
Family brewers alone now offer an expansive choice of 517 brands of core and seasonal beers, so consumer choice is at an all-time high.
Nevertheless, Cask Marque research shows that 34% of customers would not return to a pub if the quality of the pint served was poor. Cellar management training is therefore key to improving quality and helping to drive sales.
The Cask Marque Award in Beer and Cellar Quality is a BII (British Institute of Innkeeping)-accredited training course and is designed to help improve yields (by up to 7%), increase sales (3%) and decrease wastage.
As family brewers own 4,100 of the best pubs in the UK, it’s important to ensure that our beers are always served in the best possible condition. We invest in our cellars, equipment and especially training and show, by example, how other pub operators can make the most out of cask.
There’s no point having cask go to waste, so offer tastings to encourage customers to try new brands and urge them to buy.
Further effort also needs to be made to widen the market reach of cask beer, including moves to overcome women’s aversion to pint glasses with new stemmed styles that mimic wine glasses or goblets.
Cask beer is found only in the British pub, which makes it vital to the future of the industry. For that reason alone, make 2013 your year of cask beer.