The north-west brewer, which also operates about 50 pubs, is backing this up with a seasonal range based on its heritage beers.
Hydes Brewery managing director Adam Mayers explained: “We currently have five core range beers in cask. We’re predominantly a cask ale brewery, although we do keg as well.
“However, every year we do 18 seasonal cask ales. We have two ranges for this year’s seasonal beers.
“One is based on heritage beers we’ve previously made. We’ve taken the labels off old beer bottles that we made about 70 years ago and are creating pump-clips that look like them too. The first was Brown Stout 4.1% ABV then, for March, it’s Pale Ale 4% ABV.”
More on board
He added the other seasonal beer range is based on 1980s to 1990s TV programmes. The first one in January was Bulls Hydes 4.2% ABV bitter, which was a nod to Bullseye because we the business ran a darts competition. “It had our version of Bully on the pump-clip,” Mayers said.
This was followed by Flying Circus 4.5% ABV ale in February (a play on Monty Python’s Flying Circus) and Suits You 4.3% ABV pale ale based on The Fast Show.
Mayers continued: “We do our own lager and have an IPA available on keg but we’re always looking to do something slightly different each year.
“The cask:keg split is about 60:40 and, until a few years ago, Hydes was 100% cask for about 10 years.”
Rise in kegged beer volumes
On the move back to kegged products, Mayers says it’s just a general trend. He said: “We did, historically, do a lot of kegging. We moved to the current brewery 10 years ago and decided to go cask only just to service our own estate and buy all the products in.
“But we recognise that there’s a market for our own lager and our own IPA and we went back into kegging.
“The reality is people’s drinking profiles are changing. Unfortunately, cask is on the decline and you could argue, all beers are slightly declining in terms of volume, but cask is declining a faster pace. It’s a sign of the times.
“Saying that, we’ve actually seen volume growth overall at Hydes. Cask is stable but with the introduction of keg, we’ve definitely seen a slight improvement in volume sales.”
