Killing cask to save it?

The continued debate around the subject of Fresh Ale has thrown up a rather muddled article from Annabel Smith entitled Could ‘Fresh Ale’ be cask’s saviour?. I would have expected more clarity of thought from someone who is an accredited beer sommelier. The basic proposition is fallacious, as Fresh Ale by definition is not cask ale, and so there is no way it could save it.

The question might be better posed as “Could Fresh Ale be traditional ale’s saviour?”, but loyalty to cask is likely to prove a major stumbling block. Fifty years ago, drinkers tended to give their allegiance to a particular brand of beer, and whether it was real or keg was a secondary consideration. But, over the years, they have increasingly come to identify with cask as a category. If cask Landlord wasn’t available, they would switch to cask London Pride in preference to keg Landlord, even if that existed. Most of the biggest-selling brands of cask ale are either unavailable in keg form, or only found in tiny volumes, so it isn’t a case of having the choice anyway. The only keg premium bitter I can think of is Sam Smith’s India Ale, and that isn’t in most of their pubs.

That, of course, is why the makers of Fresh Ale want to dispense it through handpumps, as drinkers, even if they appreciate that it isn’t actually genuine cask, will subconsciously view it as something “cask-like”, which they would not do if the identical beer was dispensed through a keg-style tap.

In recent years, there has been a growth in “craft keg”, and many beer enthusiasts who once would have pretty rigidly stuck to cask are prepared to dabble in the category. However, it generally confines itself to niche styles and very strong beers, and rarely treads on the toes of traditional ale. You don’t see many craft keg Best Bitters. I’d also guess that there isn’t much overlap between the craft keg-curious and volume consumers of Doom Bar and Abbot. Keg IPAs such as Punk IPA and Neck Oil have gained fairly wide distribution, but again they tend to be regarded as a category in themselves rather than a subset of “ale.”

Ms Smith repeats the oft-heard cliché that keeping cask ale is difficult, and describes it as “a bloody nightmare”. But that is a gross exaggeration. Yes, it does take some more work than keg beers, but there’s no rocket science about it , just the conscientious application of straightforward procedures. If there’s a demand for it, looking after cask is part and parcel of the business of running a pub.

She also makes a strange assertion that cask is often a mandatory “must-stock” that is enforced on the operator and ends up being a “millstone” round a business’s neck. If pub owners are genuinely forcing pubs to stock cask when there’s no demand for it, that sounds like a poor business practice. If you are a pub manager, then it’s part of your job to sell what the pubco tells you to sell, so there’s no room for complaint, although a good owner will take account of what sells and what doesn’t.

If you’re a tenant or lessee, then you have much more discretion. Maybe it is part of the agreement that you are expected to stock certain brands, but again the owner should recognise that some beers aren’t suited to the pub. And if you work for an independent family brewer, stocking cask comes with the territory. I wonder if she can provide any concrete examples of unwilling licensees who feel they have been forced to stock cask.

The argument about low volumes is also often exaggerated. More and more brewers are now supplying cask ale in 4½ gallon pins, with Greene King just having invested in a large batch of them. Selling twelve pints a day of a given beer really isn’t all that much. But there will be pubs where the nature of the trade is such that there just isn’t much demand for cask, and in cases like that it will surely be better to drop it entirely rather than having a single pump of stale Doom Bar. If the volumes are that low, then any loss will be minimal.

There are plenty of pubs that manage perfectly well without stocking cask, but they tend to be either working-class locals or trendy high street bars. Others, though, even if they don’t actually shift much of it, see it as a key part of their overall offer. A high-end rural dining pub would look rather strange if it didn’t offer any cask. Plus, once you drop cask, you lose any exposure from CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide and WhatPub online pub guide. CAMRA’s influence on pub choice may not be all that great, but a little bad word of mouth can go a long way, and a few complaints about the lack of cask on a site like TripAdvisor will get a lot of views from potential customers. And if you swapped cask for Fresh Ale on a fake handpump, that would not be overlooked.

There is a case to be made for “better keg”, and I’ve argued in the past that CAMRA tends to be too dogmatic in dividing the beer world into black and white, with no shades of grey. All keg beers are not the same, and I would expect Fresh Ale to be a big improvement on the likes of John Smith’s Extra Smooth. I’ll certainly give it a try if I ever come across it. There are examples of pubs with limited or erratic trade where it would be a better alternative to either stale cask or classic keg.

But, for the reasons I set out earlier, the strong consumer loyalty to cask as a category means that Fresh Ale will struggle to gain acceptance, and using fake handpumps to sell it is blatantly misleading and will get it off to a bad start. And, if it does gain popularity, the risk is that it will be extended beyond marginal cases to pubs where the licensee just can’t be bothered with cask, or to extend the range on offer even though the overall turnover is entirely adequate for a smaller number of cask beers.