Not so fresh

Last year, Otter Brewery launched a concept called Fresh Ale, which was described as “beers that are said to straddle the lager, cask ale and craft beer categories”. The stated intention was to produce beers suitable for outlets without sufficient turnover for cask, but there was inevitably going to be some risk of scope creep. Otter claim to have enjoyed some success with this, although as I live well outside their trading area I haven’t personally seen any evidence of it.

However, Carlsberg-Marston’s Brewing Company (CMBC) have now announced a launch of Fresh Ale on a much larger scale covering their Wainwright Gold, Wainwright Amber and Hobgoblin brands. Vice-President of Marketing John Clements was at pains to point out that it isn’t a cask ale, and isn’t being marketed such, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that it is going to significantly blur the distinction.

Draught beer is often simplistically regarded as being split between “cask” and “keg”, but in fact the distinction is better expressed as “cask” vs “brewery-conditioned” – beers that undergo a secondary fermentation after leaving the brewery, versus those that are stabilised before being despatched.

In the 1970s, there were many different ways of serving it as well as real ale, such as bright beer, tank beer and top-pressure beer as well as the archetypal keg, all of which had their own characteristics. This is much less so now, but all non-cask beers certainly aren’t uniform, and many keykeg craft beers are unpasteurised and have a much softer level of carbonation than classic kegs. Fresh Ale undoubtedly falls into the brewery-conditioned category, as Clements admits.

We looked at how we could take the issue of shelf life away and how we could do the secondary fermentation in the brewery so it becomes brewery-conditioned ale. A pub can get this beer after we have filtered the yeast out yet it remains unpasteurised so consumers get the same kind of experience as cask but, for the retailer, it lasts 14 days rather than three. By no means are we claiming this to be cask beer or that it is to replace cask because we are one of Britain’s biggest cask brewers.

There’s nothing wrong that as such, and brewery-conditioned beers of various kinds happily coexist alongside cask in pretty much every pub that stocks it. But the big problem is that the intention is to dispense it through handpumps.

He added the term “cask” is not being used when it comes to the marketing of Fresh Ale, but did say the idea is to create the same look and mouthfeel. Meanwhile, along with a longer shelf life than cask ale, it also preserves the hand-pull ritual that delivers a theatre of serve so a bartender would draw a pint on a hand-pull.

The handpump has become a very clear and unmistakable indicator of real ale. If you see a handpump, that what you’d expect to get. Back in the 70s and 80s, there were a scattering of pubs that dispensed keg beers through handpumps in an attempt to mislead customers that they were real ale. CAMRA always strongly deprecated this policy and, while not illegal as such, has a long-standing policy that any pub serving non cask-conditioned beers through handpumps would not be eligible for Good Beer Guide entry or receiving any kind of award. The practice seems to have pretty much disappeared now, and I can’t say I’ve seen any examples for many years.

However, as Fresh Ale is, by CMBC’s own admission, brewery-conditioned, exactly the same is going to apply here. They could of course dispense it through a tap as with keg beers, which would eliminate the problem, but that would presumably deter most potential customers from drinking it. That in itself is a recognition that presenting it on a handpump is misleading.

In recent years, the rise of craft keg has made many enthusiasts more willing to consider beers that do not come from a handpump. However, craft keg tends to be reserved for the more experimental end of the market, and it is virtually unknown to see it applied to traditional British styles. The overlap between regular drinkers of craft keg, and regular drinkers of cask Wainwright and Hobgoblin, is probably very small.

The argument that it is only going to be supplied to low-turnover outlets comes across as distinctly disingenuous. Cask ale is now widely supplied in 36-pint pins, and CMBC’s competitors Greene King have recently invested in a large stock of these. Maybe CMBC should consider following suit. But if you can’t shift twelve pints a day of a particular beer, then it seems pretty pointless having it on draught in the first place. And CAMRA now officially turns a blind eye to the use of cask breathers, which have the potential to extent the shelf-life of cask beer. However, this comment reveals the true agenda:

CMBC added this innovation not only reduces waste and enhances profitability but also simplifies storage and upkeep, bypassing the need for specialised cleaning and conditioning. On pricing to pubs, Clements said it is slightly above current cask ales costs but it works out to be very similar after allowance for sediment and usual wastage in casks.

So it makes life easier for licensees even in situations where the turnover would make cask entirely viable. It’s just “more convenient”. It could be the thin end of the wedge for the wholesale removal of cask from pubs.

CMBC have every right to launch such a product, and it may well be considerably more palatable than the like of John Smith’s Extra Smooth. However, it is not a cask beer and they should not be leading drinkers to think it is, or something very like cask, through the style of presentation. If they chose to use free-flow taps and presented it as “nicer keg”, then it may have merited no more than a shrug of the shoulders. But by serving it on handpump they risk significant kickback. This isn’t just CAMRA being pedantic – the link between handpumps and cask is universally accepted in the industry, and indeed acknowledgment of this is implicit in CMBC’s approach. Everyone who drinks cask beer recognises the connection.

It’s worth pointing out that CMBC is a separate organisation from the Marston’s Pub Company, and is only minority owned by Marston’s. So it doesn’t automatically follow that Marston’s pubs will adopt this, although there must be a strong chance that they will.