Seeing the wider picture

Last month, US beer writer Jeff Alworth ruffled a number of feathers in the British beer community with this controversial post on the subject of cask beer quality. He quoted former Fullers head brewer John Keeling, who said:

In my travels up and down the country I can confirm that most family brewers who are the backbone of cask beer are […] reporting a decline in sales. Indeed, cask beer sales are now less than 9% of all draught beer sales and around 4% of total beer sales…. The reason is the old elephant in the room – that of quality. I have long said that the worst beer you can drink in Britain is cask beer. Cask beer that has been on serve for seven days is no good to anybody never mind what the latest new hop you use.

This provoked an angry and defensive response from many British cask enthusiasts, who insisted that in the pubs they frequented cask was thriving, and was consistently served in top quality. It is certainly true that plenty of pubs do serve cask well and sell a lot of it, but it doesn’t mean that at the same time the wider picture isn’t much less rosy.

This reflects what I wrote last year, about how many beer enthusiasts and commentators are led into the selection bias fallacy, whereby they extrapolate from their own experience that the general health of cask is a lot better than it actually is. Jeff later added an update to his post in which he said:

I do think my friends across the pond may be blind to how serious a problem poor quality is. If you are a cask fan, you have opted in to a lifestyle choice in which variability is a given and bad pints are a tolerable downside. Many on Twitter seemed to hand-wave this away, arguing that it’s not a problem if you go to the right places, or the bad pints aren’t that bad, or some other justification.

Consider those who haven’t joined you in this lifestyle choice, however. Most drinkers are not avid fans. They flow like water to the easiest, most pleasant glass of booze. Choices are legion. What is the value proposition of a form of booze that is unreliable and occasionally horrible? There’s a reason 91% of the time people buy a pint of beer that is not cask—what to speak of those who choose wine or a cocktail instead.

It should be pointed out that the main thrust of Jeff’s argument is to support the use of cask breathers, which I regard as something of a red herring. Cask breathers are essentially a means of papering over the cracks, and the key to maintaining quality should be to align cask size and beer range with the level of turnover. Now that 4½-gallon pins are widely available, there really shouldn’t be an excuse for keeping beer on too long. If you can’t sell 12 pints of a beer in a day, there’s little point in bothering in the first place.

Some have suggested that it would be perfectly OK for cask to retreat from the mainstream and confine itself to a niche market, but that is basically a counsel of despair. In any case, if cask’s overall profile is reduced it will eventually reflect back with lower demand in the niche and mean that fewer brewers bother to produce it. And I see no evidence that pubs are dropping cask in any numbers. They still see it as an important product to have on the bar even if they struggle to keep it in good condition.

The problem is also often blamed on large corporate pub owners who are more interested in the bottom line than in maintaining quality. There is some truth it this, but it is wrong to say that independent pubs are uniformly good either. Indeed some of the worst beer I’ve had over the past couple of years has been in independent pubs. There’s nobody looking over your shoulder to tell you that you’re getting it wrong. In my experience, the most reliable category of pubs for beer quality is family brewer tied houses.

There are plenty of ways to mess up beer, but the issue that overshadows everything else is slow turnover. There is no magical way of “looking after your beer” that doesn’t involve achieving sufficient turnover. When I survey the handpumps on the bar, the key things I want to know are when the beer was first put on sale, and when the last pint was pulled, but unfortunately this is information that just isn’t made available.

Last week I had some first-hand experience of drinking outside the bubble on a trip to South-West Scotland. This was primarily a sightseeing holiday, not a drinking holiday, and my expectations were not great, but I still ended up being disappointed. I thought at least with six pubs listed in the Good Beer Guide under Dumfries there would be some decent beer, but I didn’t encounter a single pint that I would rate as good. Indeed, in one GBG-listed pub that was also a recent CAMRA award winner I was served with a pint that, while not obviously “off” in any way, was at room temperature. (I didn’t take it back as I don’t go out to have an argument, and it’s unlikely I’ll ever return there anyway).

And Dave Morton’s experience in Glasgow last week was pretty dispiriting. In what other consumer market are customers routinely sending back half the products they are presented with?

We've called it a night after 9 pubs in Glasgow. Never have I had to take so many pints back to the bar. All swapped cheerfully after explaining that the beer was oxidised, but in one pub 3 beers were like that.
I've not had an outstanding beer all day, but plenty of decent beer

— Dave Morton (@dmonbeer) June 29, 2024

In a highly fragmented industry, there’s no easy answer to this question. All we can really do is continue to highlight those pubs that do consistently serve their beer in good condition. And beer writers and commentators need to take their heads out of the sand and accept that, across the board, there is a major problem with cask quality that does the sector no favours.