The long retreat of cask

The Morning Advertiser recently published figures confirming the continued decline of cask beer sales in the UK, which were reflected on by beer writer Phil Mellows:

Once a month I’m privileged to have sight of the official beer sales figures for the UK. When they pop up in my inbox I duck behind the settee and peer at them through my fingers. I’m a cask beer drinker you see – well, about three-quarters of the time – and watching the steady and sometimes not so slow decline of the category is scary.

According to the pub trade’s Morning Advertiser this week, cask ale volumes dropped by more than 7% in the past 12 months on top of year after year of similar falls for as long as anyone can remember. Barely 8% of total beer sales in pubs and bars – also in decline – are now poured from a handpump. I remember when it was twice that and people were worried then.

8% of on-trade beer volumes represents less than a million bulk barrels a year, which is less than the production in the 1970s of one single brewery, Mitchells & Butlers at Cape Hill in Birmingham, most of which comprised the unlamented M&B Brew XI. It could even be true that more Brew XI was drunk in 1975 than the entire cask sector today.

So what has caused this calamitous long-term decline? Everybody of course trotted out their own favourite hobby-horses – the big brewers, the pubcos, the rise of craft keg, CAMRA taking its eye off the ball, the anti-drink lobby – but the reality is that it is due to a combination of factors that have taken effect over a long period of time. I thought I would create an X poll to see what people thought were the most important reasons.

POLL: What is the biggest reason for the decline in cask beer sales?

— Pub Curmudgeon 🌸🍻 (@oldmudgie) June 28, 2025

The winner by a short head was “Old fashioned image”, although it is not clear whether people interpreted this as referring to the beer itself or the people who drink it. Over the past decade or so, cask ale brewers have made major steps to update the image of their beers, and it’s common now to go in a pub where most of the pumps are taken up by what might be described as “modern” cask ales. So I suspect it’s more a case of making judgments about the typical cask ale drinker. I will return later to the subject of quality.

Cost was often mentioned as a factor but, while it’s undoubtedly a major reason for the overall decline in beer drinking in pubs, it doesn’t explain why people have moved away from cask, given that cask in pubs is virtually always significantly cheaper than lager, Guinness or craft kegs.

In the early years of CAMRA, its proposition was very simple, that cask beer, when properly kept, tasted much better than its keg or tank equivalents. This was demonstrably true, and few people had much enthusiasm for the old keg ales. However, the world has moved on, and now there are very few direct keg equivalents to cask ales. Samuel Smiths and Felinfoel are the only brewers I can think of still offering this.

The alternative to cask is now not keg ales, but Guinness and international lager brands, mostly British-brewed. We even now have accounts on X celebrating British pubs praising the availability of Cruzcampo or Staropramen “in the right glass”. More and more people are now repertoire drinkers who will vary their choice of beer depending on the venue and the occasion. They are not dogmatically wedded to one particular category. “I like cask, but I find myself drinking Guinness more and more”, said one person. The challenge for anyone wanting to promote cask is how to encourage people to include it within their overall drinking repertoire. Simply denigrating other beers comes across as snobbish and is a poor tactic to win people over.

Personally I am much less dogmatic about drinking cask than I used to be. I would regard “exploring pubs” as a leisure interest, and if I’m going to a pub because I think it is an interesting place to visit I will pretty much always go for cask if they have it. If it’s poor, then I probably won’t be going back again anyway. The cask selection defines a pub in a way that having Madri and Guinness on the bar doesn’t. However, for what I would describe as “functional” pub visits, whether having a meal or just fancying a pint at a particular place and time, I might well swerve the cask unless I was confident it was going to be good. I described a couple of years ago how I plumped for a Carling rather than a single-pump Ruddles in a pubco pub. So I suppose that makes me a repertoire drinker too.

The point has been made that pub operators are reluctant to stock cask because it’s “too much trouble”. Obviously they are commercial companies and every product has to earn its keep on the bar, but the difficulties of keeping cask are often exaggerated, sometimes by those who are trying to surround it with an aura of mystique. In reality, all it takes is the conscientious application of simple principles. In the 1970s, CAMRA successfully persuaded brewers that it was worth the little extra trouble because it would bring the customers in.

The one category of pub operators for whom it definitely isn’t too much trouble are the family brewers. The vast majority of them stock cask in all or virtually all, their pubs. It is the product that bears their name, and which defines them as a business. I’d say that the tied estates of family brewers are, overall, where cask ale is best presented and best kept.

Most of the people who write about beer and pubs, whether professionally or as amateurs, are cask enthusiasts and, as I wrote a couple of years ago, this inevitably leads them to form a somewhat rose-tinted view of cask quality and availability. With the best will in the world, they’re naturally going to gravitate towards those pubs where cask is enthusiastically promoted and served well, and rarely venture into the “long tail” of other outlets.

There is little recognition of just how poor and inconsistent cask beer is in so many pubs that stock it. There are multiple reasons for this, but the biggest of all is overranging, simply stocking more beers than your turnover can support. My heart sinks whenever I read of some pub offering “a good range of cask ales”. More often than not, it will be a good range of tired, tepid glop. I’ve written about this at length over the years, but it seems to be a blind spot in the industry. A wide choice is perceived as something customers are looking for, and it seems to be a case of waiting for the other chap to blink first in terms of reducing your range, although I have seen some steps in this direction. Outside trusted outlets, ordering cask is a gamble, and losing out a few times will be seriously offputting to anyone for whom it isn’t a default choice.

There is always a tension between obscurity and over-familiarity with cask ranges. Surveys have shown that around 85% of drinkers want to see recognisable beers on the bar. They don’t want every trip to the pub to be a journey of discovery, and if all they see is a row of unfamiliar names, they may well be tempted to choose something else. But, on the other hand, one of cask’s USPs is local or regional provenance. It’s not meant to be uniform across the country, so when you find Taylor’s Landlord in Somerset or Fuller’s London Pride in Cumberland it comes across as something of a disappointment. A balance has to be struck between the two.

A factor working in cask’s favour is that it is proving very resilient. While sales volumes have fallen, this has not been matched by its wholesale removal from pubs. By and large, the keg-only pubs are still either trendy urban bars or working-class locals. It is rare to come across a pub that you really would expect to serve cask but doesn’t. It is still seen as an important part of the mix to attract casual customers, and this provides an element of optimism for the future. It also has to be remembered that Britain’s biggest pub operator in volume terms, Wetherspoon’s, is also a strong supporter of cask and indeed sells around one in ten pints produced.

Seven years ago, I wrote about The Cask Crisis, and much of what I said then still applies. The beer and pub market, compared with most other consumer markets, is relatively fragmented, and the ability of any single company to influence customers’ behaviour is limited. The long-term decline of cask is due to changes in customer preference, not some sinister conspiracy. There are no simple solutions, but in many outlets, cask continues to thrive and enjoys a loyal following. The best way to promote it is not through hand-wringing, but by highlighting the breweries who produce it and the pubs where it is served well and with enthusiasm.