News: September 2010

Cask ale remains a buoyant sector of the UK beer market, despite a tough year that has seen beer volumes overall in decline. That’s the finding of the latest Cask Report, an annual survey of the state of the cask beer industry funded by brewers, the Campaign for Real Ale and Cask Marque.

The headlines of the report reveal that cask ale grew 5% by value in 2009, against a 2% fall in the overall beer market. Three thousand pubs started to sell cask ale in this period and the number of 18–24 year-olds drinking cask ale grew by 17%.

Although the multinational brewers saw cask volumes decline by 11%, because of their focus on lager brands, regional and local cask ale producers experienced increases in volume of 1% and 5%, respectively.

The Cask Report also unveiled research that shows that the image of cask ale is changing for the positive. Of non-cask ale drinkers surveyed, only 6% said they did not order cask ale because it was ‘an old man’s drink’, ‘not fashionable’, or ‘not for women’.

Author of The Cask Report, award-winning author Pete Brown (pictured above), sums up the progress cask ale has made in the past year.

‘Considering everything else that was happening in the beer market, with continuing pub closures and consumers switching from on-trade to off-trade consumption, it’s hard to view this as anything other than a strong performance from cask ale,’ he said, while sounding a cautionary note for the future.

‘There is clearly still work to do in recruiting new drinkers. In every issue of the report, we have talked about the importance of providing tasting notes, of letting customers “try before they buy” and other ways of overcoming the obstacles to trial.’

‘While more pubs are doing this than were four years ago, not enough is being done to make cask a really compelling choice for the new consumers who are needed if the impressive gains of recent years are to continue.’