News Release

Full year of growth restores cask to former glory

After decades languishing in the beer wilderness, cask ale is fast becoming one of its rising stars, after posting a full 12 months of growth last year for the first time since 1982 according to new figures published today at the start of National Cask Ale Week, a celebration of cask in 10,000 pubs nationwide.

The figures are released by The Cask Report - Britain's National Drink (www.caskreport.co.uk). Although growth in 2009 was a modest 0.04%1, it compares favourably to the 5% fall in on-trade beer sales last year2. Among smaller brewers, total cask volumes are up by over 1% and turnover by an average of 16%. 3

The cask category started to decline in the early 1980's, losing drinkers and market share to lagers and keg bitters until the early 2000's. Since then, resurgent consumer demand, the expansion of the small, craft brewing sector and renewed investment from many regional brewers, have rescued cask ale from near-oblivion. Cask is now the only sector of the UK beer market in growth.

Cask's renaissance is good news not just for cask beer brewers, but for pubs. Cask ale is the only drink they can claim as uniquely theirs, that offers customers something they can't get from the supermarket or off-licence. It's no coincidence that pubs with Cask Marque accreditation - an indicator of well-kept, well-served cask beer - are shutting at around half the industry average.4 Or that 42% of licensees name cask as the drink that's outperforming everything else on the bar5.

Pete Brown, author of The Cask Report, says, "Cask's reinvention is impressive by any measure. In 2008, a million and a half more people drank cask than in the previous year. And this is against a trend of falling demand for beer and for alcohol overall".

"It isn't just socially acceptable to drink cask beer now, it's positively cool. Increasingly, cask is stocked by bars and pubs attracting a younger crowd, not just back street 'boozers'. Even Glastonbury, a magnet for hip under-25's, sells cask on all its bars. It's hard to believe that during the 1980s/90s, the same drink was viewed with a mixture of scorn and suspicion by anyone under-40, female, or slightly fashion-conscious."

National Cask Ale Week

National Cask Ale Week, running from 29th March - 5th April, is a celebration of cask ale and of pubs as the only place where they can be drunk.

For many licensees, Cask Ale Week will kick-start a lasting relationship with cask beers, as a way of not only avoiding closure, but attracting more, higher-spending customers through their doors. The 'cask value chain', outlined in The Cask Report, demonstrates that good cask ale pubs attract more affluent drinkers, who visit the pub more often than non-cask drinkers6 and spend more while there 7. So, despite cask beer offering the publican lower margins than other lager, it also offers him a way to build pub traffic and turnover.

By running Cask Ale Week before and during the Easter holiday weekend, pubs in many parts of the UK will be tapping into the lucrative tourist trade, which traditionally starts at Easter. Tourists from abroad make over 13 million visits to our pubs each year, and sampling a pint of cask ale is the quintessentially British experience that is near the top of the 'to do' list for many. Among the growing number of 'stay-cationing' Brits, 70% say they will visit the pub while away and are more likely to sample the local ale there - even if they're die-hard lager drinkers at home. 8

Brown comments, "Even in the three years of tracking cask in the report, we've seen it shift from being a drink that was declining at a lesser rate than other beer styles, to being the only one that managed to grow volumes last year".

"It's important to realise that cask's restoration is far from being a passing fad. It has happened not in response to clever advertising, but because of a groundswell in consumers looking for quality, freshness, natural ingredients and local provenance in their food and drink. This is a fundamental change in the core values that determine our purchasing and leisure habits, which are likely to stay constant or become more ingrained in the future".

"Now, more than ever, licensees have to give consumers a damn good reason to drink highly-taxed beer in their pub instead of cheap supermarket beer at home. If I were a publican, I'd certainly be trying to attract the higher-spending, regular pub-goers who are the main consumers of cask ale."

The cask ale success story

• 1.5 million new drinkers in 2008 (around half of them women)
• Distribution in 3,000 new pubs between June 2008 and June 20099. Many of these were owned by managed pub companies who are reinvesting in cask throughout their estate.
• CAMRA membership hit the 100,000 mark
• A record 64,000 people visited the Great British Beer Festival in August
• 71 breweries opened in the UK last year, taking the total up to 660 - the highest level since World War II

CASE STUDY

The Grey Mare, a Daniel Thwaites pub in Belthorn, near Blackburn, removed smooth flow ales for last year's Cask Ale Week and now offers five cask ales year-round. Licensee Stephen Prince is proud of the pub's 'cask ale champion' status and for this year's event, the pub is offering customers the chance to sample ales in third-pint glasses.

Data sources

• 1British Beer & Pub Association provisional data, 12 months to Dec 2009)
• 2BBPA 'Beer Barometer', December 2009 (www.beerandpub.com)
• 3Society of Independent Brewers/Local Brewing Industry Report, February 2010
• 4Cask Marque/CGA Strategy
• 5CGA Research in the Morning Advertiser, July 2009
• 6CAMRA/CAPI Omnibus 2009
• 7TGI Jan-Dec 2008
• 8BBPA Guide to British Tourism Week, March 2010
• 9CGA Strategy

Notes:

• National Cask Ale Week, running from 29th March - 5th April, is a celebration of Britain's national drink and over 10,000 pubs across the UK will be staging events to encourage more of their customers to try cask beer through tastings, offers, food and beer matching and meet the brewer sessions. To find out what's happening and where visit www.caskaleweek.co.uk
• The Cask Report is backed by bodies that represent the cask ale industry and consumers. Brewers are represented by Adnams, Caledonian, Fuller's, Greene King, Marston's and Wells and Young's, as well as The Independent Family Brewers of Britain and the Society of Independent Brewers. The Campaign for Real Ale represents the cask ale drinker. The Cask Marque Trust, the non-profit organisation championing cask beer quality, also supports the report.
• The Cask Report is published annually in October. It is also available on-line at www.caskreport.co.uk
• Pete Brown is the author of several books about beer, and regular contributor regarding beer to trade and consumer press, TV and radio. Pete also has a background in beer marketing. He has no formal affiliation with any of the companies or bodies backing the report. http://petebrown.blogspot.com

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