Move over Darling, it’s time for a pint

Just the other week, in a Cheshire country pub, I found further real life evidence of the amazing pull of cask beer.

By chance, I met a chap who lives, most of the year, in the Caribbean. There, he confessed to me over a pint, he enjoys the company of not one but two local women – one for day and one for the night, if you like details. So he has the sun, he has the sand and, by all accounts, he has his other comforts well catered for - bar one.

Over sixty, I guess, - and he was looking just a bit tired - he told me, unsurprisingly perhaps, that he loves it out there. Problem is he just can't get any decent ale in a decent pub. He just drinks rum – the beer being, well, indescribable on this blog.

Anyway, every now and then he returns to Cheshire abandoning the sunshine to spend time in the pub and gird his lions, I suspect, over a few pints of Weetwood Best.

Assault
Perhaps, if a certain Mr Darling got out a bit more, he might meet this chap or at least his fellow spirit. Then he may be provoked in to reconsidering his vicious Budget Day assault last week on that great institution that is the British pub.

Yes – despite pubs still closing at the rate of some 39 a week – the Chancellor once again raised the tax on beer. As a result, beer will see duty rise by 2p a pint. Pundits predict this will translate into at least 8-10p at the pumps.

I don’t know what my brief drinking pal has made of this. He’s probably already back on the rum - and the women. But this week the brewing and pub industry is raising a proverbial rude salute to Mr Darling.

Yes it’s National Cask Ale Week. It was planned sometime ago, of course. But it couldn’t be better timed. Backed by various industry bodies, it’s a celebration of two splendidly unique national attributes; the British pub and cask-conditioned ale. No other country in the world has these. US Bars, Italian cafes, French bistros – they just don’t hit the same spot. Where else could you meet up with a complete stranger and, after just one pint, know the details of his love life on an exotic island idyll? This just doesn’t happen in restaurants.

Foreign tourists make over 13 million visits to our pubs each year, and sampling a pint of cask ale is the ‘quintessentially British experience’. Mr Darling, it seems, fails to realise the value of the pub to the country. He remains happy to bash the industry - and the recession beleaguered consumer.

No matter, this week is a real celebration. After decades languishing in the beer wilderness, the news is that cask is fast becoming one of its rising stars. It posted a full 12 months of growth last year - the first time since 1982 according to new figures. It is now the only sector of the UK beer market in growth with some 660 brewers - the highest level since World War II.

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

A few facts: 1.5 million new drinkers in 2008 (around half of them women); distribution in 3,000 new pubs between June 2008 and June 20099; CAMRA membership hits the 100,000 mark; 71 breweries opened in the UK last year.

This renaissance is the best news for pubs in a long time. It is the only drink the pub can claim as its own - something drinkers can’t get from the supermarket. And 42% of licensees name cask as the drink that’s outperforming everything else on the bar.

Cool Cask
Beer writer Pete Brown is a chap who knows about these matters. Author of The Cask Report, Pete says: “Cask’s reinvention is impressive. 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.”

This has happened, says Pete, not through advertising but because of a groundswell in consumers looking for quality, freshness, natural ingredients and local provenance in their food and drink.

Of course those familiar with Brunning & Price (here's the plug) are well aware of all this. B&P pubs have long been bastions of cask ale and refused to countenance keg beers from day one in the eighties. It has paid off in spades for the group. Hundreds of different cask ales flow through the pumps every year.

Some 10,000 pubs are involved in the NCAW complete with promotional packs. But at B&P pubs this week you won’t see any bunting. It will be business as usual - just another great selection of cask ales. At Harkers you could catch any of these: Acorn Blonde, Liverpool Organic Best Bitter, Rooster’s Yankee, Brimstage Oyster Catcher Stout, Hobsons Mild, Lymestone Ein Stein. RCH - Pitchfork, Six Bells’ Big Nev's and Cloud Nine, Brass Monkey - Cheeky Monkey & Silverback. And Crouch Vale Brewers Gold is a treat to expect soon (Dave says regulars only!).

So let’s all have our own quiet celebration. Grab a beer, maybe one you have never tried before; look at it, swirl it, smell that pungent aroma of malt and hops, taste - let that lovely malt sweetness and tart bitterness roll gently round the tongue and across the tonsils - enjoy and toast the Great British Pub. Then have another and to blazes with Mr Darling. Could this, possibly, just possibly, be better than sex in the Caribbean?