home   about         Protz   features   A-Z      books         

    Protz:    features    reviews    tastings    news & events    books

The joy of cask beer by Willard Clarke, 10/05 A news item in last week�s Morning Advertiser made my hair stand on end. The report said Interbrew UK has spent �40 million on two new television commercials for Stella Artois. If you are the British arm of InBev, the world's biggest brewer, �40 million may amount to no more than petty cash. But the sheer size of the spend points to the growing imbalance between the global giants of the brewing world and the more humble practitioners of the beer makers' art. Drinkers whose only knowledge comes from media advertising will assume there are only a few brands available in Britain. They will know about Stella, Carling, Carlsberg, Grolsch and Heineken as the owners of these brands parade them before us at every opportunity. But the major ale brands, such as John Smith's and Tetley, owned by the same global brewers, seem to have disappeared from our screens and posters. Even Diageo seems to have bigger fish to fry these days than Guinness. The bigger regionals - Fuller's, Greene King and Wolverhampton & Dudley - advertise occasionally on regional television. But it's a hideously expensive business, beyond the budgets of most brewers. And so the message to consumers is that the big lager brands are king. They are the ones to order when you enter a pub. It's a message that seeps down the food chain and feeds the unquestioning minds of journalists who write endless articles about the death of beer and cask ale in particular.   It's a load of baloney. We live in a country that is undergoing a profound beer revolution. There is greater choice and diversity today than at any time in the past 30 or 40 years. As well as Greene King and W&D;, there are 35 family-owned regionals not only producing a range of brilliant cask beers but also reporting an upsurge in their fortunes. Fuller's now owns the biggest-selling premium cask beer in Britain. Adnams and Timothy Taylor, at different ends of the country, have installed additional fermenting capacity to cope with the demand for their succulent beers.    Hydes in Manchester - which has won the contract to brew Boddingtons for Interbrew as the giant can't be bothered to make the brand itself - has upgraded its brewhouse to expand capacity from 100,000 barrels a year to 160,000. The global brewers may scoff at such figures, but in a sane world Hydes would rank as a big brewer. Last week I spoke at the annual sales conference of WaverleyTBS, the country's major wholesaler of wines, beers and spirits. I entered the arena nervously for the group is owned by Scottish & Newcastle and I thought I would get a hostile reception when I spoke about the cask beer sector. But not only was I well received but the presentation by Martin Breading and Roy Silsby was an eye-opener. Martin and Roy come from The Beer Seller wholesaling company that merged with Waverley last year. They and their team are bullish about cask beer and busily sell it from one end of the country to the other. They don't focus solely on national brands. They sell regional and micro-brewers' beers with equal fervour. They produce brochures and pamphlets about the range they offer and they give expert advice on what to look for in cask beer, the different malts and hops used and the aromas and flavours that come from the raw materials. WaverleyTBS wouldn't bother with cask beer and put such effort into promoting it if the sector were in terminal decline. The company isn't a charity. It exists to make profits and wouldn't touch poor-selling products with the proverbial bargepole. But Breading and Silsby are dealing with a buoyant sector fuelled by hundreds of brewers who are passionate about their products and believe in beers with character and flavour rather than chill and fizz. It's an exciting time to be drinking good beer. The task of all of us who make it and write about is to bring it to the attention of pubgoers who merely "drink the advertising". There is a life beyond Stella Artois. We may not have �40 million at our disposal but lets redouble our efforts to proclaim the joys of British cask beer.

 home   about         Protz   features   A-Z      books