It's time to halt the real ale slide
Cask-conditioned beers are suffering from image problems, says David Best .
Cask-conditioned ale now accounts for less than 10% of pints drunk by British consumers, and is declining by the same percentage year on year.
Figures from AC Nielsen reveal that 95% of cask ale drinkers are male, half of whom are aged 50 or more. Only 2.7% of the lucrative 18 to 24 age group and 16% of 25- to 43-year-olds admitted to being real ale devotees.
If the decline continues, the great British tradition of cask-conditioned ale will all but cease to exist. But what to do? My own research, carried out over the last 18 months or so, may provide some answers.
Most of those questioned, especially in the 18 to 34 age group, expressed a preference for chilled beers, mainly lager.
Those in the 18- to 34-year-old age group also expressed the opinion that real ale had a poor image - woolly jumpers, beards and sandals being just a few of the more acceptable word associations used.
To a large extent, the same age group felt that real ale was an irrelevance and preferred to drink what the rest of their peer group were drinking - usually bottled Budweiser or something similar.
Inconsistent quality - all age groups felt real ales can vary enormously from pub to pub.
Lack of confidence - all age groups recognised that cask-conditioned ales need to be kept in tiptop condition but felt that not many licensees kept them that way.
A high percentage of those questioned in the 70-plus age group said they had moved on to "smooth flow" beer or lager. Many in this age group recalled the days when, if the beer was substandard, it was just hard luck.
So temperature, image, peer group pressure, inconsistency, lack of confidence and memories of the bad old days have all played their part. But while some are comparatively easy to rectify, others, I fear, will be more intractable.
Temperature, for instance, can easily be adjusted to suit modern tastes, and even those beers which form a protein haze when kept at low temperatures can easily be adjusted to be served bright.
Image and peer group pressure can both be influenced by imaginative marketing and advertising, whereas inconsistency and lack of confidence in the product are less easily dealt with.
Casks are routinely vented and tapped to allow any secondary fermentation to take place and the beer to "drop bright". Unfortunately, the same system provides a ready means of access to bacteria, wild yeast and publicans.
Again, bacteria and wild yeast are elements which can be controlled by scrupulous cellar hygiene, but as far as many publicans are concerned, the system presents a much-needed opportunity to economise.
Who can blame them when few breweries or pub estate operators allow for "ullage" to cover line cleaning and that portion of the contents which is unusable when the barrel has to be changed?
David Best is a former publican of the Bushell's Arms in Preston, Lancashire
