2 days ago
Cask ale is one of Britain's greatest inventions – and could be making a comeback
There aren't many pubs like the Limeburner's Arms. When I visited this north Lancashire classic recently with a friend, three separate groups turned to greet us warmly as we entered, while the pub's genial landlord, Joe Moore, got around using a couple of long brooms as crutches (he told me it was due to a recent operation). Payment was cash only – I had just enough shrapnel for two drinks – and the loos were outside.
And then there's the cask ale. Travel around England's best pubs and you'll encounter many ways of serving it: sometimes poured straight from the barrel ('gravity'); sometimes into a jug before being decanted into a glass; sometimes through a swan-neck spout; sometimes part-poured, chilled, then topped up to order; and, particularly in the Midlands and North, sometimes through a sparkler, producing a thick collar of foam.
At the Limeburners, though, a hybrid system I'd never seen before was in use: part gravity, part sparkler, with some sort of pump arrangement, the cask set on a low surface so Joe had to crouch to pour. It was a remarkable sight – but then again, cask ale is a remarkable product.
Not everyone gets it. In a world where serving Guinness is regarded as fascinatingly arcane, the genuine quirks of cask ale can be off-putting. It's Heath Robinson, old blokes with extravagant unkempt beards and 'Kidderminster Beer Fest '93' T-shirts, it's Dungeons and Dragons. And yet – crucially – it's just about as good as beer gets. It's absolutely delicious.
Well, sometimes. Too often it's warm, when it should be cellar temperature (12C). It's frequently too flat; while it has less dissolved CO2 than keg beer – which makes it so drinkable – it shouldn't be like a millpond. And too often it's too old: cask ale really only lasts three days on the bar, so it needs to be drunk fresh.
This is presumably why so many pubs stopped serving it after Covid: too much of a risk. Some breweries have also stepped back, most notably Carlsberg Marstons, which decided late last year to close the historic Banks's Brewery in Wolverhampton.
(Carlsberg Marstons, by the way, also produce 'Fresh Ale', a hand-pulled product that is not cask ale. Unlike cask ale, it's finished at the brewery; real cask ale continues to ferment in the pub cellar, arriving genuinely fresh in the glass. Watch out for it.)
Depressing stuff, but maybe the future is brighter than it seems. Figures gathered by YouGov for this year's Cask Ale Week (September 18–28) show that 25 per cent of 18–24-year-old beer drinkers – 'Generation Z' – now regularly order cask ale at the pub, a more than 50 per cent increase on a similar survey in 2024. And why wouldn't they? Most of Britain's best small breweries make it, and many make it exceptionally well.
I saw this first hand whilst researching my guide to the 500 Best Pubs in England. I sampled local favourites all over the country, beers that you wouldn't know about unless you were in their neck of the woods.
Wensleydale Brewery, which I enjoyed at the George and Dragon in Hudswell; Bridgetown, which I loved at the Albert Inn in Totnes; Hattie Brown's, savoured at the King's Arms in Langton Matravers; and Drenchfoot, which was delicious at the Blackfriars Tavern in Great Yarmouth – among many others.
Cask ale is a genuine grassroots culture. Many sneer at the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra), but it's consumer-led, with its (admittedly sometimes quirky) direction decided by members, not the bottom line. Take Bass: its current revival was driven by a small group of old geezers who kept a record of which pubs were serving it around the country. The multinational that owned it wasn't interested, until they saw how its popularity was growing. Pure people power.
Purely British, too, which may be part of the problem. English people will go into raptures over food and drink they've 'discovered' in Spain or Italy, yet ignore what's right in front of them. A good friend of mine once argued that cask ale would be more popular if it were called 'caskalé' and came from near the Med, and there's definitely some truth in that. Look at the baffling popularity of Peroni.
All the same, I remain optimistic.
Cask ale is one of the fundamental elements of an English pub: even those that stopped selling it after Covid-19 have largely kept their handpumps, albeit sitting forlornly unused. Cask has made dramatic comebacks before, most notably in the 1970s thanks to Camra. Perhaps its new generation of drinkers can bring cask ale rushing back once more, in all its glorious idiosyncrasy.
