Real ale prompts real opportunities

Real ale may still evoke images of bearded sandal-wearers supping warm beers with names like Frog Spit and Badger’s Armpit, but the huge range and diversity of cask ales available in most pubs these days is attracting a growing following. The hackneyed image of the typical Camra member is well past its sell-by date (if it ever really existed) and today ale is in danger of becoming seriously cool. Madonna is known to enjoy the odd drop of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord, while chefs Gordon Ramsay and Marco Pierre White, the actor Neil Morrissey, DJ Chris Evans and former England and British Lions rugby star Lawrence Dallaglio have all championed “proper beer”. Tony Hadley, the Spandau Ballet frontman, has gone a step further by putting his own money behind the Red Rat Craft Brewery, in Suffolk, purveyor of a refreshing summer ale called Hadley’s and numerous Army regimental beers. The revival of cask ale is to some extent part of a wider move by consumers away from big corporate brands — witness the recent travails of Starbucks — towards local brands with provenance and heritage. Ale also has one other advantage over most lagers: taste. While lager tastes just the same whether served on draught in pubs or in cheap packs of 20 cans from the supermarket, cask ale is uniquely available in pubs and has a very different taste to bottled versions. Recent moves by the big pub companies, many in tandem with the excellent Cask Marque accreditation scheme, to ensure the product is stored and served correctly, often at a slightly cooler temperature, have also paid dividends, attracting many younger drinkers. Lighter, less bitter ales are also gaining traction among female drinkers. The result, as Camra figures last week showed, is record numbers of new breweries, mostly micros. Some 71 new beer-making facilities have opened in the past 12 months, lifting the total in Britain to 711. In historical terms, while total beer sales are their lowest level since the Great Depression, we now have more breweries than at any time since the Second World War. That is a statistic that is worth raising a pint to. Traditional ales are also finding favour overseas. Kent’s Shepherd Neame, which claims to be Britain’s oldest brewer, revealed last week that it had snared two awards at the first Hong Kong International Beer Awards. Its Bishops Finger beer won not only the best English ale category but it also beat beers from all over the world to win the award for the best overall beer. It is no coincidence that while micro-breweries are opening in record numbers, Britain’s biggest brewers continue to rationalise their monolithic production facilities. Scottish & Newcastle, now part of Heineken, has closed its breweries in both Edinburgh and Newcastle and has put Reading on notice of closure, while Anheuser-Busch InBev is to close the Budweiser plant in Mortlake next year. Then in 2011 Carlsberg is planning to shut the Tetley’s brewery in Leeds, a plant that in its heyday was world-famous for the cask ale it produced. Another ale brand that has suffered under national brewer ownership is Bass Ale, once the country’s biggest beer brand. The rot set in under Bass itself, as marketing resources were diverted into Carling, and under InBev the decline has accelerated. At least the quality of the beer is more consistent, now that production has been farmed out to Marston’s, but the future of this iconic brand does not look safe in current hands. Who knows, maybe InBev will eventually decide to sell the brand? While Marston’s would certainly look at such a deal, what price former S&N boss John Dunsmore riding to the rescue and adding Bass to a drinks cabinet that already includes Magners cider, Tennent’s lager and Tullamore Dew Irish whiskey? Dunsmore briefly considered bidding for Tia Maria before buying Tennent’s from InBev, and C&C Group shareholders are likely to support further moves to turn the group into a significant multi-beverage player. Alternatively, Dunsmore could follow the example of the micros and launch his own brand. He could always call it Frog Spit or Badger’s Armpit. Dominic Walsh is leisure industries correspondent at The Times