Guess who'll miss the boat on cask?

The Morning Advertiser offered a fine example of 'parallel universes last week on page 8. There was I appealing to Greene King to keep open Ridley's Essex brewery while at the top of the page Graham Page of analysts AC Nielsen was voicing his familiar mantra that cask beer is in such decline that more breweries will close.

Only a sentimental blockhead would ask Greene King to underwrite a loss-making brewery in Essex. But the Nielsen figures are not what they seem at first glance and even contain some glaring anomalies.

If cask beer is following the lemmings over the precipice it seems curious that a box accompanying the Nielsen report showed Marston's Pedigree, Old Speckled Hen, Wadworth 6X, Adnams Broadside, Shepherd Neame Spitfire, Taylor Landlord, Fuller's London Pride, Young's Bitter and Thwaites all showing growth. Significantly, Draught Bass was shown to be in decline. And there is the real truth of the state of the cask beer sector.

Even Nielsen admits in its report that if you strip out the cask beer figures of the Big Four national brewers then a quite different picture emerges.

It is a picture of revival and growth in the independent sector and a startling increase in the number of new micros starting production.

Timothy Taylor has invested around £11m over the past decade increasing capacity at its Keighley plant from 27,000 barrels a year to 50,000.

I cannot imagine a board meeting of the Taylor family where the discussion went something like this: 'Cask beer sector is going down t'toilet so let's flush 11 million quid after it. Yorkshire folk don't throw brass away like that.

Neither do the canny people at Adnams in Suffolk. They have increased fermenting capacity three times in almost as many years in order to keep up with demand for their Bitter and Broadside. Last week, Hall & Woodhouse in Dorset launched a new beer, Badger First Gold. The start-up costs of a new brand are enormous and H&W invested only in First Gold because the company which does meticulous consumer research knew the demand existed, based upon the steady and sturdy growth of its other cask beers.

Daniel Thwaites of Blackburn is a regional giant with 450 pubs and 1,000 free trade accounts. In the late 1990s and early 2000s it went down the nitro-keg 'smooth-flow route but has now returned with some enthusiasm to cask production. Andrew Flintoff has been hired to promote Thwaites' leading premium brand, Lancaster Bomber. As top sports stars don't come cheap, we can safely assume that Thwaites is feeling bullish about the prospects for the cask sector.

Hydes of Manchester, not mentioned in the report, has grown its production from 100,000 barrels a year to 200,000. If that's a decline, I'd like some of it.

But what of the global brewers? The phrase 'Draught Bass in decline says it all. Both Bass and Boddingtons, Interbrew brands, have been hived off to regional brewers. Coors has followed a similar path, with its cask beers brewed for it by smaller regionals. S&N, having closed its Edinburgh and Newcastle plants, has just one main draught ale, John Smith's, and it is the smooth flow version that gets all the support. As for Carlsberg, it seems to have lost all interest in Tetley's Bitter, in either cask or keg versions.

The global brewers have a simple, if not simple-minded, philosophy known as 'brew 'em fast, stack 'em high and move 'em out. Profit, not quality or consumer preference, rules the roost. Lager and keg beers are preferred because they have a long shelf life, unlike annoying and fiddly cask ale, which needs a modicum of care and attention to deliver its robust aromas and flavours.

But the globals may have misread the market. The MA also reported last week that sales of Stella Artois are in decline in Britain, despite millions being thrown at it via expensive TV advertising.

Beer drinking is changing and the globals may yet rue the day they turned their backs on the cask sector.

I predict cask beer will flourish and prosper. If I'm wrong in five years' time, I will invite Graham Page to lunch and cheerfully eat my hat.