Trying to keep it simple

Everards in Leicestershire has come up with a revolutionary way in which to widen the appeal of cask beer and attract new drinkers - and the key is having simple tasting notes. Marketing chief David Bremner explains all to Adam Withrington

One of the great advantages of being in this business is you do get to try some fantastic beers and are surrounded by people who can help understand more about the good, the bad and the fuggley.

However, most people do not have this luxury. For them cask ale must be an intimidating animal: so much to try but where to start?

As an industry we do very little to help these people. Either they have nothing to go on but an enigmatic-looking pump clip or they find some tasting notes on the beer. And this is where the real fun begins.

Because there's nothing as irritating as reading tasting notes and seeing sentences like: "It has a dark tangy, slightly smoky and nutty aroma underpinned by a biscuity hop dryness".

What does that mean? And can I taste this multitude of flavours when I actually drink the beer? Can I hell! Do I even want to taste "a piquant, nostril-widening aroma of spicy and peppery hops, juicy malt and tart fruit"? No thanks, I'd just like something bitter - with no fruitiness if it's all the same to you.

When I go into a pub and see the range of ales on the bar is my first instinct to approach the bartender and ask him which of these ales is the most balanced? "I only drink balanced beers you see… if it's not balanced I come out in hives…"

Shooting ourselves in the foot?​

Cask ale is a wonderful thing but as sales dip year after year and brewers plough huge amounts of money into trying to reverse that decline, are we not shooting ourselves in the foot here? Either the consumer has no information at all or they have mind-numbingly complex tasting notes to wade through.

David Bremner, marketing director at Leicestershire brewer Everards, has long agreed with the argument that the industry doesn't do much to help consumers.

"There is a place for aficionados but it is not the public domain," he argues. "You could count on one hand the number of people who can actually taste and smell everything that is described in some tasting notes."

David has a solution and it is to completely change the way beers are marketed to the consumer.

He has designed a new format for the tasting notes of Everards' beers with a bitterness and sweetness scale for each beer as well as a "Cyclops" scale, which measures the look, smell and taste of each beer.

These scales are about to be put on beermats, dripmats and behind pump clips across the Everards estate and in all the company's national accounts. David hopes this will help the consumer engage with cask ale.

He exclusively explained his thinking behind the idea to The Publican.

David Bremner argues his case:​

"We decided to change our tasting notes for two main reasons: firstly they were far too complicated for 99 per cent of our consumers, and secondly we saw an opportunity to use tasting notes to develop cask beer sales.

"The latest AC Nielsen stats show standard ale down six per cent and premium ale down one per cent.

"Whether these figures are absolutely 100 per cent right or not, they are close enough to show us that we have a problem with the decline in real ale. This has to be addressed.

"There are only so many variables in reversing this decline:

• Get more pubs to sell real ale or a wider range
• Get pubs to serve better quality ale
• Get barstaff better educated on real ale
• Get existing drinkers learning more about real ale
• Get new customers into real ale.

"There is a whole generation now whose first alcoholic drink was not real ale, cider or martini but was Hooch or Two Dogs and, given the marketing success of alcopops and mainstream lagers, they have never really been tempted to give ales a go. We need to address this and also start to make cask beer more applicable to female drinkers.

"What our new tasting notes attempt to do is tackle points three, four and five above. It would be great to think that among the plethora of bodies representing the pub and beer industries we could get a co-ordinated approach to the first two points.

"In short, these tasting notes help people understand beer better. The two dominant taste sensations of beer are bitterness and sweetness and so we mark these out of five. This allows customers to start to relate to different brands and spot trends in the beers that they enjoy. For example, if you like Deuchars IPA and Timothy Taylor's Landlord then you will also probably enjoy Everards' Beacon, as they share a similar bitterness.

"This is simple, but research among the pubs told us that these measurements mean far more to customers than 'body' or 'balance'. Customers did not even know what these terms meant yet we have been using them for years. That's no way to attract customers.

"Added to this we use key words for each of seeing, smelling and tasting rather than a long waffly sentence talking of biscuit aromas and hints of chocolate. Most people new to the category would think you were talking about a novelty beer and only a minute percentage of people in the UK would be able to pick up these tastes and smells. We then made this easier on the eye using the 'Cyclops' graphic representing what drinkers see, smell and taste.

"We plan to use this approach on pump clip reverses so that barstaff can start to learn key words about the beers they are trying to sell and remember key characteristics of the beers and the differences between them.

"We will also use it on drip mats so that customers can do the same. On posters in the pub we will display all our beers so that customers can look through the range and start to associate with the key characteristics of each. This will also be the way we advertise the beers on sales presenters and the website.

"If the launch is successful we will try to include as many other suppliers as possible. With a bit of luck we will all start to talk the same language - maybe hops could be the new grapes! This is a huge project, though, and we just want customers for now to learn a few basic facts about the beers they enjoy."

Is this a winner?​

The cleverness of this idea lies in its simplicity. I would wager a large number of female drinkers are put off beer because of its bitterness. You only need to see how many women are drinking Hoegaarden, a much sweeter beer, in pubs these days to understand that.

So a simple scale informing consumers of a beer's bitterness or sweetness could work wonders for a previously undiscovered beer. One of the sweetest beers in the Everards portfolio is Equinox. How many people would know that to look at the pump clip? The scale, however, points this out pretty conclusively.

David's idea is proving popular. Tony Jerome, the Campaign for Real Ale's senior marketing manager, says: "I think Everards' new initiative is exactly what the real ale industry needs.

"This idea will also help to educate those inexperienced real ale drinkers to understand what style of beer they do and don't like and help them make a choice at the bar that suits their tastebuds.

"We hope to work closely with Everards in the near future to spread this concept out to other real ale brewers so that this simple but effective beer tasting information becomes a recognised national scheme to help increase sales of real ale across Britain."

David is now in the process of presenting the scheme to several regional brewers and a number of key wholesalers.

"It's a bit of a crusade," he says. "Some people ask me why I don't keep it to myself. The fact is we desperately need to attract more people to the category and if this scheme can help the whole category, the