Research by seven of Britian's biggest regional brewers has shown licensees need to cut down the number of cask ale brands in their pubs to ensure quality.
According to Why Handpull?, a new cask ale think tank made up of Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries, Greene King, Fuller's, Adnams, Caledonian, Charles Wells and Everards the secret to top quality sales of cask ale is quality not quantity.
The group advises that unless you are a specialist cask ale pub the best way to improve the quality of cask is to reduce the number of brands and slowly build them up as you become more skilled at getting the quality right.
The group has been working together since December 2004 on the "Why Handpull?" project and the research, conducted by market research specialists Adsearch, is the first tangible result.
The seven brewers funded the research and are now looking to work with consumers and beer industry groups to recommend other ways of improving handpulled beer sales.
The group will meet twice a year, looking all the time for other brewers to work with, and publish new findings every spring and autumn.
Alistair Darby, managing director of WDB Brands said the new group was there to represent the interests of all drinkers of handpulled beer. "We think there is a lot of rubbish spoken about handpulled beer by people who have no consumer insight," he said. "It is governed too much by anecdote rather than science and we want to debunk a lot of the mythology."
John Roberts, beer and brands director at Fuller's, said: "This think tank is a place where we can create ideas and put some momentum behind the ones that we think will work in the industry."
The research also showed that despite a consumer belief that handpulled beer was one of the more expensive products on the bar, it is actually one of the cheapest. "Handpulled beer is in fact the cheapest parts of a drinkers' repertoire," said Mr Darby. "The margin is significantly lower than in other categories and this is something we have to face."