Lager is not your enemy

Last week I was invited to chair the main debate at the SIBA conference in Leeds. Taking up such a role you silently pray for the audience to be a lively one, ready with a host of incisive questions. And for the first 20 minutes we were doing rather well.

Then one delegate speculated that the reason there were no punch-ups at real ale festivals and why there were on city centre streets was that those people drank lager and those at beer festivals drank cask beer. His summation was there were chemicals in lager that made people behave in this violent way.

There are of course many ways to debunk this 'theory'. But what got me more about this comment was how righteous it was. It suggested that everything that was wrong with our drinking culture was thanks to lager, and oh, if only we could drink more cask ale and be more civilised.

Not only is that sentiment codswallop, but it is beginning to look dated. Because these drinkers may be shocked to discover that some of the brewers they laud for their great cask beer are also embracing lager in equal measure. From Cains' Lager to the under-licence Far Eastern lagers Asahi and Kirin, brewed by Shepherd Neame and Wells & Young's, these are beers that are brewed and marketed with as much care, attention and craft as any cask beer. Lovers of cask beer need to understand - lager is not their enemy.