What lies beyond the ale?
This big splash has become a very welcome part of what is, after five years, something of an annual ritual. Every spring the report’s stakeholders start to have meetings about what we want to focus on. In July I start to get the data I need. In the first week of August I work through a blazing hangover to deliver a rough first draft (always rougher than I’ve promised) to a meeting of the great and good on the second day of the Great British Beer Festival.
Then it’s the mad scramble to design, proof, agree key messages and negotiate wording on any delicate issues, before launching in London in late September/early October to a consensus of yes, we’re all doing very well. Cask ale is in good shape.
The first few times, we attempted to get our message out to the national press, but it fell on deaf ears. “We don’t write about beer” was often the sickening response.
Last year this changed: the report had excellent coverage across various national newspapers, plus national and local radio. It was brilliant: cask ale was being noticed. The message was getting through.
This year it changed again. We still got some good press, but not as much as last year. Instead, a new response: “Oh, not another story about how well cask ale is doing. We’ve already done this. Sorry.”
Comments on those which did run were similar: “I’m sure I’ve read this article in this publication before…”
When we launched the report, I cited this feedback as a sign of enormous success.
It’s worth remembering that when we started the Cask Report, the general perception (at least to those not close to it) was that this was a drink in long-term, terminal decline.
No one thinks that any more.
I was out for a beer last night with an ad agency who wanted me to explain why cask ale is now so trendy — why even people who don’t like the taste feel obliged to order it when out with their peers in London bars.
(Again, in the report, I cited this newfound fashionability as a huge positive — though as some have rightly pointed out, with this kind of hipness comes the real possibility of a backlash.)
Cask ale is in fine fettle – and everyone knows it. The momentum behind promoting cask (of which the Cask Report is but one small part) has succeeded in its aim of making cask feel relevant and energetic, bringing in new drinkers — including a sizeable chunk of women and younger people — destroying old stereotypes, and putting cask back on the bar in thousands of pubs. The licensees stocking it are reaping the profits of doing so.
But we have a tendency towards pessimism in our industry. After I finished my launch presentation, people approached me and said, “So, you’re saying people are bored of hearing about cask ale then?” or even “So, people are bored of cask ale?”
That’s not what I said at all.
What I said was that people have got the message that cask is in revival, doing much better than it was.
We’ve been saying this for several years now, and they’ve heard us, loud and clear.
Hard though it may be for long-term campaigners and real-ale fans to believe, the perception battle has been won. I’m not saying anyone is bored of cask. I’m saying that now we have to build on this, and stop repeating the same things about cask.
The Cask Report (if it appears again) and anyone else committed to spreading awareness and appreciation of real ale now has the freedom — and the obligation — to start focusing on more detailed messages about why people should be interested in cask, now that it’s back.
We could collectively shift our main focus to education about beer styles, or diversity of flavour, suitability with food, ingredients, provenance or simply bloody good stories.
But whatever we do, we have to answer the question: “OK, cask ale is back. I get it. I’m listening.
“So now what?’
