Cask beer sales are under serious threat due to huge shift to online sales and at-home drinking, a new report has revealed.

The last two years have seen seismic shift in the UK Brewing. Cask volumes were decimated in 2020 and 2021 and are unlikely to recover in the short to medium term, with brewers switching to keg and can formats.

The SIBA Craft Beer Report 2022, produced by the Society of Independent Brewer found while overall beer sales across the market in 2021 were down 14.2 per cent per cent on 2019 pre-pandemic figures, the picture was much worse for small independent breweries, who saw production levels drop by an average of 40 per cent in 2020 and 16 per cent in 2021 when compared to 2019.

“Cask beer was sadly a casualty of the pandemic, as when pubs close small independent breweries lose the only place they can sell traditional cask beer,” said SIBA chief executive James Calder.

“Because of this we have seen a huge wave of breweries creating webshops and on-site shops, and many putting their beer into bottles and cans for the first time.”

According to the report cask beer now makes up just 46 per cent of small brewers’ production, compared to 67 per cent in 2019 – a huge 21 per cent drop over the last two years. On the flipside a third of SIBA member breweries launched a webshop during the pandemic and 40 per cent now have a bricks and mortar shop.

However the report did also find a consumer thirst for craft beer in their pub, with 75 per cent of beer drinkers surveyed in 2022 saying they thought it was important that their local pub offered a range of craft beers from small breweries.

Report editor Caroline Nodder said: “This shows the growing emphasis consumers place on the provenance of the beers they buy, and this is a trend that has certainly been accelerated by the pandemic.

“Consumers are increasingly seeking out smaller artisan producers and expect their products to be available at retail.”