The American writer Mark Twain famously observed when a newspaper published his obituary “reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated” and real ale’s demise has been similarly and regularly overstated.

I recall in the early 1990s Christopher Hutt, one of the CAMRA pioneers and author of the seminal book The Death of the English Pub, telling me that sales of cask beer were “going through the floorboards”. Chris was running a small group of pubs dedicated to real ale and could see the fall in demand up close.

And yet, by the end of that decade, sales were booming. This was thanks in no small measure to the rise of microbrewers, many of whom were dedicated to cask ale. The fortunes of both the brewers and their beers were boosted with the introduction of Progressive Beer Duty in 2002 that meant their tax bills were cut by as much as half.

The success of cask beer this century has been dented badly. There has been an absurd and demeaning squabble over cask and “craft” and whether they are identical or different styles. And then came Covid and lockdowns, which sent cask beer into a tailspin as, to state the blindingly obvious, it’s a draught beer that can be sold only in pubs.

But there are signs a small recovery is underway. Hogs Back, the biggest brewery in Surrey, reports that sales of its cask beers are “nudging close to pre-Covid levels.” MD Rupert Thompson adds he will have a further 250 on-trade outlets by the summer and his main beer, TEA – Traditional English Ale – will be listed in all Mitchells & Butlers cask pubs in the London area.

The beer will also be listed by both Star Pubs & Bars and Greene King while Stonegate, Britain’s biggest pub company, is taking Hogs Back’s new cask IPA in all its 3,000 outlets for the summer.

Thornbridge, a major regional brewer based in Derbyshire, best known for its prize-winning Jaipur IPA, says things “are looking up for cask” and is launching 12 new cask ales every month. “Cask beer has always been in our DNA,” chief executive Simon Webster says.

In Norfolk, David Holliday, founder of the Moongazer brewery, also finds sales of his cask beers are returning to pre-Covid levels.

In Yorkshire, the Ossett Brewing Company is celebrating 25 years of brewing with four special cask beers, starting with Dazzler (4.5 per cent ABV) for the spring, followed by Easy Does It (3.4 per cent) this summer, Alter Ego (5.5 per cent) in the autumn and a dry stout Jet (4.2 per cent) for winter.

The success of Ossett is all the more welcome given the shock news that the legendary Black Sheep brewery in Masham has put out a notice to appoint administrators, overwhelmed by energy costs and other problems. We can only hope it can be rescued and will continue to produce its fine range of cask beers.

The cask ale sector would benefit from support from the country’s biggest brewers, but they have little or no interest in the category. Last month Heineken announced a multi-million-pound launch for a new “Spanish” lager, Cruzcampo. I use quote marks because while the beer originates in Sevilla the version brewed here will come from a giant factory in Manchester.

You’d think Heineken would be satisfied with producing its own lager along with Amstel and Moretti as well as Kronenbourg, which it makes by arrangement with Carlsberg, but it’s added Cruzcampo to the mix. The Manchester version will be 4.4 per cent, the Spanish original is 4.8.

The appeal of these lager brands to global brewers is that they are made cheaply and quickly, with little or no true lagering or ageing, and, with premium pricing, are immensely profitable as a result. That’s why Heineken has closed the Caledonian brewery in Edinburgh, home to award-winning Deuchar’s IPA: it has no time for beers with a short shelf life and comparatively low returns.

Last month, the Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company (CMBC) celebrated a year since its merger. Did the directors include in those celebrations their decision to close Jennings, the major brewery in Cumbria?

When Marston’s was independent it twice rescued Jennings from major floods and restored brewing to Cockermouth. But now Carlsberg is the dominant partner and Jennings has gone, its Cumberland Ale transferred to that elephant’s graveyard of lost beers, Banks’s brewery in Wolverhampton, home to Tetley “Yorkshire” Bitter.

You might think Molson Coors, a Canadian/American giant, would be satisfied with owning the country’s biggest brand, Carling. But no: in 2020, with a considerable fanfare, it launched a new “Spanish” lager called Madri. The quote marks are necessary again as there’s no such beer made in Spain.

Madri is a term of affection for people living in Madrid but even though the new 4.6 per cent beer is labelled Excepcional it flies under false colours, brewed in Burton-upon-Trent in part of the old Bass breweries.

Hasta la Vista, amigos, as they say in Staffordshire.