Cask beer drinkers are far more ready and willing to pay a premium price for well-kept ale than most brewers or pubs believe.

That's the view of beer writer and broadcaster Pete Brown (pictured), which he told delegates at the Future of Cask Beer seminar, organised by Cask Marque during Cask Ale Week.

Brown said during 15 years of researching the market he had been told many times by the industry that the main reason real ale does not command a higher price on the bar “is that cask drinkers won’t pay it”.

However, Brown told delegates at the seminar, held at Brewer’s Hall in London: “I’ve never had that said to me by a drinker, in all the interviews I’ve done. In fact, many people drink cask ale as part of a portfolio that includes premium lagers, and many of them believe they’re already paying the same price for cask as they are for a pint of Peroni.”

Updating delegates on the current state of cask and the wider beer market, as well as outcome of the Fresh Beer Campaign earlier this year, Brown revealed BBPA figures which show that while the on-trade beer market is now back to 87 per cent of its 2019 volumes, cask ale is only at 78 per cent and has continued the longer term-sales decline that was in place before the pandemic.

Brown suggested industry’s choices boiled down to “either accept that cask ale is now a far more niche product than it has been historically, or start to invest in promoting cask at a much higher level”.

He cited what he called “the Madri effect”, after the successful lager launched by Molson Coors in 2020, as an example of what can be achieved with the right investment. “Despite only being Carling with added hop extract,” quipped Brown, Madri has helped the premium lager category move to 111 per cent of its 2019 on-trade volumes.

In contrast, Brown said the results of the three-month trial of the Fresh Beer Campaign to promote cask at the point-of-sale in pubs, while promising to an extent, had been inconclusive. He said the industry needed to commit to funding the campaign “for at least a year”.  

Speaking to What’s Brewing, CAMRA chief executive Tom Stainer said: “CAMRA’s policy on cask ale pricing has always been what the industry has argued for a long time, which is for a price ladder.

“That would just be the same as every other sensible product out there, such as wine or lager. There are people at entry-level looking for value, and there are people willing to pay a premium price for a high-end product.

“There’s always a danger of getting stereotypical views on this, and it’s very easy to pigeonhole cask ale drinkers of a certain age or certain type and say they won’t appreciate quality. That stereotypical cheap beer drinker sitting in a corner of the bar might also be prepared to pay seven or eight quid for a half of something special because he knows exactly where the brewery is, and what has gone into the beer.” 

The seminar also heard from Simon Townsend, the former chief executive of Enterprise Inns, and now chairman of Wadworth and a non-executive director at Adnams and JW Lees. Billed as a “gamekeeper turned poacher”, Townsend confessed he now believes that his former pubco and others “may, with hindsight, have done cask ale a disservice by allowing smaller brewers to proliferate” without a sustainable business model.

Townsend argued that smaller brewers had been able to compete on price rather than quality thanks both to duty relief and initiatives such as SIBA’s Direct Delivery Scheme, which Enterprise Inns pioneered. “In practice,” said Townsend, “this acted to the detriment of established brewers with a proven track record in supporting cask, and created a disincentive for them to continue to invest in the sector.”