Pints of View Summer 2026 - the branch magazine of Mansfield & Ashfield CAMRA.
Opinion
In Yorkshire, Theakston, which will celebrate 200 years of brewing in 2027, says it had its best year ever in 2025. In the same county, Timothy Taylor says it's brewing more cask beer than before the Covid pandemic. It's not exactly a micro - it brews 70,000 barrels a year of which 80 per cent is cask, with Landlord leading the field.
Across the Pennines, Robinsons family brewery in Stockport has built a new plant to supply cask beer to its 300 pubs. In Derbyshire, Thornbridge also reports a strong surge for its cask beers, some of which are brewed in a Burton union fermenter, that was surplus to requirements at Marston's.
Down in Cornwall, St Austell has launched a range of seasonal cask beers that will augment its core brands. In Suffolk, Greene King has similarly unveiled new seasonal beers to stand alongside their IPA, Abbot and Old Speckled Hen on the bar.
Carlsberg should take a long, hard look at Greene King, which clearly sees no sign of the decline in demand for cask reported by the Danes. The Suffolk company is now the biggest producer of cask beer in the country and it's investing a mighty £40m in a new brewery that will supply its formidable estate of 2,700 pubs.
A strong sign that campaigning works comes with the news that AB InBev, the world's biggest brewer, best known for Stella Artois and American Budweiser, has launched a promotion for Draught Bass. This is the result of lovers of the beer staging an annual “Drink Bass Day" and compiling a list of pubs that serve the beer with a National Bass Directory.
Draught Bass once accounted for 800,000 barrels a year but that has fallen to just 30,000. But now AB InBev is promoting it with new pump clips and etched glasses and stressing its history 19th century history, when its Red Triangle was the first registered trademark in Britain.
The other global brewers will turn their backs on this success story and will continue to shutter breweries and axe cask beers.
So as we raise a foaming tankard to celebrate CAMRA's 55th anniversary let us pledge to carry on campaigning. There's no room for complacency.
(Originally published on What's Brewing - https://wb.camra.org.uk/)
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