Profit before pleasure?

Disappearing from bars?

A lifetime spent working for within marketing for regional brewers has given me a unique insight into world of pubs and beer. I appreciate the different objectives of the business from brewing and wholesaling to pub retailing. A common goal is to brew, sell and serve excellent cask beer creating wealth for the business. However has the drive for profit in extracting every last pint from a cask begun to challenge these goals resulting is less cask beer being available in pubs?



Cask filter pan

The drive for profit from cask beer is nothing new, its been going on for years. I recall in the early 1980's as a young lad working behind the bar in a managed house. On my first day at the end of the night all the slops for a cask were collected and put in a bucket in the cellar and left overnight with a used tea towel covering the top. The following morning this was then filtered back in the cask via a filter pan, (known as filtering back) - no wonder the pub in question had a poor beer reputation and sadly this appalling practice only contributed to the demise of cask beer.

Not that I see this unhygienic method going on at the moment. No, its more mathematical than that. Now the drive is all about "yield" driven by how many pints you can get out of a cask or keg as measured by the till system. An extra pint each week per cask equals 52 pints a year, at retail its worth £200 per year. Multiply that by the number of casks a pub might do per annum and you can see the attraction. So how is this achieved?

In my view, how it should be done is through proper cellar practices and well trained bar staff. A cask should be vented, allowing it to rest and condition properly so the beer is perfect and not over conditioned or green. The cask should be stillaged on its belly (as the cask was designed to do) allowing any sediment to remain in the belly and not be pulled through the lines. Each pint should be served to hold at least 95% beer and 5% froth. That's the legal minimum acceptable!

How its done now could be as follows:

• Stock craft keg or lager instead of cask - the growth of craft keg and lager brands offer 100%+ yield from its keg. There is no sediment so no beer left behind to throw away. A cask holds 72 pints but you would expect up to two pints here to be sediment/spoiled beer. An 11 gallon keg holds 88 pints, you would expect to get at least 88 pints plus from this. So craft keg and lager is attractive not only to the consumer, but also the retailer and pub operator, it generates more profit!
• Serve under measure pints - a practice that's been going on for years sometimes contributed to by the beer sparkler as fitted on swan neck beer engines, its a relic of the 1990's and no longer relevant for todays drinker. CAMRA are quite right in their views on this, consumers have a right to expect a full pint.
• Stock unbreakable beers - what might this be? A good example is Doombar where much of the sediment is removed before putting into cask. It makes for a very user friendly beer and no issues for the licensee. Hats off to them, its not a very interesting beer but tastes ok and for the licensee it generates the required profit.
• Use the float dispense system - a relatively new method of extracting cask beer from a cask, it draws from the top of the cask rather than the bottom. In theory it draws only pristine beer with no wastage and can be used from when the beer is first delivered, no need to vent and rest, an attraction for licensees for events or who have cash flow concerns and need to use the beer on the day of delivery. It should also not draw sediment especially if used with an unbreakable beer as above. 
• Pub operator pressure - the expectation for the retailer is to get more than 100% from the cask, so that's more than the 72 pints it contains. The pressure is for the pub manager to achieve this and some are commercially pressured into using a combination of the above.

My question would be, is cask beer is being squeezed off the bar by the pressure of commercial business?

There are various reasons why a cask beer line may be removed from a bar, but in my view the clamour to get every last drop out of a cask has begun to outweigh the desire to serve consistently top quality beer.  So yes, I do believe the issue of yield is a contributor to why cask beer is disappearing off bars. Perhaps its time for pub groups and retailers to recognise and accept that cask beer comes with a sediment that is essential for serving the beer in top quality condition. Cask without this is not the real deal!