Celebrate Cask Ale Week with free tasters, new brews and ale trails

The hour approaches for cask ale lovers! Cask Ale Week, the annual celebration of our national drink, starts this Thursday, 18^th September and runs through to Sunday 28^th.

Around 10,000 pubs and numerous breweries up and down the country will be shining a light on cask ale, and hoping to win over new drinkers for this flavoursome, traditional and uniquely British drink. And, as cask ale can only be enjoyed in the pub, choosing it is a great way to support your local.

Cask Ale Week is a great time to discover cask ale, as brewers launch new beers to mark the occasion, and breweries and pubs run special promotions, ale trails and beer festivals. There are full details on the website, but here’s a snapshot of some of the cask-centric happenings taking place across the country this month:

• CaskFinder Ale Trail: download the Caskfinder app, buy a pint of cask ale in 12 pubs and claim your limited edition Cask Ale Week T-shirt.

• Free tasters of cask ale: between them, the 10,000 pubs taking part in Cask Ale Week are set to offer a whopping one million free ‘try before you buy’ tasters of cask. It’s a great way to find out what a cask ale tastes like before committing to a whole pint!

• Pub Quizzes: hundreds of pubs across the country will be running the Cask Ale Week Pub Quiz. So if you know your hops from your barley, and can match UK brewers to their flagship ales, why not try your hand?

• Pub promotions: a number of pub operators are encouraging customers to try cask ale:

  • Arkell’s hour: if you can slip to the pub mid-afternoon, Arkell’s managed pubs are selling cask ale at £3 per pint between 3.00-4.00, Monday-Friday

  • In Fuller’s pubs, anyone on their database who brings a friend along can claim a free pint of cask ale for them.

  • Ember Inns’ Cask Ale Club offers pints of cask ale for £3.50 every Monday and Thursday.

  • Craft Union Pubs: customers who buy five pints of cask can claim their sixth free

  • Nicholson’s 80 pubs are running a Cask Card loyalty scheme; buy four pints, get the fifth free.

  • In addition, during September, 5p from every pint of Nicholson’s Pale Ale – which is brewed by St Austell Brewery – will be donated to Social Bite, a charity and social business working to end homelessness.

  • New brews

    • Genevieve: a collaboration brew between Greene King and Thornbridge breweries, this 4.5% West Coast IPA is a clean, crisp ale with citrus and pineapple notes. Available in most Greene King pubs.

    • Lancaster Gluten-Free Session Pale Ale: a gluten-free version of the brewer’s popular 3.4% ale, full of hops to deliver a delicate fruit flavour and a crisp aftertaste.

• Welsh brewer Brains has created Rev James Reserve, a limited edition, 5.5% ABV, more robust version of its flagship Reverend James Ale, which it has been brewing for 140 years.

• Loch Leven Brewery in Kinross is launching Rob Roy, a 4.5% warming, jet black, smooth stout, brewed with chocolate malt

• Wiltshire brewer Wadworths celebrates its 150th birthday on 27 September and has created a special edition 4.8% classic bitter called 150, available in Wadworths pubs.

• Arkells has created a new 3.8% ale, using a heritage barley from malt supplier French & Jupps, brewed in their Victorian brewhouse in Swindon, and aptly named Ancestry.

Beer festivals and ale trails

• The first ever Indie Beer Cymru festival arrives in Haverfordwest in Wales on 19-20 September, a chance to sample more than 100 beers from Welsh brewers

• York Beer Festival takes place from 17-20 September in the city’s spectacular St Lawrence Parish Church, offering more than 200 beers.

• The debut Borderlands Beer Festival runs on 19-20 September at Tempest Brewery in Tweedbank, Galashiels.

Climb aboard the ale express! The Forth Valley Dark Trail by Rail, runs from 26-28 September, departing Linlithgow and stopping at various trackside pubs to enjoy dark beers, ending in Dunblane. In Sussex, the Bluebell Railway Beer Festival on 19-21 September offers cask ales, food and live music, and travel on vintage steam trains between four stations.

• Palmers Brewery Beer Festival, on 27 September, takes place in the brewery’s historic cellar in Bridport, Dorset.

• Taste the Terroir at the Cotswold Lion Brewery in Cheltenham, on 20-21 September, celebrates brewing tradition, with a spotlight on the brewer’s Terroir Series using ingredients sourced from the Cotswolds

• Hook Norton Brewery in Oxfordshire celebrates its 175^th anniversary this year, with an Ale Trail running on the CaskFinder app until 28 September.

Cask Ale facts

• Cask ale is enjoyed by all ages and genders, with an increase in the numbers of younger beer drinkers ordering cask over the past year: recent stats show that 25% of 18 – 24-year-old beer drinkers, the Generation Z demographic, regularly order cask ale at the pub, an increase of more than 50% on the previous year. (YouGov survey for the Society of Independent Brewers and Associates (SIBA)).

• Cask ales come in a range of strengths, with many at lower ABVs than other beers on the bar, supporting moderate drinking

• Despite the urban myth, cask ale should never be served warm, but cool from the pub cellar, at between 11°- 13°C.

• Cask ale enthusiasts have launched a petition calling on the government to recognise the cask ale as having Intangible Cultural Heritage, overseen by UNESCO. The petition runs until October 1 and can be signed at https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/716686

-ends-

Cask Ale Week Infographic

Further information:

Ros Shiel: ros@shielporter.com / 07841 694137

John Porter: john@shielporter.com / 07734 054389

Third-party news items that are posted on the Guild website come from press releases and emails received by the Guild. These are posted as they have been received. Their publication on the Guild website is an informational service only and is neither an endorsement of the content, nor its sender, by the Guild. For enquiries, please use the contact details that can be found at the bottom of each post.