It is impossible to consume media as a British person without being bombarded with the anuran mug of Nigel Farage. His croaking is broadcasted across all forms of media from broadsheet newspapers to cringey cameos. Accordingly the other day the dreaded algorithm treated me to an old clip from SNL UK. The clip showed a dystopic future in which Nigel Farage had become Prime Minister. He sat at a desk in No.10 flanked by St. George’s cross’ and to his right was a hand pull beer engine, from which he helped himself to a decidedly flat looking pint of golden ale. Whilst this scene is disturbing in a number of ways, the presence of the hand pull really made me think. How often have I seen Farage portrayed like this, and when did real ale become an icon of fascism? Any number of totems could have been chosen to best represent Farage and what he stands for, and yet time after time real ale is chosen as the exemplar. 

Real Ale having an image problem isn’t exactly headline news. Those of us working in the industry are well aware of this, and if we want reminding we need only look as far as CAMRAs promo material, which often features a stunning array of young well to do white people, holding pints of ale and grinning like lobotomised chimpanzees. An admirable if not ineffective attempt to project a younger, more modern, public image. The problem is that they are trying to reframe what a modern real ale drinker looks like in the eyes of the public, rather than asking what real ale itself could and should be to the modern drinker. When I say ‘modern drinker’ I am not necessarily talking specifically or exclusively about younger people. The modern drinker is the product of decades of changing habits in alcohol consumption, but also wider societal trends and demographic shifts. Real ale in a modern context needs to reflect these changes, and cast its net wide, providing the public with several different paths to engage with it. 

What should real ale look like in a modern context? To me the reframing is simple. Ale needs to extract itself from its association with a middle England that has crossed the rubicon from bunting hanging nationalism to flag shagging fascism. We must kill the image of the Tetley’s man in his fox hunting pinks, of rural pubs filled with tweed jackets sodden with Old Peculiar, and drag real ale kicking and screaming into the 21st century where it can reclaim its place as a drink for the people. We do this by showing that the intrinsic benefits of real ale are well placed to tackle problems that are relevant to contemporary society. Benefits such as, but not limited to; price, cultural significance, and conscious consumption.

Price

Going to the pub is more expensive than ever, and it is all too easy to go for a couple of pints with your mates and find yourself thirty quid worse off in no time at all. Not always, but often, a pint of real ale will be the lowest cost alcoholic option in a pub. This is not something I particularly agree with, but that is where we are. In difficult financial times such as we are currently experiencing, the affordability of ale should be embraced, it does not cheapen the product itself and if it does, so what? For too long real ale drinkers have placed cask beer, and by extension themselves, on a pedestal from which they have looked down and sneered at lager drinkers. Snobbery has created high barriers to entry in other drinks markets, beer cannot afford to make the same mistake. Beerheads want beer to be taken seriously, to be revered like wine or whiskey, but it will never be wine nor whiskey and in trying to elevate itself it loses its accessibility. In the minds of the public beer will always be just beer, and if real ale drinkers are not careful then they will ‘what’s the matter lagerboy’ themselves into oblivion. 

Cultural Significance

I’m not a patriotic person in the least, but I do think it’s important for people to feel pride in where they come from, and that we need avenues for expressing that pride that aren’t paved with xenophobia. We have allowed national pride, and with it tradition, to be co-opted by the right wing, but real ale holds the potential to provide younger generations with an arena in which they are able to engage with and take pride in British tradition in a way that isn’t tied up in nationalism and jingoism. Over 99% of real ale in the world is produced and consumed in Great Britain making it a hyper-localised product that is intrinsically and exclusively linked to British culture. For a culture that is famously a patchwork of traits cherry picked from other cultures, this makes real ale something exceptional. There has been a movement in the UK to have cask beer recognised by UNESCO as Intangible Cultural Heritage led by Jonny Garrett which you can read more about in Jonny’s Pellicle piece here. Achieving this status would certainly be a step in the right direction and I genuinely believe that the legitimacy and media coverage that would accompany this accreditation has the potential to spark a real ale renaissance. 

Conscious consumption

The modern drinker is discerning and careful about exactly where and who their hard earned cash is going to, but real ale has an intrinsic ethos that has the rare ability to find purchase amongst a broad church of morals. Made local, consumed local. Most people tend towards local produce over something that has come from far away and the ephemeral nature of real ale means that it meets these conditions almost by necessity. The relatively short distance that cask beer travels between the sites of production and consumption make it far more sustainable than shipping beer from overseas. Real Ale is not environmentally friendly, far from it. It is water intensive and many ales use hops grown in far flung parts of the world, however it is unique in that its natural carbonation and utilisation of comparitively local ingredients make it a far more environmentally friendly alternative to macro beer. Big beer also has a bad habit of buying up successful independent breweries and then either tanking them completely, or moving production away from local communities to larger production centres. This has tangible effects on local communities, just earlier this year Molson Coors announced it was closing Sharp’s Brewery resulting in 50 redundancies. We must be careful however to not allow notions of moral superiority to create sanctimony. Conscious consumption must be an individual choice, and not weaponised to denigrate or gatekeep. 

There are also practical elements that are a lot more difficult to address. There is a squeeze occurring on cask beer lineups, simultaneously consumers expect a wider range of products to choose from, whilst drinking less than ever before. Keg beers can swallow this expectation easily as they can stay in reasonable nick, with adequate line cleaning, for as long as it takes to sell them. Cask is a different story however. Most real ale is now sold in 9 Gallon casks, which is equivalent to around 72 pints. In my experience most modern cask beers last around five days from the point they go onto the bar before they deteriorate in a way that is noticeable to the consumer. This means a pub with five handpulls needs to shift 360 pints of real ale every five days, not an easy feat for a lot of pubs in the current climate. It is why you see pubs that have six or seven handpulls but only three or four in use, ultimately it is always better to have a smaller range that is in good condition than to force your customers into a game of russian roulette. But could there be an argument for the production of smaller casks so that pubs can continue to provide a wide range without compromising quality? Some breweries do already have pins which are 4.5 gallons and often reserved for specialist beers, this would be too small for most venues, but a container at around the 7 gallon mark might prove more suitable to modern drinking habits. Ultimately I think the extra costs associated with the manufacturing of new equipment make this highly unlikely, but it is the kind of conversation we should not be afraid of having. 

If real ale can’t find purchase with the modern drinker in its current format then it must find ways to adapt, or face a slow death that would be a crippling blow to British culture and tradition.