Apologies for the lack of activity in recent weeks – an unexpected close family bereavement has kept me away from the real world for three weeks or so. The only consolation to come out of a pretty horrible time was becoming more familiar with beers around Wales, which I might rave about later at some point.
Anyway, back to business, and my first brush with the outside world came last week, when I attended a meeting of regional and local ale brewers who spent half a day discussing how cask ale might be promoted more bullishly and effectively.
The first thing to share out of this was the latest news on the first ever National Cask Ale Week, which starts on 6th April wherever you see this logo, and runs over Easter. What’s special about this is it’s not just an initiative by CAMRA or Wetherspoons. Organised by Cask Marque, it has active support across the entire beer and pub industry, with major pub cos, the Daily Telegraph, various celebrities and (to date) over 5000 pubs joining in, as well as the aforementioned stalwart cask ale champions.
Full details are here.
The idea is to recruit a million new cask ale drinkers over the course of the week, and I think they’ll do it. Whatever happens, this kind of big idea, with support from so many bodies, is exactly what the brewing industry needs.
Sorry to hear about your bereavement Pete.
I’m not sure what Cask Ale week is all about. I’ve received all sorts of guff about it, but can’t see how the idea’s useful or relevant to my business.
Seeing as they’re billing it as ‘Celebrate Britain’s national drink’ it’s a shame Oz Clarke and James May wimped out and chose tea as it could have tied in nicely.
By chance, we will be in Wales when National Cask Ale Week kicks off. We will be at Kilverts in Hay-on-Wye for the opening night. I am very excited!
If the beer looks as unappealing as those pints on the opening page of the official website, I don’t think they’ll be getting many converts.
Hmm… bit worried about some of these comments – it seems that the marketing isn’t quite as good as it should be. It really should be a great event with lots of PR for cask ale and the pubs that stock it, but I will feed some of these comments back to the organisers. It is the first year so constructive feedback is very useful.