Added: Tuesday, December 2nd 2025
Draught Bass may be in a pub near you. If I had written that 20 years ago I would have been carried off to the funny farm, as Bass was the leading premium cask ale in the country and you didn’t need to go far to find a pub serving it.
But as a result of tumultuous changes in the industry, that saw Bass leave brewing in 2000, its main brand fell into the hands of AB InBev. It’s the world’s biggest brewing group, accounting for a third of global sales. It owns such massive brands as American Budweiser and Stella Artois and has little or no interest in cask beer.
Close to a million barrels of Draught Bass (4.4 per cent) a year were brewed in its hey-day. Under AB InBev’s ownership, that figure fell to just 30,000 barrels and it became almost as hard to find as the infamous rocking horse droppings.
But grassroots campaigning does have an impact. For years, lovers of the beer staged an annual “Drink Bass Day” that encouraged consumers to find a pub serving the beer and to drink it dry.
The campaign succeeded. Earlier this year, AB InBev announced it was to promote Draught Bass with new pump clips on bars, branded glasses and merchandise.
The promotion was backed with the slogan “Trademark No 1: true quality that stands the test of time”. This referred to the Red Triangle logo that was the first registered trademark in 1875.
The promotion has been a success. There are now more than 1,000 outlets serving the beer and the number has almost trebled over the past two years.
A beer of great historic importance has been saved. It’s still brewed in its home town of Burton-on-Trent. AB InBev gave a contract to Marston’s to brew the beer.
With the arrival of Carlsberg Britvic, Marston’s has become a pub company, which means Carlsberg owns the Burton plant and brews Draught Bass for its global rival. It’s an uncomfortable arrangement that may change but for the moment lets bask in the good news that the beer has survived and revived.
Draught Bass is the descendant of Bass Pale Ale, the foremost Burton beer of the 19th century. While Bass never called its leading product India Pale Ale, it was exported in vast quantities to India and further afield.
It travelled as far as Australia and New Zealand and it was available in the United States where it was listed in the dining cars of the Union Pacific transcontinental railroad.
It could be found in such unlikely places as wine-drinking France. It appeared in Manet’s celebrated painting of the bar at the Folies Bergère in Paris and it’s also in several paintings by Picasso, who was a Spaniard but had moved to France.
Lord Curzon, who had been Vice Roy of India between 1899 and 1905, recalled in his memoirs in the 1920s an occasion when he had crossed into Afghanistan on horseback. When he returned and entered India he was delighted to see a military servant coming to meet him.
“At that moment,” Curzon wrote, “I would have given a kingdom not for champagne or hock and soda, or hot coffee but for a glass of beer! He approached and salaamed. I uttered but one word ‘Beer’. Without a moment’s hesitation, he put his hand in the fold of his tunic and drew therefrom a bottle of Bass.
“Happy forethought! O Prince of hosts! Most glorious moment! Even now, at this distance of time, it shines like a ruddy beacon in the retrospect of 30 years gone by.”
Bass beers were fermented in the Burton Union system, large oak casks where liquid and yeast rose through pipes into troughs above. The yeast was retained in the troughs while the liquid returned to the casks.
The yeast culture and the sulphurous aroma of Burton water helped give Draught Bass its unique character. Bass disposed of its unions many years ago and Carlsberg axed them when it took over at Marston’s – though it did give one union set to the Thornbridge Brewery in Bakewell.
Draught Bass today may vary from the beer of old. But brewed with pale malt, maltose syrup and Challenger and Goldings hops, it’s still a fine-tasting ale.
Once or twice a year I have made a pilgrimage from St Albans to the Express Tavern in Brentford, the only pub listed in the London section of the Good Beer Guide to serve the beer.
But now I can stay at home, as two pubs in St Albans have Draught Bass on offer while there’s a growing number stocking the beer in London.
Seek it out. Sup it to the full and raise a glass to both brewing history and the success of grassroots campaigning.
First published What’s Brewwing, December 2025.
