Here we go — Cask Ale Week is here, giving us a chance to celebrate our national drink and also, of course, try a few pints of the glorious nectar!
It was formed in the early 2000s by Cask Marque, the non-profit cask ale accreditation scheme, members of whom still guide the event.
Or, more appropriately, events in the plural. Because there is no central venue. All events take place in pubs, bars, and halls up and down the country.
Pub companies and brewers are offering great incentives to get us to go to the pub. These include:
- 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 3pm and 4pm, Monday to 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.
- 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?
Around 10,000 pubs and numerous breweries will be shining a light on cask ale during the ‘week’, which actually runs for 10 days until 28th September. They’ll be 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.
Between them, the 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.
As part of the Cask Ale Week celebrations, Cask Marque will be issuing a limited edition t- shirt. All drinkers need to do is visit 12 pubs listed on the Caskfinder app during the week.
The app has been downloaded 1.4 million times and is used 40,000 times a month to find pubs. The t-shirt highlights how important the pub is to cask. Last year Cask Marque gave away nearly 400 t-shirts.
Find out more on the Cask Ale Week website.
