The case for low-alcohol cask

Last week, I drank a cask beer from Downton brewery at the Ealing Beer Festival. Secret Sobriety was the name.

There's nothing unusual about that in itself. I go to Ealing most years and drink a lot of cask ale when I'm there. Downton are a fairly well-established brewery and I've drunk 63 different cask beers from them. However...

It was a good beer. Dry. Hoppy. Easy to drink. What makes this beer so remarkably unusual is that it was only 0.5% ABV. And cask beers at that strength are incredibly rare.  

We are told that the Low Alcohol / Alcohol Free beer sector is absolutely booming. Apparently it has grown 870% since 2013, which is quite astonishing growth, given that the overall beer market has been in long-term gradual decline. AF Guinness has become one of the most popular beers in the country in next to no time (I find it too sweet and malty personally) and lots of big brands now have a low- or zero-alcohol variant available.

Heinekin, Becks, Peroni - all the mainstream lagers are at it, and Adnams has managed to take the alcohol out of Ghost Ship without losing too much else. A success story, definitely, and possibly even some sort of victory for the nation's health and wellbeing. And these beers are genuinely a world apart from the non-alcoholic beers of the past. Kaliber, anyone?

But it's always a bottle, a can, or sometimes keg. The one thing that LA/AF beer hasn't traditionally offered us is that authentic cask experience. The unique quality and mouthfeel of a cask beer is what marketing wankers might call a 'key product differentiator' or something. There's something about it that you don't get when you drink beer that comes out of a keg, can or bottle.

So why is Low Alcohol cask still so incredibly uncommon?

Thornbridge: Part of the Union

For the best part of 20 years, Thornbridge has been one of my favourite breweries. Quite possibly my favourite British brewery of all time. (And, just in case you hadn't heard, I drink a lot of different beers from a lot of different breweries!)

One of the things I like about Thornbridge is that they're not afraid to innovate, whether that means experimenting with contemporary ideas, or delving deep into brewing history. A couple of years ago, Thornbridge began an interesting project, very much in the latter category, when they acquired a 'Burton Union Set', and began a series of 'from the Union' beers - six of which I've now sampled.   

This unique method of fermentation is a fascinating part of brewing history, and one that almost died out altogether when Carlsberg-Britvic-Marstons (or whatever amalgamatory name they're calling themselves these days) stopped using their decades-old Union, and broke it up for scrap or salvage. Thornbridge salvaged some of it, as it happens, which is where this story begins.

Tu be or not tu be?

I've been toying with the idea of starting a Youtube channel. Specficially one that documents me visiting pubs, drinking new cask ales and steadily adding to my tally of around 13,000 different pints over the past 30 years.

Maybe called BV ticks beers. Or something. You'd see me in a pub getting excited because they have a new Red IPA from Siren on. I sup the beer, tell you a bit about it, and give it my considered verdict. The number 13,326 flashes up on the screen, along with the beer name, the ABV and a rating of 7/9. Then I move on to another pub in search of the next tick. Probably swearing quite a lot if it's my tenth of the day, then cutting the video short because I need a piss.

Would there be any demand for content such as this?

(I'm not assuming the answer is 'Yes', by the way. I know it's a niche thing. But then a lot of Youtube is niche. And still more of it is about making niche feel normal.)

Waiting for the Brewdog divorce settlement

The recent news about Brewdog isn't particularly encouraging. Even as a pessimist, it feels like an almost unfathomably bleak turn of events.

A little story: 

Brewdog were once, briefly, my favourite brewery. In their very early years, between 2008 and 2010, they put out some excellent beers, were at the forefront of a rise in high quality and experimntal brewing in the UK, and while they weren't exactly the pioneers they purported to be, they were major players, doing good things and I liked them a lot. 

That is why I put my money where my mouth was, and became one of the earliest 'Equity for Punks' investors. I spent, I think, £810 on three 'shares' back in, when was it? 2009? It was definitely the first wave of the EFP mania. 

And I regretted it almost immediately, because Brewdog - having taken my money - went in a very different direction to what I'd have liked.  Founder James Watt showed himself to be an absolutely massive bellend - no that's an understatement - a cuntishly borderline psychopath is probably closer to the mark.

Golden Pints: BV's best beers of 2025

Well, that's another year done and dusted. How was it for you? Did you drink some good beer? Excellent.

Personally, I was sat there all contendedly like, thinking that 2025 was probably fairly decent, ale-wise, but delving a tad more deeply into me records (for the purpose of this post) the past year actually appears far more underwhelming. Certainly less whelming. Quite disappointing, even, which is just what I needed at this time of year. Fuck you, you stupid year!

Unless the spreadsheets are telling lies, I managed 597 new cask beers during the year (about 100 down on 2024) and only five of them scored the 'effective maximum' of 8/9, which, I suppose, means they can all be detailed here without any need to shortlist them, so at least I won't have to remember which were slightly better than the others and perform tie-breakers in my head!

This takes my overall total up to 12,890 since I first starting keeping track, exactly 30 years ago. (Happy beer-ticking anniversary to me! Do I get a Pearl tankard or something?) 

I'll try and work out my absolute 'beer of the year' in a moment, but firstly, a few mentions of the - ahem - 'other' stuff...

So long, Old Mudgie

I noticed that my last two blog headers have been 'So long's - something that happened purely by accident and/or editorial laziness on my part. 

So I'm now going to 'complete the trilogy', as it were, but this is a farewell I really wish we didn't have to bid. RIP Peter Edwardson, aka The Pub Curmudgeon, who died unexpectedly a few days ago, at just 64.

This is a sad loss; To my knowledge, I only met Peter in person the one time, and that was a fair few years ago, possibly even before his beer blogging really took off, though he was already writing for local CAMRA publications.

I had contacted his local branch about the possibility of re-publishing some of his work down South, and as I happened to be in his neck of the woods for football, we met up for a few pints. Robinson's Unicorn, if I remember correctly. We chatted - slightly awkwardly, if I'm honest - about pubs, beer and the role of CAMRA newsletters/magazines. 

His blog famously promised 'a jaundiced view of life from the darkest recess of the saloon bar', but possibly more significantly, he also wrote from a perspective well outside of the 'beer bubble' and provided a refreshing counterpoint at a time when you'd be forgiven for thinking people who wrote about beer were woke hipsters who only drank craft keg.

He couldn't be persuaded into 'that world' and I acted as an intermediary for a while, with a foot in both camps. Indeed he rather relished being blocked on social media by some of the bigger names in the beer writing business for having 'the wrong opinions'! (Mentioning no names but it won't take a whole lot of guesswork...)  

We had very different tastes in beer, and indeed different views on many of the issues affecting beer, pubs and breweries, but we definitely shared a taste in music (Tull, Rush, Roxette, Thunder... though we disagreed slightly on 'Stop the Cavalry by Jonah Lewie') and broadly Libertarian politics. I wonder if we were the only two mostly non-smokers that were fiercely opposed to the smoking ban on the grounds of essential human freedom and choice?

He was a staunch defender of traditional British beer styles, bench seating, regional breweries and the tied house system. And of course Draught Bass. And, to some extent, Sam Smiths. He actively disliked a lot of the stuff I like, but we were always able to disagree amicably and have an intelligent discussion, from which we might all learn.

This is not a eulogy and I didn't know Peter well enough to say any more. Just go and read his blog. It was good. And have a pint in his memory. I did.

Rest in Peace and Rise in Glory. Or Bass.

So long, Kerala

As one of the laziest people on the planet, I frequently find myself thinking of stuff to write about, and then failing to write about it.

Honestly, the amount of content that existed in my head that never made it onto page, podcast or screen is quite frightening. A prime example is my local South Indian restaurant, which I could've written about when I moved to this town almost ten years ago, or at any point in the intervening decade, but, as usual, I did not.

Now the Kerala has closed. Apparently for good. Which is a shame because it really was excellent; quite possibly the best restaurant of any kind in the local area.