Alive And Kicking - Everards Cask Ales

Richard Everard presses all the right buttons. "The family brewers are the custodians of cask beer," he says. "The nationals aren't interested in cask - we are the driving force."

He backs the enthusiasm with solid numbers. Sales of cask beer are increasing in Everard's 140-strong pub estate. The directors shake their heads in disbelief when they read the malign figures produced by industry statisticians A C Nielsen that predict the imminent death of real ale.

The view from Everards at Castle Acres, Narborough, on the outskirts of Leicester, is that cask beer has a healthy future. To this end, the company has re-branded its three main beers (right) with new pump clips that feature the tag "Brewed in Leicestershire", and advise: "Get to know the locals". Everards isn't ignoring the national free trade but its main sales drive is based on what it calls a "heartland strategy". In recent years, the company has converted its entire pub estate to tenancy. It backs its tenants with a team from the brewery that monitors beer quality and consistency, runs cellar management courses and helps publicans gain accreditation with the British Institute of Innkeeping.

The strategy is based on a major overhaul of company philosophy. "We used to put brewing, wholesaling and retailing before pubs," chairman Richard Everard says. With his sister, he represents the fifth generation of the family to run the brewery.

"Then we changed the priorities. Pubs are now the core part of our business. We have total clarity about what we want to achieve: we need pubs in the right places with the right licensees."

The strategy entailed selling off a number of pubs that didn't fit the plan and buying or building new ones. At the turn of the 1990s, Everards invested 20 million in its pubs. Profits took a hammering for a while but soon recovered. Last year they were a healthy 6 million.

This change of course coincided with the transfer of production from Leicester and Burton to a custom-built new site at Castles Acres in Narborough.

Everards dates from 1849 when William Everard leased a brewery in Southgate Street in Leicester. Business was good and the brewery was substantially rebuilt in the 1870s.

In 1892, Everards bought a second brewery in Burton-on-Trent to met the demand for the new pale ales brewed there with the aid of Burton's famously salty spring waters. The first site was the Bridge Brewery, built by Boddingtons of Manchester. It had a capacity of 10,000 barrels a year but this proved inadequate and Everards moved in 1898 to the Trent Brewery built by the Liverpool brewer Thomas Sykes.

The Trent Brewery eventually became known as the Tiger Brewery following the introduction of Tiger Best Bitter in the 1970s. The name stressed the importance to the county of the Leicester Regiment, nicknamed the Tigers, and sponsorship of Leicester Tigers Rugby Club.

The Southgate Street brewery closed and for a time production was based at Burton. But by 1990 all brewing was transferred to Castle Acres. There was an acrimonious end to the Burton brewery, which staggered on for a few years as a museum but eventually closed.

The Castle Acres brewery, which produces 40,000 barrels a year of Everard's own brands and 10,000 barrels of contract beer, was designed by Robert Morton of Burton using a technology similar to that of farm brewers in Belgium. The mash mixer doubles as the boiling copper and hop whirlpool. Following mashing, the wort or sugary extract is clarified in a mash filter or lauter tun, leaving the spent grains behind.

The wort is returned to the first vessel, where the mixer is lifted to reveal the boiling kettle. Hops are added, boiled with the wort, then filtered in yet another area of the vessel, the whirlpool. The technology means the brewhouse needs two rather than three vessels, can produce lager as well as ale, and has a brew length of 70 barrels -a tad more than the average Belgian farm brewery.

Water comes from the public supply and is hardened with gypsum -old Burton habits die hard. The beers are fermented in a dozen conical vessels, using a complex three-strain yeast for the ales. The regular cask ales are dry hopped in cask before they leave the brewery: a long-running advertising campaign stressed the importance of dry hopping to the character of the beers. Right: the brewing process from Everards website. Beacon Bitter, 3.8%, is brewed with pale and crystal malts, hopped with Challenger, Fuggles and Goldings, and dry hopped with Goldings. It has 20 units of colour and 26 units of bitterness. It has a fruity palate reminiscent of sultanas, a peppery Goldings aroma and a nutty, fruity finish with biscuity malt that ends dry with a good hop note.

Tiger Best, 4.2%, is brewed with pale malt and a "secret syrup" that gives a toffee note to the beer. Colour and bitterness units are both 27. The hop recipe, including the dry hop, is identical to Beacon's. The beer has a superb hop aroma -spicy, peppery and resinous -with a plum jam fruitiness, juicy malt, and a long dry finish with more powerful hop character.

Original, 5.2%, is brewed with pale and crystal malts, and hopped similarly to the other two beers. It has 31 colour units, 33 bitterness units. It has a delicate nose of oranges and sultana fruit, is very fruity in the mouth, with biscuity malt and spicy hops, and has a complex finish packed with ripe fruit, sappy malt and peppery hops.

The news on the cask ale front is good. Everard's pubs on average sells 350 barrels of beer a year, of which 37% is cask. That's a high proportion. Sales of Beacon in the past year are 6.7% up, Tiger Best up by 40% and Original by a whopping 55%.

But there's a downside to the figures. Stephen Gould, the company's new managing director - ex-Bass and Punch - points to the stats: 87% of real ale drinkers are more than 35 years of age and of that figure 51% are more than 50. Even more alarmingly, 96% of cask beer drinkers are male.

It's what Stephen calls "the ticking time bomb under cask beer". But he and his team are addressing the problem of attracting younger drinkers to the sector with skilful promotions and welcoming pubs.

And Stephen wears his heart on his car, if not his sleeve. When he took over as MD he was ceremonially handed the licence plate for the brewery's top man: ALE1.

Lets hope both he and the sector don't crash.

Everards Brewery Ltd Castle Acres Narborough Leicestershire LE19 1BY Tel: 0116 201 4100 www.everards.co.uk

ATTENTIVE readers will have noted no mention of mild at Everard's. It's still brewed but sales had slipped so badly that it has been reduced to keg form only.

A different strategy has been adopted at another family-owned brewery, Hook Norton in Oxfordshire. This classic site, a Victorian tower brewery driven by a steam engine, has also gone in for some new brand imaging.

As a result of the success of the premium bitter Old Hooky, the company now labels its main brands with the Hooky name. They include the former Best Mild, which is now called Hooky Dark and has been up-rated from 3% to 3.2%.

Sales have increased for a beer that is ruby-brown rather than black, brewed from Maris Otter pale and mild ale malts, crystal malt and brewing sugar, with caramel for colour. The hops are Challenger, Fuggles and Goldings, it's dry hopped -rare for a mild -with colour units of 50 and bitterness units of 21.

It's a nutty, chewy, smoky beer with gentle hop notes and a good refreshing finish full of dark grain and light fruit. And it's only in cask form. Don't mention the word keg at Hook Norton or they might set the dray horses on you.