Cask Ale Week: the return of Brains Dark
Its Cask Ale Week. Given that cask ale is a living product sold very largely in pubs and bars there have been significant issues in 2021 with pubs shut from January to April because of the pandemic.
Fortunately however pubs are now open again and cask is back.
The range of cask beer available is now hugely larger than when I started drinking it in the early 1970s. Then there was bitter, mild (perhaps) and best or special bitter. This last would be a bit stronger sometimes reaching as much as 4.5% ABV.
Dark mild has not fared well since. Historically it was brewed at a range of strengths- its style not a strength- but by the 1970s it had overwhelmingly come to be a low alcohol beer. It might be drunk in quantity by those involved in manual labour but was increasingly replaced by lager.
As Cask Ale Week started then I was delighted to try a glass of a classic British (and Welsh) cask beer Brains Dark in a central Cardiff pub.
While a Brains dark beer has been available in various formats, cask has not been brewed for a while. Demand genuinely was too low (see above).
Brains itself had a significant question mark over its future. It has passed its pub estate to Marstons and was talking about stopping brewing at its new Cardiff brewery in favour of contract brewing.
Fortunately the brewery remains open and Brains Dark was brewed there once again in early September. Head brewer Bill Dobson tweeted that the new brewery facilitates production of small runs of beer a lot more than the old Bass site by Cardiff Central station they moved out from.
The good news is that the beer tastes much as ever. There are chocolate notes and it remains an easy drinking 3.5%. Hopefully it will continue to be brewed. The pub I sampled it in was not a Brains (Marstons) one and I’m not sure if its available in any of the old Brains pub estate. But available it is and well worth a try in Cask Ale Week.
I continue to wish an imperial version was brewed though..
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