Carlsberg announced yesterday that it will shut Marston's Brewery in Burton on Trent, where it produces cask beers including the flagship bitter Pedigree and Draught Bass, which it contract brews for AB InBev, next summer. Where those beers will now end up being brewed is anyone's guess.
I drank quite a bit of Pedigree, and the occasional pint of Draught Bass, when I was a student in Stoke on Trent in the early nineties, the former mostly in the Victoria pub, opposite Stoke City's ground of the same name, after meetings in the Labour Party offices round the corner. In the 2010s, I regularly drank Draught Bass at the Unicorn in Manchester city centre, the pub where the Honourable Order of Bass Drinkers was founded in the late sixties, when Manchester Jazz Society met there, and in 2013 went to Burton on Trent where the Coopers Tavern serves it straight from the cask.
AB InBev belatedly started an advertising drive last year to promote Draught Bass, which has since seen a modest uptick in sales, including amongst young people, paralleling the much wider popularity of Draught Guinness with that age group. Let's hope that they can find another brewery with the capacity to produce enough of it to meet the continuing and deserved demand for this iconic beer.
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