Greene King Brewery is celebrating a year of success since the introduction of the four-and-a-half-gallon cask pin to its customers.
It launched the smaller vessels with its seasonal cask ales last summer. It was the first major brewer in the country to launch cask pins, with the aim to help licensees minimise wastage, ensure quality, and prove that cask could still be viable on the bar by providing a smaller throughput.
This year, the brewer has extended the range of beers available in pins, making permanent cask ales available, too.
Over the last year, the brewer has seen higher Cask Marque scores in stockists of Greene King beers using pins.
It has also seen an improvement is cask yield across stockists, meaning that the smaller vessel is proving successful in not only encouraging licensees to offer more cask on the bar, but also delivering higher profits and ensuring a better quality of cask in pubs.
John Malone, head of internal sales at Greene King, said: “We continue to support and innovate in the cask market, and the launch of pins has been an important step for us as a brewer, and the industry, to address key challenges that cask can bring as we look at building a positive future for this unique product.
“Cask ale is Greene King’s heritage and the core of a great pub, and we continue to invest in the product because we are determined for it to not only have its space on the bar for many years to come, but also to be a product that pubs are proud to serve and celebrate.”
