It’s 6:30 in the morning and Hook Norton Brewery is already cranking into gear. Golden light streams through the Victorian windows, refracting off copper pipes and setting the steam rising from the oak mash tun ablaze. The smell of steeped malt takes me back to my days growing up in the shadow of Morland Brewery in Abingdon on Thames, and for a moment I forget that I’m supposed to be filming.

Bairds Malt

The beauty of Hook Norton Brewery has to be seen to be believed. Built in 1872 by renowned industrial architect William Bradford, it’s a monument to Victorian ingenuity and ambition—and still a celebrated brewery over 150 years later. That such a thing could happen is a small miracle, but as I stood there watching the mash tun fill and forgetting to record any of it, I felt a profound sense of loss.

Hook Norton’s survival highlights how rare such heritage businesses are today. Breweries like this are final reminders of when Britain was the brewing powerhouse of the world. Most of their contemporaries are now supermarkets, flats, or flattened completely. In contrast to my footage of a typical brew day, I watch the Hook Norton brew team wrestle with ancient valves, wield wooden paddles, and tap at rusted dials while considering how, when the past is forgotten, the future is often put in doubt.

Hook Norton photography by Jonny Garrett

For all the headlines about American-inspired craft beer, about four times more traditional cask ale is served in the UK. It is the focus of nearly all our 1700 breweries, the lifeblood of the British pub, and a marker of our national identity. It’s also about as sustainable as brewing gets, thanks to its natural carbonation and the fact that it’s predominantly made with British ingredients and served locally. It has all the makings of a thriving, premium product and yet it sells for less than your average mass-produced, contract-brewed, international conglomerate lager. Which makes it all the more incredible that, over the last 10 years, sales of cask have dropped by nearly 40%.

All this is to say that, it was during this early morning mash that I realised that cask ale deserved more—that we deserved more—than a slide into niche obscurity. It was 2021, and I was working on a documentary series called Keep Cask Alive for my long-term project, The Craft Beer Channel. The idea was to encourage people returning to the pub after COVID to look at the handpulls, but it quickly took on more urgency.

““It is the focus of nearly all our 1700 breweries, the lifeblood of the British pub, and a marker of our national identity.””

Cask didn’t resurge in the way the industry hoped, the acreage of British hop farms halved in just 12 months, and pub closures continued at alarming rates as debts were called in, energy prices soared and the cost of living crisis hit. Clearly a five-part Youtube series wasn’t going to fix any of that. So how could I help where the reach, government contacts and budgets of organisations like CAMRA, SIBA, the BII and the BBPA weren’t able to?

The notion, like many great beer-related ideas, came from Belgium.

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Around ten years ago, the nation’s three political regions—the Flemish, French and German speaking areas—came together and applied for UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage status for their brewing scene. The application pointed to its unique styles, unusual history and central place in culture, but also to its distinct bars, attentive service and of course, bespoke glassware.

It was given UNESCO designation in 2018, and caused a seismic rumble in the global press. In addition to the marketing boost, its new status put legal safeguards in place, as well as assistance and potential funding towards protection and education efforts, often aimed at younger generations.

Additional photography by Matthew Curtis

It also meant that when governmental decisions are taken that might negatively affect beer culture in the country, its UNESCO status is a bargaining tool against them. While it’s hard to measure the direct impact that Intangible Cultural Heritage status has had on the industry (which to be clear is struggling like most beer scenes), there’s little doubt it has helped with interest in beer among residents and tourists.

Given cask ale’s heritage and central role in British pub culture, I was amazed that no one had put it forward to UNESCO. So in the finale of our first season of Keep Cask Alive, we naively announced our intention to change that—then quickly found out why.

Intangible Cultural Heritage is completely distinct to what we usually associate with UNESCO status, granted to places like Stonehenge and the Pyramids of Giza. The safeguarding takes a different form and as such is an entirely different treaty, only introduced in 2003. Unfortunately, at the time that we announced we were going to apply, the UK was yet to ratify it.

We set up meetings with lobbyists and sent emails to a few MPs—we even met one at Parliament to discuss the idea. But no one knew why we hadn’t ratified, or who would even do it if we wanted to. So we basically sat on our hands for two years, wondering what to do. Then, completely out of the blue, in February 2024 the Conservatives announced a consultation into ratification of the treaty. It was one of the last acts of that government, but we were only getting started.

Our first move was to start filming a second season of Keep Cask Alive. After securing funding from nine British beer companies, we spent a year making seven feature-length documentaries that served as both an public-awareness campaign and actual evidence gathering for the eventual application. Each one was based around a specific form of evidence that UNESCO looks for in submissions—things like artisan craftsmanship, social practices and traditions, community impact, and generational knowledge.

The journey to UNESCO recognition, however, is a long one. The first step is recognition at a national level, which means applying to the UK government for a place on an inventory of ‘Living Heritage’. A government commission will then pick cultures from this list to put forward to UNESCO, which limits each country’s submissions to one a year.

The national inventory doesn’t really come with any protections, but it does create a committee for every listed culture that can speak to the government about concerns, issues and topics from their respective area—effectively giving them access to policy makers. Obviously that’s a great help to smaller examples of cultural heritage—regional production processes, traditional dances, local festivals.

But cask ale is a national endeavour, produced and consumed all over the UK. It’s a multi-million pound industry that already has powerful lobby and consumer groups. So while a living heritage committee specific to cask offers another avenue to engage those in power, the real opportunity is the full UNESCO listing with access to safeguarding, funding and education.

““It feels like the industry is being underestimated by those in power—as it has been for decades.””

Unfortunately we have to take things one step at a time—but everything we do with the campaign has one eye on UNESCO. At the start of April 2025 I launched a government petition to help ensure cask ale’s recognition on the national list. That petition already has 14,000 signatures and a positive response from the Department for Media and Culture, but we are now shooting for 100,000 signatures, at which point there will have to be a parliamentary debate about our proposal.

This will serve as both evidence of public support for UNESCO and a little extra pressure on the government during the national submission phase, which is due to open this summer.

During brief discussions with the civil servant in charge of the project, I was told there would be a “relatively low bar of entry” to the national list, but that there was no intention to put any submissions to UNESCO for the first few years. The reasoning was that the government was not certain how to select which cultures should be submitted, but it also feels like they are reluctant to do so until they fully comprehend the implications for governance of any that make the grade.

I understand these concerns completely, but without that UNESCO recognition, the ratification of the treaty is little more than a marketing exercise for any cultures that already have access to government. With its national appeal and vital contribution to UK society and its economy, I’ve been arguing that cask makes an excellent candidate to be the first put forward.

Frustratingly though, it feels like the industry is being underestimated by those in power—as it has been for decades. Our petition launched on the same day that business rates relief for hospitality was reduced and National Insurance was increased.

As more and more pubs shut early to save on wages, and even stop opening mid-week, it was announced they could stay open late on VE Day. The contradiction of assuming everyone goes to the pub to celebrate national events while simultaneously hiking taxes on them seems to go over our politician’s heads.

It’s so easy to walk into a busy pub and wonder how anyone could say the industry is struggling. But volume decline aside, margins have become unsustainably tight, meaning even a pub full seven days a week can be losing money. I think many people assume that if Hook Norton has lasted nearly 200 years, its future is relatively assured.

So many of the conversations I’ve had with policy makers fall into the same trap: this notion that beer and the places that serve it are ever-present but peripheral things; that they are “nice to have” elements of western society, rather than central to it; that yes they are struggling, but they will never disappear.

But they do disappear – we saw that in the consolidations of the 1960s that reduced UK brewery numbers to down double figures, and are witnessing it now in the 20% reduction in the number of pubs since 2010.

Tough choices need to be made to ensure the UK’s fiscal health, but what of its cultural and social health? I strongly believe that recognition of cask ale and the pub’s role in society through UNESCO could change the conversation and break the political inertia.

Cask ale is the lifeblood of the British Pub, and the British pub reflects how together our communities are, how egalitarian our society is, how wealthy our poorest are. What does it say about the state of our country if it’s in decline?

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Pellicle proudly supports Jonny’s campaign to give British cask beer and its surrounding culture UNESCO heritage status. We’ll be doing everything within our capacity to help raise awareness of his efforts, starting with his petition to the UK Government. If you haven’t signed it yet, please do so by clicking here.