Although Whitbread were notorious for “converting” their casks to top-pressure elsewhere, it wasn’t done or noticed in my part of north Kent.

We had keg pubs with not a handpump in sight, and then we had Shepherd Neame pubs.

The kiddos drank in the keg pubs and the old fogies (and the old at heart) drank in the Sheps pubs.

The keg pubs in the Medway Towns were mostly Ind Coope or Courage, with a couple of Whitbread and another couple of Truman thrown in for good measure; I think that there may have also been Worthington and Watneys outlets over in Chatham and Gillingham close to the Dockyard, but we never went there.

The country pubs on the outskirts of the Towns and the nearby villages were all of a similar makeup.

I was fortunate to have two Sheps pubs where I lived in Strood, the Swamp (Cricketers) and the Cornerpin (Britania), every pub had both an official name and an alias.

Both were the fogeyest of fogey pubs and were avoided by my mates, even my dad tended to avoid them until he got friendly with the guvnor at the Cornerpin and started to hang out there for a while, until they fell out again; he pointed out the handpumps to me and promptly went on the keg, while I was on the Vimto back in those days.

Once I graduated to beer, I did occasionally visit both the Swamp and the Cornerpin and drink the cask (both had ordinary bitter and dark mild) which was very variable in quality in both houses; almost certainly due to low turnover, as my dad didn’t even drink them.

But I was even more fortunate to have another Sheps pub in the nearby village of Higham, the Railway Tavern (no nickname there), which was not a fogey pub at all and was the center of the Lower Higham community.

It would become a regular hangout with me and my mates a few years later, although I was the only one of us who went for the cask, such was Sheps reputation, but the cask was popular with the locals and always in great nick; no Shepherd Scream in the Railway.

No free-houses anywhere nearby, that was more of a mid-Kent thing, and the only other pubs in the Towns where I could get a real ale were the Bull Hotel (Great Ex) in Rochester for Fremlins (Whitbread) and the North Foreland, a Courage pub on the Rochester/Chatham border (lower road) which remarkably served Directors and had a major nautical theme going on.

Both served excellent cask beer.

Of all of the pubs mentioned above, only the Bull Hotel remains, and I am not even sure that there is a bar there anymore.

So what would it have been like had cask breathers not been frowned upon?

Who knows?

But I believe that it would have had an almost certain effect on the quality of the beer at the two Sheps pubs in town, and elsewhere in Kent; can you imagine a world without the Shepherd Scream?

I also think that it would have encouraged the other breweries to reinstall or reactivate their handpumps, not only in the country pubs but also the historic or upscale pubs in Rochester and Chatham, and even Strood; looking at you, Crispin and Crispianus.

When Ind Coope introduced the magnificent Burton Ale, they were quick to put it into almost all of their “country” pubs in the area, as were Truman with their Tap Bitter, although that is a different story.

And today, most of the remaining pubs in the Medway Towns, and elsewhere in the country, have cask beer on the bar, so why not then?

Tradition?

Who’s tradition?

It was a missed opportunity in the UK to increase the exposure of cask ale to the masses, to improve the general quality of the offerings, and to encourage the breweries at the time, both big and small, to brew the stuff in the first place.

Decades were lost unnecessarily.

I would have so many more stories to tell.

No such problem here in the States.

While some pubs do use breathers and others do not, or don’t have the need, the breweries that produce and sell cask on their premises pretty much all use them to maintain quality over a longer period; why throw away beer and discourage the punters?

To me, it is simple.

If you do not have the foot traffic or you have low turnover, then you need a cask breather; your cask will be more consistent, and you won’t be scaring away the punters and tossing so much beer.

At the end, for the consumer, it all comes down to taste.

Can you taste (or sense) the difference?

Probably not.

Can I taste the difference?

Not at all.

Can the unnamed consumer organization taste the difference?

The good folks at the Rose and Crown in Histon couldn’t in 1999.

Maybe there was a reason that I was saving this one…

It has come to my attention that some of you may not know what a cask breather is.

If that is the case, I admire your tenacity in reading this post.

Google would be your friend here.