If there is one thing that really makes a small brewer angry it is the site of a brewery selling beer in a cask that does not belong to it.

Happily this practice is fairly rare, but there are always a few fly-by-night cowboys who believe that they can start up in business with a bit of help from their competitors.

Casks can easily account for 50% of the start up costs of a small brewery. Any brewery that chooses to go into business on the cheap, by using casks belonging to other breweries is harming the wellbeing of honest businesses that have invested in expensive casks and are denied their use.

Size is no excuse. Some cask thieves justfiy their actions by only stealing casks belonging to national brewers, and try to fool themselves that this somehow mitigates their activity. However, the size of the brewery from whom you steal the cask does not affect the size of the brewery against whom you are trading unfirly in the open market.

For this reason SIBA will take action against ANY brewer, of whatever size, whether they are SIBA members or not, should evidence come to our attention of cask misuse. SIBA will, and has, expelled any member found guilty of deliberate cask misuse.

SIBA are always keen to encourage publicans and beer festival organisers to ensure that beer they order arrives in casks belonging to the brewery owning the cask.

There is one exception to this rule, and this is BACKFILLING. This is an arrangement whereby one brewer will authorise another to ‘backfill’ a cask in order to facilitate its faster return. Backfilled casks can be recognised by the presence of a ‘backfill’ sticker, issued by the cask owning brewery. In addition SIBA maintains a register of backfill agreements between member brewers. If in any doubt please contact SIBA for confirmation that a cask is legitimately backfilled, or advice on what to do if a stolen cask is discovered.
How to spot a stolen cask

Nearly all casks have their owners name indelibly engraved on the top or embossed into the chime (the rim around the top of the cask). It is not unknown for the name on the top to be ground off, painted over, or labels to be stuck over the owners details. To the trained eye, all these methods are immediately obvious, not least because they are frequently done in a clumsy fashion. The picture at the top of this page is a cask belonging to Courgae Brewery, which has been badly replated, with the thief’s own name amateurishly welded over the word ‘Courage’.

When casks are legitimately sold, they are replated professionally, all references to the previous owner are properly removed and the new details added in a neat and competent fashion.

There is no way that a cask looking like the one shown is in circulation legitimately. If you see a cask like this please contact SIBA – if you request it we shall respect your anonimity.
What to do if you see a cask at risk

The best and easist thing to do if you spot casks that are either being misused or are clearly outside the distribution system and are therefore at risk is to get in touch with the inudstry cask security services Kegwatch. They can be contacted on 0808 100 1945 or via their website www.kegwatch.co.uk

www.kegwatch.co.uk

SIBA are members of Kegwatch
Cask misuse forms
SIBA issues a cask misuse form to its members which enables them to report cases of theft and misuse. We also encourage festival organisers to keep a copy in case beer arrives at a festival in an inappropriate container. We are happy for any interested party to have a copy of the form, and encourage them to use it report instances of casks that have clearly fallen out of the collection system as well as those which are being wilfully misused.
To download an adobe pdf copy of the form click here http://www.siba.co.uk/forms/caskform.pdf