A dark beer, and a dark day for the West Midlands' brewing heritage

A headline on the Carlsberg Group's website: 'Carlsberg and Brooklyn Brewery launch first ever lager where all barley is replaced with drought-resistant fonio grain'.

For real-ale lovers, it is hard to think of a more dispiriting sentence. Apart from this week's news that Carlsberg Marston's is to discontinue cask production of Banks's Mild and Sunbeam ales.

Shelly Bentley, regional director for the Campaign for Real Ale, says she finds it hard to take the news in, and it is hard to argue.

I've said it before, and make no apology for repeating it. Banks's is not just a beer brand, it is part of Wolverhampton's soul. I never thought I would live to see the day when Britain's biggest selling mild ale was no more. 

It was sad enough when Banks's sister brewery, Hanson's in Dudley, closed in 1992, even more so when the beer itself was dropped 15 years  later. Now, just as our region is coming to terms with the loss of Banks's Park Brewery in its 150th year, it emerges that its most famous beer is to be discontinued.

Carlsberg's assurance that Banks's Mild will continue to be sold in cans in supermarkets, and in pubs as a pasteurised keg beer will come as little comfort to real-ale buffs.

The Campaign for Real Ale was founded in 1971 by former Express & Star journalist Michael Hardman as a protest against the dominance of generic, pasteurised keg beers. Over the past 53 years, the body has helped transform the brewing industry, creating a vibrant market where hundreds of interesting and varied beers have sprung up, giving the consumer real choice. And Banks's, which was always a big supporter of Camra, played a crucial role in that revolution. Thousands of drinkers who, hitherto, had little interest in how their beer was produced, discovered Banks's as a gateway to cask ales.

Now it is to disappear at the hands of one of the mass producers of generic keg lager that Camra was set up to challenge.

Of course, Carlsberg Marston's is a business, and can't be expected to produce a beer which people aren't buying. 

But doesn't it speak volumes about the state of the nation when the future of the brewing industry lies not in a 150-year-old ale which formed the bedrock of our region's most successful brewery, but in a synthetic lager designed not for its superb flavour, but because it is easier to produce?

This month we've already seen Jaguar, another much-loved West Midland manufacturer, neutered by a tacky re-branding exercise which has managed to turn what was once one of the world's most desirable cars into a national joke.

Now we learn that the beer which turned the region into a brewing powerhouse is to be killed off by a Danish-owned conglomerate best known for its bland, tasteless lager. 

It is a sad day indeed.