Britain's most popular beers by region

I found the beer map below on the Morning Advertiser website showing the beer most likely to be ordered in different regions of Britain. As someone from the north west of England, I'm disappointed to see the most popular drink in my area is Fosters lager. The Scots also have lager, but at least it's a local one.

This puts all the beer geekery, including the pointless and ludicrously hyped-up cask v. craft debate, into perspective: most pubgoers aren't affected by it and, if they thought of it at all, would probably regard is as a fuss about nothing. For most beer drinkers, including many of us who would consider ourselves to be to any degree knowledgeable on the subject, beer is usually an adjunct to other social activities, such as meeting friends, a pub quiz, watching a football match or a live band in a pub, or special occasions like weddings. Most people don't want to experiment: they prefer to find a drink that's acceptable to them and stick to it.

I occasionally used to hear from old CAMRA types the sentiment that if only people could be persuaded to try real ale, they'd be converted. They might, or they might not: we all taste things differently. Some time ago in the Old Ship in Southport, I heard a customer order a pint of Tetley's Smooth and the barman say that they only had the cask version. "That will have to do then," was the reply, accompanied by a sigh. As he supped it, he didn't appear to have a Road to Damascus moment.