A BREWERY has smashed its festive sales record after experiencing a bumper Christmas and new year.

Figures from Burnley's Moorhouse's Brewery revealed a ten per cent rise on 2006 sales with 1,200 brewers barrels (345,600 pints) sold to pubs in December up to Christmas Eve.

And Christmas trading figures from supermarket chain Tesco underpin the rise in the popularity of real ale.

Moorhouse's sales came after a roll-out of a 30-second TV commercial in the Granada and Yorkshire regions that made Moorhouse's the smallest UK brewer ever to launch a TV campaign.

In recent years sales have soared by 130 per cent. Now the brewery is poised to double capacity to more than 700 barrels a week with a £2m investment.

Managing director David Grant said: "Once again our sales fly in the face of the pundits that forever peddle doom and gloom for the ale market.

"A TV campaign was a major marketing leap of faith for us, but, without doubt, the creative commercial provided a powerful platform for our festive sales offensive and captured the attention of many cask ale drinkers.

"The exposure has further raised our profile for the future and, as a result, we have already gained several new accounts for 2008. In the autumn the commercial will run again to promote our unique Halloween beers - and beat the highest ever sales achieved last year.

"Our experience indicates that, despite many pubs struggling through the first Christmas of the smoking ban, cask ale sales have held up extremely well. This gives us even more confidence in our exciting plans for the future."

Tesco figures show that in the last year sales of real ale in UK supermarkets have grown by 6.6 per cent while demand for lager has actually gone into a decline.

Tesco believe the boom is partly down to real ale's increasing popularity at the dinner table but it's also due to our more sophisticated palates.

Tesco ale buying manager Ian Targett said: "Much of that popularity is due to ale's increasing use at the dinner table as an accompaniment to food.

"For years ale has been wrongly saddled with the image of being an old timer's drink."