Current efforts to portray traditional beers as modern unisex drinks seem to be missing the point. It's not bitter on Twitter or the 'ale' in 'female' that counts if you want to turn young, funky types on to cask ales

It's National Cask Ale Week, this week, that time of the year when the likes of CAMRA and Cask Marque celebrate real beer.

Judging by the wholly unbelievable pictures of attractive, cosmopolitan middle-youths enjoying a pint on the Cask Ale Week home page; Monday's Twitter-based beer tasting with Roger Protz; and such innovations as the new Cask Marque iPhone app, there is a real desire among interested trade bodies in giving real ale a contemporary makeover.

This isn't the first attempt to make real beer appear young, sexy and thrusting and it won't be the last. But if our brewers, landlords and beer enthusiasts really want to break with the stereotypes nailed so accurately in Viz's Real Ale Twats, then, perhaps, they need to start with the basics. The real issue is bitter, not Twitter.

If they want real ale to appeal to a broader range of people, they have to address the issues of brewing, branding and the wider real ale culture which alienate so many potential converts. In the interests of real change, therefore, Word of Mouth presents The Malt Manifesto.

1) Sneering at 'lager boys' for drinking fizzy slop is counter-productive. No-one likes a smartarse. How about a change of tack? Namely, encouraging drinkers to, at least, differentiate between Budvar and Carling.

2) Price. We're in a recession. Real ale is routinely 50p-£1 cheaper-a-pint than those big name beers where you're just, as any beer bore will tell you, 'drinking the advertising'. Why isn't CAMRA hammering that?

3) The real ale community really needs to work on its 'look'. Beards, leather waistcoats and that whole Bill Bailey thing just isn't working for me. Likewise, beer festivals, where the entertainment is generally of a hurdy gurdy folk bent, or a Pink Floyd covers band if you're lucky. Recently, a friend of mine - a seasoned festival veteran, I should add - was even subjected to an outbreak of Morris dancing. Now, beer is a broad church, but if real ale wants to attract a more diverse audience it, surely, needs more attractive brand ambassadors, a wider cultural frame of reference. Hosting a beer festival? Go mad, have an indie disco.

4) Life is short. Does the lay drinker really have time (much less the inclination) to worry about the technical differences between a stout and a porter or the characteristics of Fuggles and Golding hops? Radically, this man argues that you can, broadly, define all beers by colour, as a starting point for beer appreciation. You've got to talk to people in a language that they understand.

5) As one contributor to the Real Ale Blog puts it: "Sometimes I feel like beer names and pump-clips are created by brewers in some demented vacuum of taste and logic." Note to brewers: if you are trying to build a modern 'brand identity', please do not look to Tolkien, the Carry On films, the tongue-twisting 'wit' of Richard Stilgoe or, much worse, Margaret Thatcher for inspiration. I don't want to order a pint of Sheepshagger's Gold or a Golden Shower. Instead, I want sharp graphic design or something iconic, timeless and self-explanatory.

6) Beer needs to be cold. Colder, certainly, than many real ale pubs serve it. People (people conditioned by keg lager, if you like) want a pint that is chilled and refreshing; something which, in the first instance, will slake a thirst. We can enjoy its subtler flavours as it warms a little, sat on the table. But you will never lure in lager drinkers with lukewarm beer.

7) Is it me, or won't the ladies find this a bit patronising? If 1.3m women already drink real ale, do they really need a femALE day and - Lord above - "special female friendly ales"?

8) Boil it down and the difference between good and bad beer is the difference between beers brewed for taste and beers brewed for volume. Therefore, rather than the current concentration of campaigning power around one traditional, rather fusty beer type - cask ale - why not a broad front, uniting, not just cask drinkers, but Belgian beer hunters, German schwarzbier fanatics and fans of other bona fide beer styles?

9) Real ale's biggest enemy? British brewers. Specifically those British brewers who flood the market with dull, steady, fundamentally boring brown beers, on a flavour spectrum defined by Greene King IPA and Taylor's Landlord. Contrast this with America where uninhibited, challengingly hoppy craft beers are flourishing. More power to those Meantime and Brewdog, who are taking inspiration from the US of A (and boldly riffing on the 'rebellious', anti-corporate nature of artisan beer brewing to boot).

10) Beer gets you drunk. Being pleasantly drunk is fine. It's a beatific state, even. No-one celebrates this any more. Everyone wants you to moderate your drinking, match beer with food, savour the complexities of real ale as you might a fine wine. Puh-lease! Just shut up and get your round in.

Now, what have I missed?