Advertisements for two popular beers are to be banned after one was found to be misleading and the other was judged likely to appeal to children.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) will say today that InBev, the brewer of Stella Artois, can no longer boast that its lager is produced by a family that has been dedicated to brewing for six centuries.

Yesterday the authority banned an advert for Miller beer after ruling that it had breached rules intended to prevent any kind of appeal to children.

Stella Artois has been brewed in Leuven (Louvain), Belgium, since 1366. The brewery was bought in 1717 by Sebastien Artois. The authority said the Artois brand was no longer family-owned and it was untrue to claim that “one family of common ancestry had been involved in the brewing of Stella Artois for six centuries”.

In reply, InBev said: “The reference to family was intended to give an overall impression of the Artois heritage and referred to the origins of the Artois ‘family’ of beers having been in existence for six centuries.”

The company said that it would drop the claim and replace it with the slogan: “One family, three beers, six centuries.” But the ASA cautioned the brewer against using the new slogan, which it said was “still problematic”.

Meanwhile, Miller, a US brewer, has been forbidden from repeating its advertisement in which a man performs a daring series of stunts on rollerskates to impress a woman, who rewards him with a bottle of Miller Genuine Draft. The ASA said: “We considered that the action of rollerskating, particularly when combined with the effortless cool of the execution of a series of tricks, was likely to appeal strongly to under18s.

“We considered that the somersault over a group of dogs, the jump through a tyre and the backwards descent of a staircase constituted daring behaviour and concluded that the ad associated alcohol with feats that would be considered dangerous, and appeal strongly to under18s.”

Miller said that the advert was deliberately designed to appeal to over25s – and script changes had been made to ensure that it was not aimed at the youth market.

The ASA will also ban a British Airways advertisement offering cut-price travel. The internet advert, which appeared last year, read: “Prague one-way from £29 . . . restrictions apply.” But when the ASA investigated, it found that the offer mainly covered flights that were six months away. The ASA began its inquiry after a complaint by easyJet, a BA competitor. The regulator said that BA’s advert was misleading, breaching truthfulness and stock monitoring guidelines.

BA told the ASA: “The ‘from’ prices applied to outbound seats during the promotional period of April 20, 2006, to March 31, 2007.”

The airline claimed to have ensured that more than 10 per cent of seats on the Prague route were for sale at £29. But, after examining BA’s records, the ASA found that the airline did not offer the cut-price deal at certain times of year. “We considered that BA needed to show that at least 10 per cent of seats were available at the ‘from’ price throughout a reasonable spread of the promotional period.”

Complaints about BA’s adverts promoting cheap flights to other destinations were not upheld.

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