decent beer doesn’t have to be expensive. My local does decent cask ale for £3.30 a pint and not far from me is the Thornbridge tap room and even there a beer is a half decent price…cant remember what exactly, but don’t remember being outraged by the price when I visited a few months ago. Think the establishment affects the price more than the wholesale price.

Having said that my local usually has about five or six really good cask ales on at any time, and he really looks after them and cellars them well and it shows so is a great pub for top notch cask ale. However his best selling beer is still Carling and before COVID he put 20p on beer prices after not increasing them for several years, and he lost a proportion of his Carling drinkers to the branded pubchain pub down the road that sells it a few pence cheaper which really puts a squeeze on the paper thin finances of village pubs. Some people just don’t care about the beer and just want to sup something cold and fizzy and will go where it is the cheapest. I’d happily pay an extra 50p or so for a decent pint and to support local landlords who really give a shit about beer and the pub. But I guess 50p on a £3.30 pint is not a big deal…if they were £5 a pint it would be a different story. When the cost of a pint of beer starts knocking on the door of the cost of a half decent bottle of wine there are problems. Might get away with it in a trendy city centre bar, but not in a sleepy village pub.

Edit: £4 for a pint of Jaipur at the Thornbridge Taproom. Towards the pricier end, but not extortionate for a decent pint. I remember paying more when at Uni 25 years ago and certainly in any big city centre bar. Wouldn’t want it to be much pricier though. For me £5 a pint is the mental limit.

4.80 for a pint of Amstel in Wimbledon last night, more galling was the same price for a bottle of Heineken.
A colleague once ordered a pint of artisan stout at a well known hipster pub in Pimlico, he was told that a pint would cost £19, he went for a Guinness instead.

It’s at least £5 a pint here in Worthing..

More like £5.90 to £6.50…

I take a leaf out of the street drinkers here, and mix alcogel with Frosty Jack’s, and just pass out in a wind shelter on the seafront until @pictonroad picks me up and takes me home/A+E

DrP

You’re not really complaining about the price of beer though, what you’re complaining about is the fact that there’s a logistics shortage, and the price of moving just about everything (and things like beer are a really good indicator)  has skyrocketed. It doesn’t effect stuff like Houns at his local, as that’s multi drop ‘keg or two at a time” from one location to another on a 7.5t van, but chain pubs who buy hundreds of kegs are now competing with supermarkets from the same mass brewers via the same logistics firms.

When the choice of beer starts to narrow, (especially on supermarket shelves) is really when you know the shit has hit the fan…

It’s all* my local Sainsburys has on the shelves, it looks more like an offy than a supermarket

(*big over exaggeration, but most of the empty shelf space now has cases of beer on them)

£11 for two bottles of Cidre, Lancaster Holiday Inn! Charged 10% Gratuity on top to bring to the table, barstewards.

A £5 pint last night. Probably would have had another if it was cheaper. Trying to support local pubs but it is tricky.

£4.50-£5 is pretty standard in a lot of places these days. I can get a decent pint of ale/cider for £3 locally though, but it’s a slightly off-the-beaten track type place.

£4.00 for a bolt maker in the village pub, up from £3.70 pre covid. Think a morreti is about £5 but neither I nor Mrs brain drink it so only ever ordered in a round. it’s about £7 or £8 £for a glass of red.

For “bog standard” beer over 5 would have me considering a bit, equally for fancy beer £5 for a 1/3rd isn’t out of the way.

6 pints at our local last night £21.60.

Unless you are comparing what we drank 10+ years ago it’s not a fair comparison. In terms of choice there’s not a better time to be a pub beer drinker. As the quality has improved so have the prices. If all you want is a fosters or a carling then you should be annoyed about the cost increase and these will be the drinkers most likely to stop visiting pubs. Pubco’s are slowly killing pubs with the tied prices they charge landlords/ladies.

£20 each last night for three rounds of post-ride restorative beers, but that included too-large tip as they were brought to the table.

Yes, tipping in pubs. Everyone does this now?

As a non drinker for the last 10 odd years (got bored of pubs, buying a pint only to be pissing it back out 30 mins later and drunken people being idiots) i now only drink fizzy drinks if i do find myself in a pub (rare occasion, normally to catch up with old mates)

£4 for a fizzy drink! not even free refills! very annoying as i know i could buy 2 litres of the exact same stuff in the local supermarket for £1.50

Also an ex smoker, i quit when my partcuilar brand hit £5 for 20, they are now at £11+!!!

Now i just see booze and fags as wasted bike money and a hangover that stops me having a good ride the next day!

Anyone got a break down of the price of a pint? What makes the average lager so pricey?

Anyone got a break down of the price of a pint?

Tax
More tax
Some more tax
Huge brewery ‘tied’ house mark up
Some more tax
Normal overheads of running a business
Some more tax

Pre-virus a pint in my local was £2.40-£2.60. Dunno what it is now as I don’t live there any wore.

Went into a ‘spoons earlier this week (against my better judgement, I was in the Wirral for an escape room and didn’t know the area). Got a pint of fizzy piss and a pint of something brown any it came to £6.87.

As a non drinker for the last 10 odd years (got bored of pubs, buying a pint only to be pissing it back out 30 mins later

Do you have the same attitude to other drinks? Or food?

and drunken people being idiots) i now only drink fizzy drinks if i do find myself in a pub (rare occasion, normally to catch up with old mates)

And the drunken idiots are still being drunken idiots despite the fact that you’re not drinking alcohol, and you’ll still be discharging your overpriced fizzy drink in an hour.

😀

What makes the average lager so pricey?

People willing to pay

If all you want is a fosters or a carling then you should be annoyed about the cost increase

Not really. Even if the cost of production hasn’t changed (which of course it has) shipping, wages, rents, taxes have all gone up.

8 for 5. Red strip or tyskie from the corner shop back in the day. None of this pub malarkey.

There’s some right little rays of sunshine on this thread 🤣

I worked in a studenty bar in Manchester in 2001 and this was true then. IIRC it was £2.20 for a pint of coke (from that mixer syrup stuff)

Bag In Box. Probably the biggest mark-up profit in the building.

Back when I was a student I worked in a bowling alley. The biggest cups of drink we sold in the diner for like three quid (in 1991!) cost us something like 9p. It cost more to buy in those little pots of ketchup, we actually sold those at a loss and people complained about having to pay for them.

Would you have one or two more if it was slightly cheaper? What’s the tipping point for price? Does this apply to 20 somethings or just old farts with memories like us?

And as mentioned above Tax/Duty plays a huge part. It only goes up year after year – so in a way it the govt putting up the price of your pint – not you local.

Non drinking pal pointed out that a bottle of zero coke costs less than the stuff out of the pump in the local.

Do you have the same attitude to other drinks? Or food?

Tend to see food and drink as fuel for riding these days, i do allow myself the odd treat (chocolate etc..) but if i dont keep myself in check the weight will pile on and i tend to get lazy the more i eat unhealthy food

And the drunken idiots are still being drunken idiots despite the fact that you’re not drinking alcohol

Hence why i only go to pubs very rarely to catch up with old mates, dealing with drunk people when sober is much easier i find, i understand they are drunk and are being an idiot (think we have all been an idiot when drunk) and ive been in their shoes so know how they are thinking

Dealing with drunk people when your drunk yourself normally means things can escalate quite quickly when its only a misunderstanding, both parties arent thinking straight, get egged on by mates and have much more brvado then they would normmaly have

Do get me wrong i enjoyed my drinking days, pretty much every weekend and a few week days spent in the pub for 20 years but after 20 years i just bored of it and realised there was more to life than being sat in the pub with the same people every weekend

Hence why i only go to pubs very rarely to catch up with old mates, dealing with drunk people when sober is much easier i find, i understand they are drunk and are being an idiot (think we have all been an idiot when drunk) and ive been in their shoes so know how they are thinking

If yo think everyone in pubs are all blind drunk then you need to go to different pubs. If your benchmark is some kids bar at 2am then you’re view is seriously distorted. Most people in pubs are sober and not even drunk. Even on a Friday or Saturday night where people might have an extra couple of pints than they might normally have they are perfectly well behaved and coherent. If you go out to a pub determined to see drunken chaos then that is what you will see wether drunken chaos is occurring or not.

From their FB page, I’ve left the ‘5d’ in the pic so you can see I’m not talking hogwash. HPA used to be £2.80, Bathams and Enville have gone up but can’t be sure by how much as I don’t drink it

One of the only things I miss about the Midlands is The Robin.
Not found a Borders pub that sells anything drinkable yet.
Tempest brewery is pretty good though but only open Friday/Saturday.

Beer is a middle class artisan product !?

Those hipster craft ales are, yes.

My local bar churns out its own cask brews at around £3.60 a pint and very palatable they are too.

I like beer, but I’m not a heavy drinker, so £5+ a pint isn’t too bad really. There are thousands of pubs to choose from in London, so it’s much more about the experience of going out, meeting friends etc. Many also now do food, which is far more civilised in my opinion. Closer to the original idea of what ‘public houses’ once were.

Regarding Whetherspoons; the high price of going out means this business model will always be popular, as they are less exclusive. I’m quite mindful of how difficult it can be for those on lower incomes to socialise if it means food and drink is expensive; I’ve been there. Whetherspoons offers the same experience at a much lower cost. It is unfortunate though that the company owner is such a ****. Perhaps if the tied pub model was to be relaxed, to allow individual pubs to buy in more local beers, then Whetherspoons would have less of a monopoly; a big part of the success is Whetherspoons’ model of buying in large quantities of short-life beer (which they can then sell on cheap), which many of the tied chains won’t touch. Personally. I can’t understand why anyone would want to drink absolute bilge like Stella, Fosters etc, but the sheer volume of that muck means it’ll always be cheaper.

If yo think everyone in pubs are all blind drunk then you need to go to different pubs.

I was thinking the same. I’m pretty old school and believe a decent local boozer is a fundamental human right. I’ll be knocking off today and going meeting a couple of mates in the pub (£4.30 for a pint of Veltins in the Irwell Works Brewery). I’ve really missed that during lockdown. So we go to the pub quite a bit and I can’t recall the last time I ever saw anyone who was properly ‘drunk’. When you do, it’s conspicuous because it’s so rare.

You just need to drink in better places

I can’t recall the last time I ever saw anyone who was properly ‘drunk’.

Me neither. Babyfaced Assassin can do that to the memory.

a big part of the success is Whetherspoons’ model of buying in large quantities of short-life beer (which they can then sell on cheap), which many of the tied chains won’t touch.

And its largely nonsense, the reason Whetherspoons is cheap is their margins are lower and they buy in bulk from a central ordering system so get bulk prices. They don’t then sell* that beer onto their own pubs they just issue* the stock.

Tied pubs buy have to buy the beer from their “owners” who don’t buy in sufficient bulk, trouser any discounts they do get and mark up the beer before they sell it to their pubs. Its margins on margins on margins and its the pubs that get screwed.

See the comment up there about whether spoons being cheaper at retail than the wholesale cost. That’s not because the beer is old, it’s because Ws buy 10k barrels at a time @ 45/barrel then transfer it to the pubs.
Your tied pub buys 10 barrels, from whitbread, who won’t let them shop around @100/barrel. Whitbread retail buys 100 barrels at a time from their wholesale division at 65/barrel, who buy it 1k at a time from brewing at £45/barrel.

As a freehouse you buy from wholesale at 80 a time in small quantities.

It’s the same reason buying beer in asda is usually cheaper than wholesale or a slab direct from the brewery at retail.

*in fairness I don’t think they free issue these days but rather “sell” at cost internally the big thing though is there is no markup between purchase and cellar, only at the pump.

Small price to pay for moving to Scotland though @singlespeedstu 🙂

Close to the jdw model but not wholly accurate.
Each pub can buy from a list of suppliers.
Tender annually within brackets to be on the list
Direct supply from smaller breweries, and multi drop from nationals

Actual cost of a pint, around 50p if you inlude malt, hops, water, gas, elec, chemicals, duty. Then you have your fixed costs or overheads to covet and delivery

there is nothing more crushingly sad than having a ‘bar’ in ones home.

I would disagree, although it does depend on the bar and the setting.

Family friend has a full size snooker table and dart board in the garage. Done up to look like an old gentleman’s club. It’s awesome!

A (almost) pint in Munich usually costs between 3.20-4.50€.

A crate of 20 Augustiner costs 17€. That’s 85c a beer! Needless to say that when meeting friends we usually meet up along the river and chuck a crate in the water to keep the beers cool.

Just checked. £9 for two pints of ale from a nice pub in Stockbridge, Edinburgh. Happy to pay that.

However a couple of weekends ago we were down in Wendover (Bucks) and ordered 4 drinks. Two were cocktails at £8 each and two were beers. Nothing fancy. Total bill came to £30, so it was £7 pint. Nearly fell of my bloddy chair.

Around 7-7.50eur for a US pint of local craft or an imported UK nitrokeg like Bombardier or Speckled Hen. 2.50 for a caña (about 2/3 pint) of domestic pish, Ambar or Estella Damm, which are fine on a hot day. Don’t mind paying that tbh

Last time in Manc/Shudehill, it was weird to pay 7.50 for a pint of their own cask. My old local freehouse is about 3.60 for something very tasty indeed.

The bunch of us who ride on a Thursday night have always put our beer money into a kitty after the ride and have always gone to the same pub – popular place, away from the town centre, but not cheap.

Ten years ago it was £7, which covered 2 pints and crisps, and we had change which went towards next week’s beer. The last time we went, just before Xmas last year, it was £10 plus contributions to make up the cost of a second round. We don’t visit the pub so much any more. 🙁

Pub at our caravan site is £3.30 a pint (10% discount for site owners). Pub down the road, £4.50-£5.10 a pint.

Manchester city centre then minimum £5. We went into the Rising Sun with my boss a couple of years ago – it’s just a typical boozer he likes, except it was £5.50 a pint – he usually drinks in the Piccadilly Tap which is about £3.50. He nearly died when he had to pay. I said, look we could have gone to 20 Stories across the road and paid £6 a pint, and got a rooftop view !

Oh and Northern Quarter in Manchester, add on a couple of quid just because.