Only, I stopped for a quick beer with a mate after a bike ride last night as the tented garden looked quite inviting.
'Pint of Amstel and a pint of that hipster ale in the funny glass for my friend please bar keep' says I.
£10.70!
That's without nuts!
I very nearly asked if there was an option to pay in instalments!
Pubs have had it rough so it's understandable there'd be price rises but... 😯
I'm not even in that London.
It’ll be that high hop hipster ale that bumped the price up.
still, £11 for 2 pints of beer isn’t outlandish.
It wasn’t that long ago that the local went from £1.25 to £1.28 a pint.
Outrageous. Suddenly you couldn’t lay a fiver on the bar and four pints magically appear.
There would have been less grumbling if they’d just gone for £2.50.
Double post
I thought it was for one when i read that...
It's not terrible for 2... although not a bargain either. But i'd expect it to be in the 9-10 range.
still, £11 for 2 pints of beer isn’t outlandish
It bloody should be.
I spent £2.5k on a tennis ball last night.
It was inside my dog for a few hours though. What I wouldn't give to have spent £10.70 on 2 beers instead, you lucky lucky ...
I spent £2.5k on a tennis ball last night.
It was inside my dog for a few hours though. What I wouldn’t give to have spent £10.70 on 2 beers instead, you lucky lucky …
You win 😂
Hope the dog recovers!
It is expensive. But if its a decent pint, served in a decent pub doing table service paying decent wages to staff along with Covid protocols, I'll happily pay it.
If it means I drink one or two less of an evening, so be it. I go to the pub to meet and socialise with mates, not to get trolleyed.
£3.80 for a decent cask ale at my local. Anything keg is more pricey though.
I'd probably say average cost is £4-5 in the locals for keg but happier to pay a little more if it's a decent beer.
I have no idea how much a beer costs in a pub or bar these days, partially because I brew my own, partially because COVID. But, for imported or hipster beers, that seems about right.
The lack of nuts though, horrifying. You poor bastard.
Sheffield's Fat Cat (Camra pub of the year and all that) last Sunday, pint of 5% IPA and a glass of white wine: £6.10. My local: c. £11-12.
When I were a lad 50p a pint for Tetley's in student Union. 10 pints, curry and taxi home for under a tenner
Been over a fiver a pint in most of the trendier Leeds bars and pubs for years. There are still a few cheaper pubs in the city centre - some you might actually want to drink in as long as you don't want too fancy a beer - notably the Angel Inn
The price of a pint is pretty wild these days.
The worst thing is when you take a punt on something new/fancy, costs nearly £6 and taste like bin juice.... 🙁
Hence why i dont often go for a pint anymore, i know its not the same, but i can get a 4 pack for the price of a pint and enjoy it in my own home.
How some people afford to be down the pub every night boozing is beyond me (although i am sure there are many parts of their life that suffer due to this).
Don't go then, it's no hard.
Have you seen the price for a gallon of petrol! #whenIwereAlad etc,etc. 🙂
Those prices. Not a wetherspoons then?
My local put the price of my usual up by 20p to £3, but I’ll forgive them because of covid
5 quid for Punk IPA in my local (and that's sleepy Herefordshire), £2.99 in Peebles served to your table (it does mean giving the Weatherspoons bloke my money tho).
Happy to pay a fiver to have a beer with my mates after a ride. Don't go to pub that often so it's not a massive drain on the finances!
I have no idea how much a beer costs [...] but that seems about right.
excellent STW-authoritative post there! Kudos! 😉
As for the tennis ball - don’t you have to brew coffee out of it now? Or is that cats?
Its just like the price of mountain bikes, everyone knows they are stupidly over priced, yet people still buy them.
Both are luxury middle class artisan products
I recently rolled my eyelids on receiving a bill which stretched into 3 figures for dinner at out local restaurant, it turned out I was partly to blame - 4 pints of the blonde beer cost £7 each...
However (and bear in mind this was 10 years ago), I think the record was ordering 4 pints of Guinness in a ski resort and being asked for 48 euros.
One thing I have noticed in the UK recently is that whilst beer hasnt gone up so much, the cost of soft drinks seems to be rising to the point where a large coke is the same as a pint of beer.
Beer is a middle class artisan product !? 🤯
I'd be smug about the prices here, but that's for industrially produced Spanish lager like Mahou, San Miguel etc. The nicer craft stuff isn't that much cheaper than the UK.
You should see the prices in Norway 😉
A fiver a pint?
Pfft! Peasants!
*tannoy*
@DazH to the forum please. REPEAT: DAZH TO THE FORUM PLEASE
We need to discuss the relative prices of 'artisan' IPA's. Ones that must have been distilled from the tears of angels and delivered in a spaceship
One thing I have noticed in the UK recently is that whilst beer hasnt gone up so much, the cost of soft drinks seems to be rising to the point where a large coke is the same as a pint of beer
Was the last time you bought one at the student union when you had handed in your car keys(while not owning a car) for free cokes cause you were skint......
Cokes always been pricy -and that's noted from both sides of the bar.
Soda water how ever was often 15 or so pence....that has crept up to be in line with coke now
As for not giving weatherspoons money..... I wasn't boycotting due to his political ****tishness we all entitiled to our views how ever silly but the way he treated/left his staff high and dry during covid means no money from me
Given the moaning when pubs were closed, I assumed their regular customers were willing to pay £20/pint.
Personally I hope some pubs will find that table service and less of a let’s see how many we can drink attitude works for them and it lasts beyond covid.
On the Weatherspoons front (and I won't go near that ****s places either), my mate is a pub landlord and says he can't buy his beer off the brewery for what Wetherspoons sell it at.
It's a whole different argument about the scandalous profiteering behaviour of the Pubco's, but it's worth bearing in mind when you're moaning about the price of a pint. If they don't charge those prices, with their overheads, then I'm afraid that Spoons are the only pubs you'll have left. And I don't think anyone wants that.
Personally I hope some pubs will find that table service and less of a let’s see how many we can drink attitude works for them and it lasts beyond covid.
I doubt that'll be happening. The increased staffing costs mean most places will have been operating at a loss, but doing it just to get some revenue in. People in the hospitality sector have lost an absolute fortune over the last 18 months. Most have taken on massive debt to stay afloat so will be looking to get back to 'normality' ASAP, which will mean we'll all be back to going to the bar again.
Most of the pubs near me seem to have put their prices up by about £1 since COVID. If I was a 6 pints/night guy this might sting but since Long Covid completely banjaxed my alcohol tolerance it has only increased the cost of a night out by about, er, £1. And if that's what it takes to help them stay in business I can live with it.
One thing I have noticed in the UK recently is that whilst beer hasnt gone up so much, the cost of soft drinks seems to be rising to the point where a large coke is the same as a pint of beer
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) or, most days, £1 for a bottle of Becks. A great incentive to stay off the booze!
i've only bought beers in leeds city £11-12 for 2 now
and 2 ossett brewary pubs after biking, 3 pints for under a tenner,
i think they need to put the price up personally, another 50p cant see many moaning,
Talking of studenty bars, I walked past one at about 11pm last night. Absolutely packed, full of paralytic 20 year-olds whooping it up on the dancefloor and snogging random strangers. Like nothing ever happened. COVID stats in the next couple of weeks are going to be painful...
My local put the price of my usual up by 20p to £3, but I’ll forgive them because of covid
Where do you live? 1998?
You should see the prices in Norway 😉
I did several years back and it was about £8 then. Dread to think what it is now.
kelvin said - Old man yells
Hey, I'm only nearly 48!
Oh....ok then 😉
Here in the Brighton area we have been hit by stunning covid opportunity inflation / lets try and make the lost money back.
A pint of harveys would have been 3.80 - 4.00 18 months ago. You will struggle to get anything now south of 5.00 GBP.
I bought a round of 5 drinks post ride - that will be 30 quid thanks !
(and none of it was hipster shit)
Where do you live? 1998?
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
[img] 
[/img]
A shade under £5 a pint around here, it does seem expensive but good value compared to a goldfish bowl of wine the Mrs orders.
Edit - Forgot to add. If the bowl of wine isn't bad enough, sometimes it will be a gin and bloody tonic with a fruit salad or some grass cuttings floating on the top. When she orders on of those I just tap my card with my eyes closed hoping not to see how much the total is 🙂
Lots of folks at work have bought these home pump things, and tbh while I've never really understood folk that sit in pubs themselves, there is nothing more crushingly sad than having a 'bar' in ones home.
GHill
Full Member
You should see the prices in Norway 😉
In Sweden, so I feel the pain of the fellow Scandinavians. Hence why the "about right" comment I made was... made. A workmate regularly bitches about paying 70kr for a beer in Stockholm, which is why he defaults to drinking the cheap stuff (most often seen on streetcorners) when at home.
And he used to work in finance too... Cheap bstard.
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.
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.