Price of beer in pubs

In message , Douglas Clark wrote

Not beer prices, but for comparison the rpi for around the last 90 years can be found at:

There is a link to a graph at the bottom of the page

Aston Ale 30p, lagerade and Guinness 31p.

I can't recall food prices (they weren't as important :-)

In message , Douglas Clark wrote

CAMRA survey 1994 Average £1.36 (3.5% ABV) South East £1.53 North West £1.20

Multiply the above prices by 1.5 to give inflation (RPI) adjusted figures Ave = £2.04 SE = £2.30 NW = £1.80

So in the last 14 years beer in pubs hasn't got any cheaper in real terms. Also consider that the 'trade' is predicting an average £4/pint by the end of the year and £5/pint by 2012.

In message , Steven Pampling writes

In Chester in 1974 mild was 12p and bitter was 14p. Most of it was keg; we were grateful for Banks' in the countryside at the same price. The

I remember refusing to drink in the bar of the Derwent Hotel, Torquay because the keg "Double Diamond" was 24p a pint; in a pub it would've been about 16p. That was at Easter 1975. There was a geography course on the same field trip; I went back to the bar after closing for something I'd forgotten and there was John Cryne -

Er. Um. Beer prices were shooting up in the 70s like everything else though. In about 1977, passing through Farnham, someone said "Bet lager's 50p a pint here!" meaning it'd be expensive. By the following year that would've been cheap.

In the late seventies when I used to underage drink in the Hare and Hounds in Hastings (now long gone), a pint of Whitbread was 66p. We used to have a pint and a half, and the evening's drinking still gave us change from a pound.

Happy days.....

In article , Manky Badger writes

Indeed, when I started drinking in 1963 you could have a night out for a pound, 12p a pint, 12.5p for 20 cigs, 3p each way bus fare to Huddersfield, mind you the down side was I was only earning £3.15 a week and had to pay board out of that.

Mike

Yes, that was something I was trying to reconcile in my mind - I recall the start of drinking IN pubs back in 1974 (or possibly 73) and the price per pint was the same as the maximum bus fare which at the time was 15p

Maximum fare hasn't got to the current beer price at present, despite fuel costs.

I was about to say that Double Diamond was a pretty good reason for not drinking, then you threw in the reason to avoid pubs :-)

I also remembered why I remembered the price difference on the beers in the student union - the Aston Ale was the same price as lager and I avoided lager, so until the Real Ale bar opened in the cellar Steve Parry and I drank upstairs in the second floor. Since Guiness was one penny more than the lager he was drinking he kept score and every 31 pints I had to buy an extra round. Those who know Steve of old will now be laughing and recalling a number of other similar incidents.

I do not have exact figures or quotes but surely the only real comparison can be how many hours/minutes a specific common type worker such as building labourer has to work to buy a pint.

Building labourer? At the moment, that calculation would tend towards infinity.

In article , Steven Pampling writes

A pint cost that much at the student union bar at Queen's in Belfast around that time.

Bad choice maybe, I'm not up to speed with that work thing these days.

Are you sure about this? I started drinking about the same year (63) and can remember (*) paying about 1 shilling 5 pence (63 being pre-decimal) for a pint (of bitter) on Merseyside. This equates to just over 7p. I can't imagine Yorkshire would be nearly twice as expensive as Merseyside. Even 5 or so years later a so called "premium" (ie keg) beer was

Malcolm

(*) Being the 60's, I don't guarantee my memory either...

For many years a Mars bar kept level with inflation and was regularly used to equate to cost.

Of course, like everything else, they had to change the size.

There again, THEY have to change things usually for the sake of change.

Just who THEY are is impossible to discover but they have a lot to answer for.

In article , Malcolm Lee writes

I was thinking after I posted that maybe memory had played a trick or two and it was nearer the back end of the sixties.

Very true.

Mike

I'd be surprised if it were true, given the fact that the price of raw materials has shot through the roof recently [1]. The price of the cheapest pint in my local has increased from £1.60 to £2.20 over the last two years, and much of that is due to increases in brewers' prices because of this.

To add another data point to the graph, when I left Uni (Salford) in

I recall my local charged 12.5 pence a pint for Home Bitter in 1973. My wife drank halves and the landlord charged 6.5 pence for the first half , 6 pence for the next and so on.None of the present day rounding up for him.

In message , Douglas Clark wrote

Shameless advert: A friend of mine has some beer price lists for sale mailto: snipped-for-privacy@tap-room.com or editorial address found at

Back on topic: Some pub prices taken from those price lists. Some prices are for Keg products.

Hall & Woodhouse 1964 Public bar Keg bitter 1/10   pint Keg mild   1/9 Best        1/9 Pale Ale   1/4 Mild        1/3

Stingo Barley Wine 1/5 1/2d nip Export Stout 1/1  1/2d Light Ale 11 1/2d

Whitbread 1965 (Probably London prices) Tankard 2/4  Pint Bitter 1/11 Best 1/6

Whitbread (Light?) 1/2 1/2d Mackeson    1/7 1/2d        1/2 bottle 2.8% Gold Label Barley wine 1/10  Nip (6oz)

Fremlins 1966 Elephant Light Ale 2/- pint IPA 1/9 pint Queens Ale 1/7 nip

Tolly Cobbold 1968 Public Bar Mild   1/7 Bitter 1/11 Old Strong 2/3

Tolly Cobbold 1969

Tolly Cobbold 1969 Mild 1/10 Bitter 2/2 Old Strong 2/6

For the younger readers, or those with brains that have been affected by the vast amount of Real Ale drunk over the years :)

Some price adjustments in line with the RPI RPI figures taken from

It looks like that compared to prices charged in pubs in the mid to late

In message , Alan wrote

Some more prices from the 1950s - off licence prices

Priced per dozen

(Peterborough) AUTUMN 1951 Guinness, Harp label 12/- halves - 22/- pints Nut Brown 16/6 pints Carlsberg 15/- halves Grahams Golden Lager (Skol) 11/6

XMAS 1953 Guinness = same price Nut Brown = 17/- Carlsberg = same price Skol (GGL) 12/-