Price of beer in pubs

I still remember my first £1 pint. (I was horrified!) It was in a pub in Norfolk in the summer of 1988. Norfolk was a beer desert in those days - how times have changed!

Astonishingly I had another £1 pint a few weeks ago at the Barge and Bottle in Sleaford, Lincs. (A GK related beer on special offer. Maybe that says something about GK beers, although the beer concerned...)

I don't think that can be right. In 1970 I remember Double Diamond (yeah I know better now .....!) was 1/10d per pint in Chelmsford - around 9p/pint. I could buy a round for 4 - with crisps and nuts and get change from 10 bob (50p) - I was on £440 a year at the time as an apprentice.

The Malt Shovell in Altrincham is selling an excellent Samuel Smith's Bitter for £1.37 a pint.

Unfortunately, yesterday I didn't get past the Abbot Special Reserve in the "spoons" at £1.99p

Ken, BOLTON.

From the 1986 GBG , average beer prices per pint were

I started drinking in 1960 and the prices I paid were:- Simmonds bitter 1/3d Strongs bitter 1/5d Marstons bitter 1/6d

At decimalisation I was paying 2/4d for Marstons bitter and in 1979 it was 40p.

At the moment my local (soon to be ex) is charging between £3 and £3-20p. Another pub a couple of miles further down the road is charging £2-50p for beers under 5% and £2-60p for beers 5% and over with an ever changing choice of 3 guests.

PY

......

It's gone up to around £2.50/£2.60 around here too (glum) (that's South Wales in rural pubs, even spoons is over the £2 mark now.)

On Wed 03 Sep08 08:56, Cerumen wrote in :

If prices change at a different rate to earnings then isn't it better to compare the price of beer to the price index?

Hi

If my memory serves me right; back in the mid 1960s, when I were a lad on a wage of £67 10 shillings per month, a pint of Toby light was about one and tenpence!!!! 8^)

Regards KGB

Yes, but we were talking about beer.

That's all we could get in those days - arguably, at least it tasted marginally better than lager!!! 8^)

Regards

KGB

Which leads me onto a sub-thread. I loathe the taste of pasteurised bottled beers - that dead, caramelly sameness that they all share and which ruins the basically good taste of *some* of them. However, on the rare occasions I drink bottled/canned/keg mass-market lager, that pasteurised taste is not present. Whilst I don't rate the flavour highly, I don't find it offensive like I do with most pasteurised beers. So what gives? Is mass market lager pasteurised? If so, why doesn't it taste as bad as the pasteurised bitters etc? Or is it just me?

Hi

I also hate bottled beer and know exactly what you mean; although personally, I now brew my own draught beer at home. By brewing my own, I do NOT mean making it from kits, but in a proper little (5 gallon) brewery in my garden shed, starting the process by milling the grain and then brewing in exactly the same way a commercial real-ale brewery does, in a mash tun followed by sparging etc. - and tastewise, a "full mash" homebrew can hold its own with the best real ale bought over a bar, the main difference being that mine costs just over twenty pence a pint.

The reason I go to the trouble of milling my own grain is purely and simply for convenience. Whole grain lasts for years, whereas milled grain goes off in just a few weeks. As all my ingredients have to be bought mail order, it is more convenient to buy un-milled grain in bulk and just mill it as and when required.

When on holiday however, I do tend to drink the local beer - usually a lager, which almost certainly suits the climate (British beer doesn't taste right when the air temperature is well over 100 degrees). I do find often that, although there is no "dead, caramelly" taste to mass-market lager, quite often there is an odd "tinny" taste which fortunately seems to be masked by the flavour of the lager (What flavour I hear you cry!!!!) 8^)

Regards

KGB

Well you're pushing at an open door there. I first started brewing kits in '71, switched to extract, crystal and hops in '76, and to full mash brewing in '84. I also crush my own grain (bought direct from Faram's

Agreed again. Though I remember going to Boston many years ago, (work related) and trying Bass chilled to within an inch of its life. Ye Gods! It doesn't taste right even when the ambient temperature is similar to here! Then I discovered Samuel Adams :) Now *that* didn't taste caramelly (cold-filtered and CO2 injected??)

I've certainly had that tinny taste with canned lager, usually after its 'Best Before' date, and some keg lagers, probably also past their 'Best Before' date. But if in date I haven't noticed it.

Point taken. My experience of "Watney's red" put me off beer for ages. I couldn't understand how anybody could drink this foul tasting stuff.

......

a shilling a pint in 1958

Until recently I enjoyed Sam Smiths at the Belle Monte in Frodsham for GBP1.42 a pint. Unfortunately, they saw fit to remove the handpumps and sell ony keg beer a few months ago - despite my never having experienced anything other than excellent ale there - so I won't be going back. The Golden Lion is still fairly reliable for SS cask. However, I am pleased to take up the offer of Oakwell "Old Tom" mild regularly for GBP1.40 a pint at the Weaver Hotel, Weston Point.