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My local Greene King pub sells Belhaven Black, which is proving to be quite a popular alternative to Guinness.
The Beer Orders Act was well intentioned but ended up being an utter disaster. The big brewers did run a cartel but at least they brewed beer (albeit a lot of it not very good) and had a vested interest in pubs. The PubCos which replaced them were only interested in squeezing every last drop of rent out of pubs and ended up being worse.
The problem isn’t that pubs are too expensive, it’s that alcohol purchased off-trade (i.e. in supermarkets and off licences) is too cheap.
Both if you ask me although certainly the cheapness of supermarket booze is the bigger factor. You can fairly easily get 3 pints worth in the supermarket for the same cost as a single pint in many of the pubs round here. If money is tight then what do you do? Yes the pub is offering a better product, particularly in the case of real ales, but that’s a huge chasm. That said, getting little to no change out of a score for 3 pints, increasingly common in my neck of the woods, does sting a bit.
Of course it does as ever come back to property prices. I’d definitely go to the pub more if my mortgage didn’t eat up the thick end of half my take home each month, and I’m reasonably well paid with no kids to feed. I don’t know how some people manage it. Ludicrous rent and mortgage rates are a big part of the reason why going to the pub is now the luxury you rightly say it is.
There’ll always be a place for pubs though and I really don’t think they’ll disappear completely but it’s no doubt a smaller market than it used to be for the various reasons described here.
Much of the cost of a pint in a pub is tax and duty. It is far higher than in other countries. I recall reading that when Britain was still in the EU, it accounted for something like 40% of the total tax haul on alcohol. That is crazy.
I wonder what the response would be if taxes were increased on supermarket alcohol and reduced on pubs accordingly. Obviously a difficult balance to get right but surely it would make some form of sense.
I’d be interested to see what the figures are for duties on a pint and is the same amount payable regardless of the overall cost? I’m thinking of the difference between a Wetherspoons pint and your local independent which can easy be a couple of pounds. Is the difference purely the Weatherspoons business model or do they also pay less tax by selling it cheaper?
I heard a rumour that Adnams have cut their ABV on their classic Southwold Bitter from 3.7% to 3.4%. If true, that is an accountant’s decision. It means the beer qualifies for a lower rate of duty – but it is unlikely to improve the taste.
A sad way for such a classic to be treated but I get the impression all Adnams cares about now is the remarkably successful Ghost Ship, their pale and hoppy beer, which I believe accounts for a huge amount of their production. Including the 0.5% alcohol version.
They become victims of their own success like Sharp’s Brewery from Cornwall of Doom Bar fame. As I understand it, much of their output now comes from Burton upon Trent (although they don’t exactly shout about that) and they’re now going to close the original Cornish site that produces the cask stuff.
It’s been owned by Molson Coors for a while now and this is the inevitable result.
I think the bottled version of Doom Bar has been brewed in Burton for several years now.
And then there is the news about BrewDog. I am sorry for anyone who will lose their jobs via bar closures but not sorry for the company’s founders.
Yes I have been in the odd Brewdog bar and the staff themselves have been fine so it is a shame for them but as you say some of those higher up are odious people.
The bars, whilst being nice enough, weren’t cheap and I never saw that many people in when I passed the one local to me. It was quite large but with relatively few tables. It was presumably a similar story elsewhere and why the vast majority were not kept as part of the deal.
Only visited two Brewdog pubs and didn’t like them at all: cavernous with doomy dark decor and uncomfortable seating, and the beer didn’t appeal either.
Tetley Bitter is now brewed in Burton too, by Marstons I think, and is not the same or as moreish as the lovely liquor brewed at the now-demolished Hunslet brewery in Leeds.
Burton’s particularly hard water is fine for the distinctive beers long made there such as Draught Bass and Marston’s Pedigree but is not suitable for replicating beers once brewed elsewhere.
In former times one of the joys of travelling around the country was the opportunity to sample regional beers sold only locally and I think it a shame that now you can get the likes of Taylor’s Landlord in Cornwall and Doom Bar in Yorkshire.
I had a pint of Harvey’s Dark Mild in Liverpool yesterday. Until recently the brewery had a policy of only selling its beer within a 50 mile radius of its Lewes home but it recently signed a distribution deal with the Kirkstall Brewery, resulting in its beers being seen further afield now.
Draught Bass is now brewed by Marstons. It almost disappeared a few years ago but is a more common sight now. I believe Carlsberg/Marstons have promoted it as some sort of cool heritage brand. More importantly it tastes good. I had a lovely pint of it in Uttoxeter after racing recently. Just down the road from where it is brewed.
As for BrewDog: I think they started out OK but unfortunately they got too big for their boots.
I didn’t like the way they happily used CAMRA beer festivals to get themselves noticed but then viciously turned on the organisation.
After that they seemed more interested in publicity stunts and attention seeking rather than brewing anything worth drinking. That was successful for a while but I suspected it was a house built on sand. And then the bullying accusations emerged, which didn’t really surprise anyone.
Their Liverpool outlet is not part of the deal announced yesterday. I am not surprised. It is not a particularly good location. You could easily miss it and there are plenty of better pubs in that part of the city, in terms of beer quality, value for money and the look of the pub.
“Tetley Bitter is now brewed in Burton too, by Marstons I think, and is not the same or as moreish as the lovely liquor brewed at the now-demolished Hunslet brewery in Leeds.”
This raises a much discussed question on the CAMRA forums: should a beer which is now brewed away from its roots and with different ingredients be allowed to use the same name when it clearly isn’t the same beer? A good example that has emerged recently is the revival of Boddingtons.
I recall the original beer, brewed in the Strangeways Brewery. It was a very pale and very bitter, unusually so for a northern beer.
During the late 80s/early 90s, it acquired a cool image via a clever television advertising campaign under the tag line “The Cream of Manchester”. It was even name checked in an episode of “Friends”, which presumably AB InBev must have paid top dollar for, given it was about the biggest show on television at that time.
The Strangeways Brewery closed some time in the mid to late 90s (I think) and the beer was contract brewed by Hydes. However, the contract was not renewed when Hydes moved to a new site and downsized, meaning cask Boddingtons disappeared.
It has recently been revived under the care of Manchester brewer JW Lee’s. I had a pint of it in Preston a few weeks ago. To be fair, it is very well brewed and I enjoyed it a lot. However, it is of a noticeably darker hue than the Strangeways beer and though it still has a pleasant bitter aftertaste, it is not quite as bitter as I recall.
It is genuinely pleasing to see such a famous name back on the bar. But is it really Boddingtons? Maybe it won’t matter to younger drinkers and I suppose the issue will be irrelevant as us older brigade take our leave!
I’m not a fan at all of things pretending to be something they aren’t. I get why they want to use the famous names rather than come up with entirely new branding but it all rings a bit hollow with me and I’m not quite an oldster yet!
As a part time lager lout I don’t like the fact that most of the European brands are now at best brewed in the UK and at worst completely made up such as Madri which is about as Spanish as I am.
Even Guinness is apparently starting up London operations again after ceasing some time ago.
“Even Guinness is apparently starting up London operations again after ceasing some time ago.”
https://opengatelondon.guinness.com/en?utm_source=localsearch&utm_medium=gmb&utm_campaign=gogbl
Squarely aimed at tourists.
“I don’t like the fact that most of the European brands are now at best brewed in the UK and at worst completely made up”
I’m usually a cask ale drinker but don’t mind the odd pint of lager on a summer’s day. The difference between real Cruzcampo from Seville and the rubbish that’s brewed under licence in the UK is enormous; similarly, there’s no comparison between Japanese Asahi and the pish you get here.
Have you tried Veltins Richard? The only lager I like (here in the UK) and still only brewed in Germany, unlike the majority of ersatz European brands ‘brewed under licence’ here.
Boddingtons bitter in its orginal form was very distinctive but a bit too bitter for me. I believe the Strangeways brewery was opposite Strangeways prison. The scent drifting across and tickling the noses of the inmates must have made their incarceration all the more trying
“I believe the Strangeways brewery was opposite Strangeways prison”.
That’s right. I often used to go to the Brewery Tap, which was the one place in Manchester where you were guaranteed to find the cask version of Boddingtons, which wasn’t that widely available in the city even at the height of the Cream of Manchester era. The place had a certain frisson.
Cruzcampo has made itself ubiquitous very quickly. I must admit I do like the glass, which looks quite stylish. I recall having a glass of it in Cordoba about 15 years ago, when it was something like 39°C and most of the locals were wisely having their siesta. It hit the mark nicely.
I shall have to hunt out Veltins, thanks.
I do find that the German brands are more reliable for having the all important word ‘imported’ on the bottle.
I do like some of the Polish beers as well, you usually have to go to a Polski Sklep to find anything beyond Tyskie but it’s worth the trip. They often pack a punch too, 5.5-6% is not unusual. Zubr (literally bison) is perhaps the pick of the bunch.
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