Price of drink!

[the0ni0nking]

Was a relaxing 2.80 Euros for my San Miguel earlier.

[simoan]

Was a relaxing 2.80 Euros for my San Miguel earlier.

Now there’s a beer I wouldn’t drink if it were free!

[GrahamPlatt]

Was a relaxing 2.80 Euros for my San Miguel earlier.

Likely to have been a 33cl bottle; 2.8 x 568/330 = €4.82 a pint.

Still, I tend to agree with simoan here.

[Mike4]

Was a relaxing 2.80 Euros for my San Miguel earlier.

Now there’s a beer I wouldn’t drink if it were free!

Calling it "beer" is going a bit far, Shirley.

[the0ni0nking]

Nah, 2.80 for the draught pint. Might have a Cruzcampo today.

[didds]

Indeed Mike. I suppose the historical distriction is blurred because villages once with a pub, a primary school, a church and a local shop, a very few decades later, have none of these things. All that remains is a public phone box, which may now be a mini swap-a-book library and home for a defribulator!

[jaizan]

Was a relaxing 2.80 Euros for my San Miguel earlier.

Usually no need to drink that. Every European country I've visited in recent years has very nice locally brewed IPAs. Even the Czech Republic, where they invented the other stuff.

Most were sensibly priced, but Spain was something of an outlier, with IPAs going for around 6~7 Euros per half litre. So very little demand at that price, so it was quite hard to find a bar selling it.

[bungeejumper]

Indeed Mike. I suppose the historical distriction is blurred because villages once with a pub, a primary school, a church and a local shop, a very few decades later, have none of these things. All that remains is a public phone box, which may now be a mini swap-a-book library and home for a defribulator!

Easily half of the former pubs in our village were buildings that had other uses in the daytime. Such as the forge, the farm workers' cottages, the dairy and the bakery. It's very likely that they would all have brewed their own beer on the premises.

Around Zummerzet it was also very common to find cider houses where you just walked into somebody's house and sat down on a straight-backed chair in the parlour to buy a pint or two and chat with the neighbours. All the ones I used to frequent in the 1980s were run by fierce old widows who didn't stand for any nonsense. I've often seen similar in rural France.

BJ

[UncleEbenezer]

Was a relaxing 2.80 Euros for my San Miguel earlier.

Usually no need to drink that. Every European country I've visited in recent years has very nice locally brewed IPAs. Even the Czech Republic, where they invented the other stuff.

Try anything once. I tried a San Miguel once - never again. I seem to recollect it was at a US airport, where all choices looked dire.

Most were sensibly priced, but Spain was something of an outlier, with IPAs going for around 6~7 Euros per half litre. So very little demand at that price, so it was quite hard to find a bar selling it.

Looking back to my time in Italy (and supposing living in Spain might be a similar experience), there's perhaps a deeper point there. Italy had some Brit-style real ales, but after a few months there I no longer had an appetite for them. I think it must've been something about the climate and environment, and real ale just didn't work any more. Neither did I feel the urge on visits back to Blighty. It was only on my permanent return that I re-acquired the taste.

[simoan]

Nah, 2.80 for the draught pint. Might have a Cruzcampo today.

Only decent Spanish beer I’ve ever tried is Turia which you can find on draught around Valencia. It’s a German Marzen style. Some of the local specials you get from Estrella Galicia and Estrella Damm can be interesting but otherwise it’s mostly lager style pish.

[simsqu]

You're all stark raving mad.

I live in London - have done all my adult life - and I wouldn't be seen dead in a so-called old fashioned traditional pub serving limp, tepid, sewage runoff a.k.a. ale, beer, call it what you will. Bermondsey is fantastic now: plenty of trendy coffee bars, cocktail bars and restaurants, both old and new.

Give me a nice pint of crisp, cool, clean, refreshing San Miguel, or Amstel, or Estrella any day, or ideally, a Campari & Orange

[servodude]

You're all stark raving mad.

I live in London - have done all my adult life - and I wouldn't be seen dead in a so-called old fashioned traditional pub serving limp, tepid, sewage runoff a.k.a. ale, beer, call it what you will. Bermondsey is fantastic now: plenty of trendy coffee bars, cocktail bars and restaurants, both old and new.

Give me a nice pint of crisp, cool, clean, refreshing San Miguel, or Amstel, or Estrella any day, or ideally, a Campari & Orange

This feels like an "I'll have a babycham!" moment

[simsqu]

This feels like an "I'll have a babycham!" moment

Ooooh I'd LOVE a Babycham!

[Hallucigenia]

I remember when minimum wage was introduced, we paid the student part-time staff £3.20 per hour and they could buy a pint for £1.60.

So a beer cost 30 minutes of wages - although Guinness would have cost quite a bit more??

We spent Christmas in London with the children and their partners in the course of which four of us went for a 'sharpener' in Southwark on Christmas Eve.
£27 for two pints of Guinness and two lagers.
Blimey! In my local in Teesside the round would be £12.50.
I don't know how the young manage to afford a good old fashioned 'sesh' without a bankers draft!

So £6.75 a pint. Minimum wage is currently £10.42/hour (£11.44 from April) but in central London bar staff are getting a minimum of £12, and £15-16 if they are any good. So the cost of the pint in minutes of low-end wages hasn't changed much - I suspect many people don't realise quite how much minimum wage has gone up beyond inflation (up over 60% in real terms) and in turn that's a major reason for higher beer prices, as the beer can cost as much as the labour to serve it once you add in now-compulsory extras like pension costs).

Beer pricing these days can surprise on the upside or downside anywhere.Back in the day it was cheap up north and pricey down south.

Last week I visited a pal in Mansfield while northbound and paid £13.50 for two pints of Neck Oil IPA in a run of the mill local pub. The following day I paid a surprisingly reasonable £8.20 for two pints of Ilkley Pale IPA at a stylish gastro pub in Addingham.
We stuck around for another two rounds in the latter but not the former.

Keg has always cost quite a lot more than cask, which I'm guessing was what the Ilkley was? But also if you're seeing (Heineken-owned) Neck Oil outside the M25 then it's almost always going to be at a pub owned and tied by Star Pubs - owned by Heineken. So the poor pub is being stiffed by Heineken on prices, which it has to pass on to the punter.

Our village (1200 people) has only one pub left, although it's been well run and is doing well. But compare with 1901, when its 1,050 residents had eleven pubs to choose from!

Back in 1901, I guess the village pub did not have to contend with:
1 Excessive business rates
2 High taxes on beer & spirits
3 Minimum wages
etc

Instead it had to contend with extortionate prices for pub licences and then in WWI all sorts of restrictions not just extortionate taxes...

Also I would guess that most of those 11 establishments were not full pubs but alehouses which were a different thing with different licensing - and they were generally pretty small, whereas the overall square-footage of licensed premise will have changed less, as various factors have pushed towards fewer, but bigger places. Another big factor is that people's houses are just much nicer places than they were, with functional heating and entertainment that could previously only be found in pubs.

This fictionalised account gives a good idea of the various forces affecting pubs over the decades:
https://boakandbailey.com/2017/04/pubs- ... 1837-2017/

[Mike4]

Also I would guess that most of those 11 establishments were not full pubs but alehouses which were a different thing with different licensing - and they were generally pretty small, whereas the overall square-footage of licensed premise will have changed less, as various factors have pushed towards fewer, but bigger places. Another big factor is that people's houses are just much nicer places than they were, with functional heating and entertainment that could previously only be found in pubs.

This fictionalised account gives a good idea of the various forces affecting pubs over the decades:
https://boakandbailey.com/2017/04/pubs- ... 1837-2017/

What a great read, thanks Hal.

I've often wondered if the seven supposed pubs in my tiny village were not full-fat pubs but something else and "Alehouse" or "Beerhouse" seems a lot more likely. I have also wondered about the status of all the basic-type micro pubs popping up in what used to be high street shops, which seem to sell only proper beer and wine, no spirits or any of that CO2-powered pub bar paraphernalia. Presumably they have a different legal status to a "Public House" which may not be demolished without Planning Permission; possibly they are the same thing as a Beer House in the eyes of the law and the local council planning dept.

[Urbandreamer]

Presumably they have a different legal status to a "Public House" which may not be demolished without Planning Permission; possibly they are the same thing as a Beer House in the eyes of the law and the local council planning dept.

A quick web search shows that as I suspected, "Public house" is not a legal term.

As I understand it Ale houses were private homes where you could drop in and buy ale. Public houses started the same way. Inns provided accommodation as well as food and drink.

By the way, if you can find a copy can I recommend the book "An Inebriated history of Britain", I think reprinted as "Beer and Britannia".
Well worth a read for those who drink things other than Babycham.

Ps, I have been known, upon occasion, to drink San Miguel, but I do prefer something a bit more robust normally.

[Mike4]

Presumably they have a different legal status to a "Public House" which may not be demolished without Planning Permission; possibly they are the same thing as a Beer House in the eyes of the law and the local council planning dept.

A quick web search shows that as I suspected, "Public house" is not a legal term.

As I understand it Ale houses were private homes where you could drop in and buy ale. Public houses started the same way. Inns provided accommodation as well as food and drink.

By the way, if you can find a copy can I recommend the book "An Inebriated history of Britain", I think reprinted as "Beer and Britannia".
Well worth a read for those who drink things other than Babycham.

Ps, I have been known, upon occasion, to drink San Miguel, but I do prefer something a bit more robust normally.

Thanks. I'll have a search for that book.

The wiki page on pubs agrees with you there is no agreed definition of a pub, and yet the govt guidance on pub demolition uses the term repeatedly.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/when-is-permission-required

This cropped up recently in the news in the case of the "Crooked House" 'pub' illegal demolition.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-66951166

One wonders how it can be illegal to demolish a 'pub' when there is no definition of 'pub'.

[Dicky99]

By the way, if you can find a copy can I recommend the book "An Inebriated history of Britain", I think reprinted as "Beer and Britannia".
Well worth a read for those who drink things other than Babycham.

"Man Walks into a Pub" from recollection of reading it years ago is also an interesting and entertaining social history of all things beer. If you're a kindle reader there is the option of a taster sample.
The thing that sticks in my memory was the chapter discussing unintended consequences of just about every government attempt to force people to drink less.

[UncleEbenezer]

The thing that sticks in my memory was the chapter discussing unintended consequences of just about every government attempt to force people to drink less.

Could that be why they're now encouraging people to drink more with this Pints-of-Wine nonsense?

[88V8]

Give me a nice pint of crisp, cool, clean, refreshing San Miguel, or Amstel, or Estrella any day, or ideally, a Campari & Orange

You should try a pint of brown ale shandy, or Guinness shandy if no brown ale.

V8