Sheffield as was

[Hallucigenia]

This may be of interest to some around here :

https://www.totalales.co.uk/blog/2017/1 ... -sheffield

[sg31]

Thanks for posting it. He's the same age as me and I know most of those pubs and drank enough of the local brews to sink a very, very large ship many times over.

I was introduced to beer at a very young age, 5, when my parents took on an off licence. it was tied to John Smiths and we sold draught bitter and Magnet which was a thinker stronger brew much favoured by my father and (unknown to him) his little son.

By far the best beer in Sheffield was Wards, true nectar if it was kept right and fart maker if it wasn't. It's all about cleaning the pipes between the barrel and the pump. At least twice a week if I remember correctly but preferably 3 times. A lazy landlord might do it once each week and the beer would suffer.

True drinkers went for Wards, Smiths next, Stoneses was hoppy but very light and a bit thin, Whitbread was sweet, Tetley was OK but nowt to write home abhart.

[Clitheroekid]

He's the same age as me

Yes, he must also be about the same age as me, and my memories of that era are very similar.

But I was surprised by the price of his first pint. I don't think I can remember my actual first pint - I seem to think we started on halves at around the age of 14 or 15, probably trying to appear less conspicuous and therefore less likely to get thrown out - "a half of bitter beer please" in a barely broken voice.

But I do definitely recall buying a pint of bitter made by Almond's of Standish - long since defunct - in the Pear Tree Pub in Wigan. It was 1/10½d (not sure if that's the right way to print it, but it's supposed to be one and tenpence ha'penny). Which equates to about 9 pence. And I'm quite sure of the year, it was 1970.

As I was young and (relatively) innocent I was for a while seduced by keg beers, mainly because they were almost exclusively served in the type of pubs which attracted girls, whereas traditional beer was more for the old street corner boozers - `four ale bars' as they were called. Our local keg beer was a concoction called Brew Ten, which was, I think, brewed by Bass Charrington.

Although it, along with other keg beers, was slated at the time by CAMRA etc to be perfectly honest at that age we didn't care. Beer was about getting drunk and the taste was pretty incidental. We also all smoked like chimneys at the time, so I doubt we'd have been able to tell much difference anyway.

But I do recall being quite shocked when the price went up to 15p a pint, and for the first time some doubts arose as to whether a pound note would get you through the evening! But these were the early days of high inflation, and we soon became quite used to beer going up what seemed like every few weeks.

Fortunately, I discovered - or more accurately rediscovered - proper beer in my 20's, and although its prospects seemed very gloomy for a long time I think we're now very lucky to be living in a splendid beer renaissance. And for that we have to thank whichever government it was that enabled the micro-brewery - a very rare example of legislation that appears to have been almost wholly beneficial.

[Hallucigenia]

Don't forget he was drinking in a village pub in Lincolnshire, which even today would be expected to be more expensive than a pub in Wigan, even before you take into account the logistics being so much more difficult (no M11 for instance, and the A1 rather more rudimentary than it is now) to boost the cost of a national brand over a local small brewery. Plus he was taking the premium option of Red Barrel over ordinary Watneys...

<i>whichever government it was that enabled the micro-brewery - a very rare example of legislation that appears to have been almost wholly beneficial.</i>

No one piece of legislation was reponsible - the likes of Burton Bridge started in the early 1980s just because they wanted to. But the Beer Orders gave a big push in that they led to a lot of brewers being made redundant and using their redundancy packages to set up breweries in the early 90s, and then Small Breweries' Relief halved duty in 2002, the latter representing 50% of the good decisions that Gordon Brown ever made.

[gryffron]

the latter representing 50% of the good decisions that Gordon Brown ever made.

Kept us out of the euro.
Abolition of betting tax (another win-win-win. As it helped UK punters, brought huge amount of Far-Eastern betting to UK bookies, which actually increased the total tax revenue)

I make that 1/3.

[tjh290633]

Interesting. He's nobbut a lad, of course. My first vists to Sheffield were in the early 50s, passing through when in the RAF at Worksop, but I worked in the city from 1957 to 1963, and have visited many times since.

Beer was about a shilling a pint then. Keg in its various forms tended to be 1/3d a pint. I was working at Neepsend Gasworks in 1957 and our normal habit was to take a tram to Fitzalan Square for lunch, which we took in the upstairs bar of a Higson's pub at the top of Commercial Street. The only one east of the Pennines, I believe and a long way from Liverpool. In 1959 I took a job in the University Area, on Northumberland Road, and we often went to a Ward's pub on the other side of Crookesmoor Road.

My last visit included a meal in a pub on Kelham Island, the Milestone, which had some locally brewed ales, as I recall. See http://the-milestone.co.uk/wp-content/u ... ct2016.pdf

TJH