Quite so, and if that means hipsters happy to pay more for their craft keg and the same pubs then being able to afford slimmer margins for quality cask then who am I to complain?
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You only care deeply about the price of beer if you spend a lot your income on beer. If you drink 40 pints a week price is going to be an issue even if you're on quite a good income. A pound a pint extra is a couple of grand a year. If you drink eight or ten pints a week on a similar income you're not going to get so excited if some of them cost £6 rather than £4.
I remember paying 10p a pint so when my1/2 of craft keg costs £4 I am aware that I could have had 40 pints of Dryboroughs -heavy for that price. when I first started drinking in 1969.
You're wrong there, it would have been two shillings in 1969! In the same year that was the cheapest pint I ever had and it was Greenall's at the Swallow Falls Hotel. It was cheaper than the keg Tartan or "E" in the London student union bar which cost two shillings and four pennies.
About 4 years later Young's pubs were on the agenda and Special was 14p a pint in their cheapest Public Bars.
I remember being an impoverished civil servant working in Holborn when decimal currency was introduced, and with a couple of similarly impoverished colleagues had our local as the White Hart in Theobalds Rd where Watneys Special (I think that's what it was called - it had a yellow tap front, and was cheaper than Red Barrel) at 10p a pint, and their vegetable pie was also 10p. I'm sure that three pints of Watneys Special and veggie pie had no effect whatsoever on our productivity in the afternoon. The White Hart's listed on here but was demolished years ago.
It certainly was Watney's Special. I too was an uncivil servant in Holborn back in the mid 1970s. Soon after the Sun in Lambs Conduit Street had opened with two Brakspear, two Young's and two Greene King beers. It was a great place until they started doing so many different beers that none of them were any good.
Indeed, in 1981 the roster (from Real Ale In London) was:
Bateman - XB and XXXB
Brain's SA
Brakspears Bitter
Chudley - Bitter, Lords
Devenish - Bitter, Wessex Best
Everard - Beacon, Old Original
Felinfoel Double Dragon
Fuller's London Pride
Gibbs Mew - Bishop's Tipple
Jenning's Bitter
Marston's - Pedigree, Merrie Monk
Theakstons - Best, OP
Tolly Cobbold Original
Tower Bitter
Wadworth's 6X
I make that 21 beers. There were people who made a thing of going round the pumps.
I don't remember ever having a decent pint in there and it wasn't in the GBG by then.
It was a popular area for pub crawls. The Princess Louise,round the corner, in its pre-Sam's days, set itself up in competition and posted 17 beers, and there were various other pubs with large ranges locally, though none as ridiculous as those two.
Bridge House - £6.25 for a pint of keg Lagunitas IPA two nights ago.