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I went to London last Thursday. I popped in pub called Green Man next to Great Portland Street tube station and I ordered a pint of Otter ale.
Then to my horror, it came to £4.10! :eek:
I have visited few pubs beforehand and price of pint are generally £3.60 but pint in Green Man are taking a piss.
Now I am used to Midland prices with around 2.80 which is perfectly normal, how come London prices are different from other parts in UK?
Prices in my area (Hampshire/Surrey borders) are pretty much the same as London, ranging from £3.40 to £3.90 depending on strength, so London prices no longer shock me apart from paying £4.50 for a pint of fizzy Jaipur IPA in The Old Red Cow in Smithfield. :moremad:
I've just paid £2.70 for a pint of Ossett Yorkshire Pride, in my village local. However, last week I went to a pub in the neighbouring village and paid £.3.50 for a pint of Ossett Silver King. That really did strike me as taking the piss. I was drinking in Greater London, during the summer, for less than that.
Had my first £3 pint in my local last night :eek: it was Jaipur 5.9%:D , most guests are around £2.65 in the 4.2% - 4.6% range , next door they have had a few £3 pints again the stronger ones but there own beers are usually pretty good value between £2.20 and £2.60.
Out and about in North Yorks today I've paid:
Magic Rock Curious (3.9%) £3.18 [pub 1]
Great Heck Jarnos Ashes (4.5%) £3.34 [pub 1]
Wharfebank Tether Blonde (4.1%) £3.35 [pub 2]
Deuchars IPA (3.8%) £3.30 [pub 3]
Rudgate Ruby Mild (4.4%) £2.94 [pub 4]
The best beers were the Magic Rock, and Great Heck in one pub and Rudgate in another, the most expensive beer was very cold, very cloudy and very poor quality, the second most expensive was the second worst beer of the day. Not only was the beer in pub 1 better but I quite fancy the landlady too. I'm undecided whither the Magic Rock or the Rudgate was beer of the day.
Most of the central London pubs rely on passing trade rather than regulars who would protest about the price of a pint.the high price of property is the main reason for the prices.the Bree Louise was sold last year for about £1.5 million.its only a little shabby corner pub but to get a return on that price they need to price the beers accordingly.its not uncommon for beers to be near £4.00 a pint now.
I paid £4 for a pint of Landlord in the Clerk and Well yesterday.:eek:
The City of London can be something of an exception, however, since while there are a good number of very pricy establishments most of the 'proper' pubs seem to be somewhat cheaper than in the West End despite the sky-high property prices in the Square Mile.Quote:
Originally Posted by london calling
There is some truth here in that many City pubs cater for the bone-headed city trader morons and West End pubs try and attract gullible tourists.Quote:
Originally Posted by london calling
This may be true for the Bree Louise, which I haven't been to, although I did once go there when it was an awful Watney's pub called the Jolly Gardeners.
The fact is that beer in central London has always been expensive. Back in the days when the Big 6 brewers owned virtually all the pubs they charged through the nose in Central London, despite the fact that they had owned these pubs for decades or more. Even Wetherspoons charge the earth in Central London. I was at their Victoria pub a month ago early on a Saturday morning and noticed that their guest ales were from £3.30 (I had a tea which was also ridiculously expensive).
In the last 20 or so years Central London has been spreading and it's now getting to the stage (even in East London) that Central London prices apply to Inner London.
The few remaining established regional brewers seem to be charging top prices and some ruining their pubs.
Your best bet is to ignore Inner London and rely on Spoons and independent pubs that you have established are reasonable value.
When on a day out price of a pint is secondary (within reason) to the pub,the main criteria being good pub and good beer,if this has to be saved for so be it,I wouldn't spend good money on a train fare to spend the day visiting Wetherspoons outlets,only my opinion though.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aqualung
That's where a Coffin Dodger's Freedom Pass comes in handy!!!Quote:
Originally Posted by Mobyduck
Unfortunately not achieved one of those yet.:DQuote:
Originally Posted by Aqualung
I thought that after a busy day fixing LIBOR they only drank bolly ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Aqualung
I fully understand Moby's aversion to Spoons pubs, especially as he lives "out in the sticks", I could never imagine going to a far off town and spending all day in a Spoons however good it might be, but in the days when I would travel afar, I would always include the Spoons unless it was miles off route. Having said that, I've visited Derby a couple of times and never ventured past the Brunswick and Alexandra, partly because they are so near the station.
However, if you go to certain parts of London the best bets are only JD pubs. There are so many keg only or mostly keg "Sports Orientated" or simply rubbish pubs. The ones that have only one or two handpumps invariably sell something boring that is badly kept and at a high price. To be honest, I would be happy to never see a London Pride pump clip ever again.
A Spoons pub will never be one of my all time top ten pubs, but I can't think of any London Pubs that would be included. There are many good pubs in Inner London, but the price is a deal breaker for me. There is another factor in that some of the best Central London pubs are quite small and get totally rammed. In my pre-coffin dodger days I might have tolerated this but not any more.
tonight i was in the
pembury £3.00
snooty fox £3.00
cock hackney-£3.30
duke of cambridge(islington) -£3.60
earl of essex(isl)-£3.80
wenlock -£3.30 approx
there are still bargains to be had and i would hazard a guess that the beers i had tonight were better than the £4. 10 Otter
cheers
old fountain-£3.50 approx
My aversion to Spoons pubs is probably due to the fact that my nearer ones in places like Basingstoke,Fleet,Camberley etc are to be honest total crap,uninspiring soulless places with unreliable beer quality and poor slow service,yes they will change a poor pint if you ask but there is no awareness of the fact the pint is bad or why, several times Iv'e changed a pint with the consistency of mud and taste of vinegar only to serve the next person from the same pump without any comprehension whatsoever .:moremad: OK thats the ranty bit done ,I feel better for that. I do understand you can't tar every outlet with the same brush,particularly Spoons in London and I'm sure in other larger towns and citys,they appear to be of better quality,I enjoyed a visit to The Gatehouse in Highgate and would have no problem using it again,(shock, horror),Also I would have no aversion to having a look in the Crosse Keysand will pay a visit to The Drum next time I return to the very good King William1V.As Aqualung quite rightly states there are loads of rubbish pubs and bars in central London as well as he also rightly says there are many good ones,I very much take his point regarding high prices and rammed pubs,but I will continue to seek out these small hidden away good pubs avoiding Spoons and the like in general for as long as I am able,something I will be doing tomorrow.:cheers:Quote:
Originally Posted by Aqualung
We have the Drum down for our East End of London trip for Sunday 18 Nov. This thread has been interesting, and we will make sure we take plenty of funds with us. Pubs we hope to get to now are;
Tap East .. King William IV .. Drum .. Olde Rose and Crown .. Pembury Tavern (may or may not) .. Cock Tavern .. Bell.
We were going to include London Fields Brewery, but e-mailed them and they will be closed Sunday.
Those should be enough for us to get to. The train from Chertsey gets into Waterloo, and we seem ok for bus travel around those pubs and back for a decent day out. All bar Pembury will be new for us.
As said earlier, if we want to do the pubs we pay the price, but what is listed above is not that much dearer than we pay around Birmingham anyway.
I've only been to half a dozen or so Spoons outside the London area, and the only one I can recall being rubbish was the one near Piccadilly Station in Manchester. I vaguely remember an indifference to the one in Reading.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mobyduck
The only one I've been to this year that was rubbish was the one at Potter's Bar.
Prior to that the only one I've had a problem with beer quality is the John Gilpin at Edmonton. There are other issues such as a limited selection of beers or an awful building (the Wood Green one wins my award for that) and the perennial Spoons problem of slow service.
The vast majority of them are pretty soulless as they are not pubs in the old sense of the word, more like a cross between a drinking establishment and a Cafe, and of course almost all of them are much larger than the original Victorian pubs, some alarmingly so. The shop conversion doesn't help either as it means the only natural light is from the doors at the front, although not a problem in the evenings.
I see that the Basingstoke Spoons is currently GBG listed. Is it any good?
I'm going to try a local pub to me that I haven't been to for some 35 years when it was a rubbish keg Truman's house. It's Ye Olde Rose and Crown which is holding a beer festival and the decision to move on will be mainly made on the price issue.
It's been a regulat GBG entry for some years now and is widely regarded as the best pub in Walthamstow. We shall see.
The nearby Bell is still very much WIP, but they seem determined to open in early November. Apparently they have had no end of problems with the refurbishment. There is a website Belle17.com. I'm expecting the prices to be high (over £3 a pint) so there will probably be only one visit by me to see what it's like.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mobyduck
For the last 3 weeks I have been paying £1.50 a pint for guest ales in JDW using vouchers issued to attract the new intake of students in Leeds from nearby universities. The vouchers run to the end of November so I wont be drinking anywhere else for a while. Without the vouchers its £1.99. I don't know how other members of this site can afford some of the crazy prices quoted. Thank goodness for Wetherspoons.
The Central London JDWs (Hamilton Hall) has festival beers FROM £2.99. So no reduction during festival and still expensive for a Spoons.
I haven't been in the Basingstoke JDW ,The Maidenhead Inn for about 18 months or so ,Basingstoke itself is not a serious pub goers destination as I seem to remember old boots mentioning in the past,the pub I suppose does not have the usual Wetherspoons look decor wise as you enter from the main entrance,Quinno ,in a recent review mentions it looks like something from an Ikea ad,a good description, I in the past have likened it to walking into a canteen. To be fair the beer I had was in good nick, cant now remember what it was or how much but good enough for another,but as with my past comments on this issue not a place I would want to stay in to long.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aqualung
Many Wetherspoons seem to find themselves in the GBG even my nearest outlet The Prince Arthurwhich ,my bias aside really is rubbish,there seems to be some mutual back scratching between CAMRA and Wetherspoons,or have I now become totally paranoid.:D
The Idea of Wetherspoons is a good one, promoting a wide range of real ale at very good prices,but as someone recently said ,and I believe it was old boots again, many of their pubs don't come up with the goods.
I am in no sense of the word wealthy,probably because I am regularly paying £3.50 a pint or so.I could drink in my local Wetherspoons for £1.99 a pint but wouldn't be enjoying myself regardless of whether the beer was good or not, so if I wasn' enjoying my surroundings I'd rather go without.:eek:Quote:
Originally Posted by pintplease
If Wetherspoons can afford to do this and still make a profit, it just shows what a rip-off the places are charging over £3 a pint and i'm sure in London over £4 a pint. It's worth remembering though that Spoons dropped their prices this summer so I wouldn't put it past them whacking the prices up after the Xmas / New Year period.Quote:
Originally Posted by pintplease
Are there conditions with the student vouchers as with the CAMRA ones, namely one drink per visit and ten issued for a 3 month period? If you've got two Spoons next door as in Romford then you could bypass the one drink per visit by simply making the short walk between each one for the next pint!!!
You have my sympathy as most Spoons don't have great surroundings, but I have noticed that some of the ones that do have half decent surroundings (ie natural light through windows, rather than a dark shop conversion) still get slagged off on another beer review site. I wonder if some of the posts are made by rival pubs that have seen all their trade go down.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mobyduck
To me the price, choice and quality of the beer are paramount. I would drink beer in a rat infested hovel if it was good and cheap enough!!!
All fair comments ,we just differ on the last couple of sentences,but everybody to their own.:cheers:Quote:
Originally Posted by Aqualung
As London Calling has said, this is mainly due to ridiculously high property prices in London. The prosperity of the area is probably the causal factor behind both symptoms..
Aqualung mentioned the awful Wetherspoons on Piccadilly and I would wholeheartedly agree! It is probably one of the worst pubs in Manchester and unfortunately one that many newcomers to the city probably visit first. The Paramount, just 5 minutes walk away, is one of the better Wetherspoons.
I had my 3rd most expensive pint in London when I got a Stone Ruination IPA at Euston Tap..over £7 a pint :D Well worth it though...
I beg to differ about the property price issue. If that is the case then how come Wetherspoons can charge £1.99 for many of their beers (I'm not including Central London in this).Quote:
Originally Posted by Spinko
Most London pubs have been in the same ownership for many years, so what the property is worth doesn't come into it. The fact is that all the pub chains and brewers charge as much as they think they can get away with. The Last Post in Loughton yesterday had the tedious Fuller's London Pride at £2.65 and the much less tedious ESB at £2.85. All the festival ales which included a 6% mock Belgian beer were £1.99.
A clue to the attitiude of the brewers / pubcos can be gleaned from the Scottish Newcastle pubs web site where they display a list of their "premium" products, all of which are complete rubbish apart from Deuchar's IPA. They make the bold claim about this pile of dross in that they are premium products that will attract customers prepared to pay a premium price. Don't you just love Marketing Executives?
By the way Spinko, have you been to the William IV in Leyton yet? Last Friday you could have had a pint of Keykeg Big Mofo Stout (10.5%) and a pint of Imperial IPA (11%) and had 40p change from your seven quid! Whether you would have got home afterwards is another matter!
Not seen thm ever do sub £2 pints outside of rundown areas.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aqualung
Were they £2.85 or £1.99?Quote:
Most London pubs have been in the same ownership for many years, so what the property is worth doesn't come into it. The fact is that all the pub chains and brewers charge as much as they think they can get away with. The Last Post in Loughton yesterday had the tedious Fuller's London Pride at £2.65 and the much less tedious ESB at £2.85. All the festival ales which included a 6% mock Belgian beer were £1.99.
pubcos can be gleaned from the Scottish Newcastle pubs web site where they display a list of their "premium" products, all of which are complete rubbish apart from Deuchar's IPA. They make the bold claim about this pile of dross in that they are premium products that will attract customers prepared to pay a premium price. Don't you just love Marketing Executives?Quote:
A clue to the attitiude of the brewers
Yes, I have one of them at work and she is female. Perhaps enough said....
Sounds like my kind of craft beer. I'll put it on my itinerary...Quote:
By the way Spinko, have you been to the William IV in Leyton yet? Last Friday you could have had a pint of Keykeg Big Mofo Stout (10.5%) and a pint of Imperial IPA (11%) and had 40p change from your seven quid! Whether you would have got home afterwards is another matter!
All of the Spoons I've been to for the current festival have been charging £1.99 for the festival beers.
The Fuller's beers were observed on sale in the run down Essex town Loughton where all the festival beers were priced at £1.99.
As far as I'm concerned beers from larger regional beers that are not on the official Spoons guest list are not welcome as they displace beers from the official guest list or beers from genuine local breweries of which there are many nowadays. The main culprits round my way for this are Fullers and Adnams and to a lesser extent Nethergate.
Not been to a Spoons for a festival beer yet, probably down to some kind of phobia! but heard today my nearest Spoons was flogging off its usual suspect beers for a £1.00 a go desperately trying to free up pumps for festival ales.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aqualung
I can only assume that this means the local Spoons to you are not very successful, which would explain your bad experiences.Quote:
Originally Posted by Mobyduck
So much depends on the Manager and their duty managers. If some or all of them don't understand Real Ale then the pub will go down the toilet.
I feel lucky in that all of my local Spoons are reliable as far as the beer is concerned.
Part of the problem I believe is that the managers in chain pubs not only Spoons seem to change on a regular basis ,every year or so, whereas in more traditional pubs the landlords are there for longer giving a consistency, The landlord of my local has been there for a remarkable 35 years and the benefits are evident.Quote:
Originally Posted by Aqualung
a lot of its down to the manager. some of the mcspoons i use have well kept beer and a good choice of them.others the beer quality is never good.one manager in a central London one told me when i enquired how he selects the beers(dire choice as usual) "the warehouse knows what i like and just sends it.".surely it should be what the customers like and shows a lack of interest in real ale.
The manager and duty managers are absolutely vital. The area manager also has an effect as I believe (I don't know this for sure) that he/she has to approve the beers on offer that are not the usual suspects or from the current guest / festival list.Quote:
Originally Posted by london calling
I was interested to see that the Great Western under Wolverhampton Station (one of my all time favourite pubs) is charging just £2.40 for Batham's Best. This compares favourably with London Spoons (I don't believe the £1.99 is going to last much longer).
I suspect that the East London Spoons are more reliable is partly due to the fact that they have to put in some effort to attract customers. Most Central London pubs have a captive market which means they don't have to try hard at all. Happily there are some people still around that think that running a pub is not just a way to make a quick buck, but that serving well kept beer at a reasonable price in a full pint and not filtering slops back into the barrels is a worthwhile thing to do.