Surely that isn't a valid comparison? Wines and spirits have their own rates of duty (which I don't actually know the details of) and wine is stored for longer than beer making it more expensive to produce.
The Salopian brewery tap sell their 7.0% ABV Automaton on keg for £3.40. To keep things simple let's just double that to get £6.80 for the equivalent of a 14% abv pint. If we added the cost of a cask 5% or 4.5% abv pint there then it would be the same equivalent abv at just 20p over half the cost. That doesn't make Howling Hops look reasonable to me in any way. This is a company that won't sell pint measures at their brewery tap in Hackney Wick. Why? To make the rip off prices look better value of course!
Standard Gross Margin in pubs is 60% so that's £7.50 plus VAT (if the £3 is ex-VAT), making £9 retail.
However average strength cask wholesales at £70-90 ex VAT per nine gallons or £0.98 to £1.25 a pint (not including wastage). That's a retail price of £3.75 at 60% GM, I have no idea of the wholesale price of stuff like Clearwater or other pricey beers
As someone once said beer is just a mix of commodity grains, weeds and fungus so shouldn't cost that much .
I paid £1.89 (festival price) for a pint of the 7.2% Adnams Tally Ho in this Greater London JDW yesterday. This is the only Southern JDW I can think of with a standard guest ale price under two quid.
"At that moment I would have given a kingdom, not for champagne or hock and soda, or hot coffee but for a glass of beer" Marquess Curzon of Kedlestone, Viceroy of India.
I hadn't tried it for donkey's years, so long I can't even remember where or when. It may well have been from a cask on the bar, a practice which has thankfully died out.
The ONLY Adnams beers I don't care for are Broadside and Old which they have changed to what tastes to me like a watered down Broadside. They are one of the few old regionals that haven't completely lost the plot, sold out, put TVs in all their pubs or priced themselves so high that they aren't worth bothering with.