Beer set to hit four quid a pint

Booze industry experts have issued a chilling warning that the British pint could hit £4 a pop - a price hike provoked by crap weather which has forced up the price of hops. According to a sobering Guardian report, the British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) estimates the average jar at £2.50 for lager, and £2.20 for bitter. …

[Danny]

Noooooooooooooooooooo

Sobs quietly into his last pint of reasonably priced beer

No coat/No door, I am making this one last awhile!

[Paul]

Noooooo!!!!!!!

IT in the UK is doomed!!

As for "higher aluminium, cereal and crude oil (prices)" worryes me a little. What the hell are they putting in there beer.

[Dave]

Well, i'll be ok

Round where i come from, a decent pint of the local brew will cost you around £1.80 or so, i can't see it hitting £4..ever

[John Williams]

Oh please God no!

If this happens, I'm switching to turps...

[John]

Metric??

How many Euro is that per litre?

[Anonymous Coward]

So ????????

I long ago decided to remove myself from the system when it came to life's little pleasures. I quite happily brew my own beer (c 20/30p a pint), wine (c 2quid a bottle), and spirits (c 1.50 a litre).

Up yours gord !

[Mr Chris]

Best start panic buying then

Mine's four pints please, landlord.

[Anonymous Coward]

Number of Pints and their content

I was only 4 at the time, but back in '79, didn't we shift mostly 3% ish beers,

now it's all 5.5 percenters (ok a nod toward "newer" low alc beers)

So are we shifting the same net amount of booze - i.e. no change?

[garry]

THE HORROR!!!

NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!! my life is ruined, this means pubs are going to be empty, I also believe that every man woman and england will pay top dollar to find out who those doomongers are, what will life be like in britain now, just imagine the alcoholics that havent seen the light of day properly for 20years *shakes head* actually I'm not goin think about it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Admittedly serious, but...

This is shocking news, however it is no excuse for coining the word "doomonger", which simply does not exist*

Drinking more will increase demand, which may push prices down? I feel it is our duty.

* - in my lexicon.

[Mad as a Bat]

That explains...

...why their beers all taste like shite:

"The company has fingered higher aluminium, cereal and crude oil costs as the cause"

[Liam Johnson]

News

Foster's is beer?

[Chris]

Crude Oil Costs!

I know its fithy lager that is referred to, not real ale, but since when was crude oil used in brewing?

[Niall Campbell]

It's enough to drive you to drink

This sort of news is most unwelcome. It's like saying work to us members of the drinking classes. I almost choked on my pint.

[Nick Cassimatis]

Crude Oil?

"The company has fingered higher aluminium, cereal and crude oil costs as the cause, the Guardian explains"

There's crude oil in my beer???

[Steven]

Well that's that then.

Best look the bottle of turps out the garage and start claiming disability allowance in accordance with new government directives!!

[Konstantinos]

And there was "light"...

but its actually pretty heavy =/

[Matt]

comment title required - since when?!!!! :p

no surprise really... with the cost of petrol at over a quid at even the cheapest stations, we might as well get a butt raping with other essentials, im just waiting for the cost of air to go up..

why the hell would anyone want to live in this god awful hole!

please, one express ticket out of here!

[Richard Tobin]

Sixty percent ???

Just how much of your average pint is hops? Sounds like an excuse for increased brewery profits to me.

(And why can't I post with "60% ???" as the title?)

[JP]

What goes into a pint?

"The company has fingered higher aluminium, cereal and crude oil costs as the cause."

How much crude oil does my pint contain?!?

[Robert Hill]

IT Angle???

And the IT angle here would be...ah, yeah, The BOFH of course, who will now be forced to supplement his income in more nefarious ways to pay for his "lunch".

Looking forward to this new plot twist...

[Hugh Cowan]

<<<< Look at the icon

As the icon says........where is the IT angle?

[Anonymous Coward]

Title

Given that hops are only a single ingredient in some beer, exactly how much have they rose to force a 60% rise in the final product ?!? Sounds like scaremongering (or maybe profiteering) to me.

[Dan]

We'll have to work fast....

A pair of quadruple whiskies and another pair of pints........

[TeeCee]

@Danny

OK smartarse. Where did you get a pint of reasonably-priced beer in the UK? Go on, tell us.

Still look at it this way. You'll be able to fly cattle-class to Prague, stay the weekend, get thoroughly wankered, fly back and still save money. The best part is that your flight will contribute to Global warming*, pushing up the price of beer in the UK and next time you do it, you'll save *even more money*.

Yippee!

The Bomber jacket with the Pilsner Urquell logo please.

*Unless, of course, it's nothing to do with Global warming at all and it's just making an appearance as the usual trendy cop-out, in which case this won't work. Boooo.

[Anonymous Coward]

o well

looks like it's time to start smoking dope again.

However I mostly only drink bottles and cans at home with my mates, drinking out is already too expensive. £35 will get enough booze for 3 of you to get happily sloshed all weekend at home.

[Andrew Kelly]

Could this see inflation spiral out of control?

With many a good deal being closed in the pub over a pint or ten and those pints being claimed back as expenses and those expenses claimed back from the client via increased costs, could we be seeing compound inflation (have I coined a new phrase?) on the way?

[Andrew Hill]

Real price of hops

The quantity of hops per pint is very small. To brew 4 gallons at home, one would require around £3 worth of hops. This equates to approximately 10p of hops per pint. Even if the price of hops doubled, it would make little impact to what we spend at the bar, bearing in mind breweries are buying a little more than 100g at a time.

[GrahamT]

@John: Re metric

£4 per pint: That will be about €9.85 per litre, or €3.28 per 33cL glass

[Anonymous Coward]

sigh

"How much crude oil does my pint contain?!?"

none, however the heating of the mash probably uses oil in some way or other, delivery trucks all use fuel which is based on crude oil so the delivery costs go up (which has tobe taken into account in the price) etc etc.

aluminium - cans and the barrels. I assume at some point they make new barrels.

grain - too much is beimng diverted for biofuels, see the pasts protests in italy the other month over Durum wheat being too expensive.

to the "where's the it angle" brigade it's in bootnotes so really it should be "where's the paris hilton angle".

[Rob]

Thank God for Magners.

I like my ale as much as the next man, but the good old Magners has been a fave for me lately. Hopefully the Apple Orchards we see in the luverly Irish ads are still ok ?

[sue]

and you drink this stuff?

"The company has fingered higher aluminium, cereal and crude oil costs as the cause."

Glad I don't drink....crude oil and Rice Krispies beer? bad enough, but think of the company bods having fingered your aluminium cans first!

[Will]

Let's find the UK's most expensive pint from a pub

I'll open with £4 for a pint of Staropramen at the Duke's Head in Putney.

I was literally gasting flabber.

Can anyone trump this? Criteria is a pint of normal bitter or lager (none of that fancy cherry flavoured stuff) and purchased from a pub, not a nightclub.

[Rick]

On the other side of the pond

To get a good Irish or English pint over here already cost anywhere from $5.50 to $7.00 so this is not to much of a shock for us...your just catching up to the rest of the world. On the other hand if your over here you can always have domestic US beer...errr....

[Craig Peters]

The IT Angle.

If no-one here sees the IT angle in this, I want to know where they work. Tis a sad day when the price of forgetting a hard days 'work' will get little change from £20.

To be honest for you, I feel sorry for the curry house.

[Lloyd]

You've obviously never drunk in Chelsea

£4.40 for a pint of Peroni in the Waterside.

[Gabor Laszlo]

@AnonCoward

Brewing your own starts to look like the way to go. Mind you. I live in Bavaria, where the 1/2l lager is still under 1€.

[Tim Spence]

Greener/cheaper options

I think we need a campaign to promote the production of biobeers - they're cheaper (due to lower taxation) and better for the environment too (the exhaust fumes aren't as toxic, unless you combine it with a curry).

Can you drink LPG?

[Jim McNally]

Try living in Oslo!

Once again the universe takes it upon itself to dump on me from a great height.

I've been working in Oslo for the past nine months and finally come to terms with the £5 pint (plus or minus 50p say for local Ringnes chemical pish, gets up to around £7 or more for owt decent, especially down Aker Brygge).

I'm finally leaving this Friday to return to the UK, and was looking forward to getting change from a fiver for 2 pints. And then this!

[Anonymous Coward]

the pubs already are empty

thanks to the smoking ban. they will be closing their doors quicker than local post offices soon.

[Ash]

Shandy? Half pints?

At least with these you won't find you've mistakenly identified a hot blonde lady with a 38DD chest, who is actually a 6'4" metal-head rocker with a 54" barrel chest.

Then again, if you're drinking halves or shandies that's probably your thing.

[bluesxman]

Not enough hops? Boo-hoo!

I'll be sticking with the Hoegaarden, Franziskaner, Schneider Weisse, Ayinger, Paulaner, Erdinger, Schoefferhoffer, Maisells Weisse, Etalon Weissbier and (to a lesser extent) Grolsch Weizen then -- nary a hop in sight, so hopefully no price hike! Hurray for wheat beer!

Not that the fuckers are particularly cheap to begin with though...

[Pheet]

I'm glad I live in Germany now...

Ok bottled beer (half litre, just under a pint) from the off-license: from 60 cents ('bout 40p).

Mid-range pub in the west (with table service), ca €3 (2 quid).

The german laws on beer purity means there's no aluminium, cereal or crude oil either ;-)

Sounds like the typical rip-off britain scenario - pay the highest prices for the lowest quality. I'm think sometimes that the europhobia in the British establishment is due to the fact, that if the majority of people in the UK were to compare their quality of life with their european neighbours, there'd be an instant uprising...

[Graham O'Brien]

Not all US beer is bad ...

"On the other hand if your over here you can always have domestic US beer...errr...."

Sam Adams Oktoberfest? Yum!

[Timothy Slade]

@richard tobin

numbers as comment titles not allowed, for some reason...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not so fast

Sorry bluesxman, Erdinger uses hops (I just checked the label of the bottle I am drinking), and I suspect some of the others if not all of them use hops too...

[Karim Bourouba]

@Anonymous Coward

How does brewing your own save you? Its hops that are going up, and I presume you use these to brew your beer?

Also, I am fairly sure brewing your own spirits is illegal in the UK.

[Simon Greenwood]

Hmm, where's el Reg based again

Oh yeah, right in the West End. I was paying £3.50 for a pint in some pubs in central London six years ago so it's hardly a surprise. 5% lager has gone over £3 in most city pubs in the North now (the range in Leeds is downright bizarre sometimes: something like Carlsberg Export will be £2.60 in one pub and £3.05 in the next. It has something to do with the number of flashing lights I think). We'll keep on paying it though, don't you worry.

[Stephen Gazard]

@ Karim Bourouba

Brewing's permitted. Selling/distilling's not. Means you can only get up to 15% (if lucky) on your own wine.

[Andy S]

what does the price of hops have to do with it?

the price of beer in pubs is already grossly inflated. for example i can buy a 24 pack of most beers (£2-£2.50 a pint in a pub) for around a tenner, thats under £1 a litre.

[Gianni Straniero]

Price hike will stay

Here's the awful truth, ladies & germs. Although you and I know otherwise, beer is a luxury commodity in the market, unlike petrol, whose price can sometimes come down when the cost of raw materials (i.e. crude) drops.

Your pint will likely stay above £4, even if we have a blazing hot summer next year and every oasthouse from here to Gravesend is overflowing with hops; or even if the Aussies discover a huge bauxite reserve in the outback, and aluminium cans become as cheap as chips.

Those swine in the breweries will be laughing all the way to the bank as they trouser the massive margins yielded by the price hike. Us poor saps on the wrong side of the bar will still fork over the dough come what may.

You know it to be true.

[JasonW]

@Stephen Gazard

Actually there are high yield yeasts available that will take you above 20% now (I'm sure I saw one for 23% recently). http://www.leylandhomebrew.com/item930.htm as a hastily googled example for a 21% yield yeast.

@Karim

I've just put another batch of 40 pints on and the total cost per pint (allowing for depreciation of the pressure barrels over the 15 years I've had them, the fermenting vessels etc) is 29.36p per pint. Zero crude oil, zero aluminium involved.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sums it Up Realy

"Six pints of bitter,"

"And quickly please, the world's about to end."

[Anonymous Coward]

15% a pint?

Eh? If beer were to be sold in liters, it's price hike would be lesser, in percentage? Bring the metric system on, now!

M

[Anonymous Coward]

Time to move to the Czech Republic then!

Well, there summers are hot, winters have more than 1cm of snow and most importantly they have tons of really good beer for 40 - 50p a pint in Brno (second biggest city). I'm sure the tourists get ripped off in Prague but hey, tourists get done in every major capital.

They have light and dark Budvar instead of the Yank ripoff copy brewed out of rice so it has no taste and a whole load of other good beers to go with it. Light and dark Starbrno mixed together goes down so easy, mmmm......

Oh, nearly forgot to say that for a tad over £2 you can get spicy ghoulash with pototaoe pancakes (and for those pulling faces I bet you've never tried them, potatoe pancakes are the buisness!) + you get beer brought to your table instead of queuing 3 deep at the bar, even on Friday/Saturday nights.

OK, rant over, I'll get my coat (and passport), Czech Republic here I come....

[DaveT]

@Will

"I'll open with £4 for a pint of Staropramen at the Duke's Head in Putney."

Indeed - and their Peroni is even pricier. However, cross the road and walk back towards Putney Bridge and you'll pass the Bricklayers Arms up a side street. Far, far superior and much more reasonably priced.

[Smallbrainfield]

I feel a bit bad for you lot down in London Village

I went out on the sauce last Thursday in Manchester.

£1.20 a pint of lovely Mild in Sinclairs Oyster bar. I went out with £50 beer money and came home with £35 change.

Mild for the win!

[Dam]

"Oil in my beer !!" <--- failed IQ test

To all that went "oh my god there's crude oil in my beer o_O ?" :

You fail.

[Anonymous Coward]

Drink American beer...

..they don't use hops, so the prices should stay down.

Did I read correctly that Fosters contains crude oil?

[Anonymous Coward]

Distilling illegal in the UK

Yes of course distilling your own spirits is illegal in the UK, like doing 35 in a 30 limit. Thing is - they have to catch you don't they?

Posted as AC for obvious reasons.

[David S]

Hurrah for homebrew!

...And I don't even have a beard...

[Gordon Matson]

the effects of drink

"major British brewers suffered a profit slump of 78 per cent between 2004 and 2006"

Can we call that a droop?

That's mine one behind the blue fleece, thanks...

[Anonymous Coward]

where do i invest in beer futures?

to hell with speculating on oil, beer is what really makes the world go round!

[Martin Benson]

Peroni or Staropramen in pints?

You deserve to pay £4 a pint for that stuff. But how much is a pint of London Pride? or any other decent ale?

[Ross]

Re "Thank God for Magners"

I'd drink it if it saved me money but for the fact I can't stand it. I ordered something totally different in a noisy establishment and got that instead. Couldn't even finish half of it.

I might try that weird fruit cider stuff they sell tho - apparantly it's quite nice. Can't for the life of me think what it's called at the moment. Koppa something? Anyway, if it's cheaper than £2.80 I might give it a whirl.

As for inflation spiralling out of control - nah, the government only include prices that don't rise in the RPI. If we included the actual cost of everything we buy (houses for example) then our economy would not compare favourably to pre-revolutionary Argentina. The cost of beer etc will therefore rocket skywards, but the RPI will stay at a healthy 2.5% or thereabouts, letting the big boys give pay rises about 20% below the actual increase in cost of living.

And then of course we can't afford to drink our sorrows away, which is when the uprising will begin. If the government have much sense they'll have to keep an eye on the cost of beer....

[dave]

Thatchers cider FTW!

Not tried it? About five and a half quid a gallon (or 1.70/pint in pubs), around six percent, and quite tasty.

Much as I like beer, it became too expensive some time back (2.70 on average, around here).

Re homebrew - it generally takes like arse. Unless you can be bothered making your own mash, etc...

[kurt]

Beer Price Con!

The pubs pay approximately £1.00 per pint of beer including duty!

The cost of raw materials in a pint of beer is 10-15% of the Pub Beer price!

The cost of hops in a bottle of beer is often less than the cost of the bottle label!

The markup in pubs is 100-150%. That's already highway robbery!

Take a stand and DO NOT BUY BEER at these high prices and prices will drop.

I am a retired brewer and know what's what!

[Hedley Phillips]

doomonger

I thought a doomonger was a retarded dove.

[Anonymous Coward]

Awwww. Poor wee breweries..

..churning out their fizzy piddle by the million gallons and blaming the weather, goverment and anything else they can think of for the fall in their multi-billion pound profits.

Couple of points to consider..

More people drink wine, alcopops and spirits now than previously - perhaps because what passes for beer these days is flavourless horses wee with elevated alchohol levels aimed at binge drinkers who honestly don't give a toss what they are pouring down their necks so long as it gets them too drunk to care who they are shagging/battering/throwing-up-on and comes with a label they recognise from those 'cool' adverts in 'Balls' or 'Hiya' magazine.

More people drink at home now than previously, perhaps to avoid being shagged/battered/thrown-up-on by the aforementioned binge drinkers who the breweries bend over forwards to accomodate with higher strength product, endless 'happy' hours and get-pissed-cheap promos (Drink Aware my arse). Besides, no-one's going to make you go out into the rain for a ciggie if you drink at home (nothing worse than being shagged, battered, covered in sick AND wet and cold).

Screw the big breweries, they are just like the record industry - churning out poor quality dross to people who don't know any better then whining to anyone who will listen when their huge profits start to fall and their directors discover they can't afford a new Aston Martin this year after all.

Stick to real-ale or imported lager from small, independant brewers or make your own - and if you have to buy mass-produced elephant widdle then at least get it cheap and in bulk from the supermarket rather than paying the brewer twice for it by buying it from one of their pubs or even better nip over to Calais and screw the taxman too - the treasury being an even bigger beneficiary of the binge-drinking chav culture than the brewers.

Right - rant over - off for a pint of Orkney Raven Ale from my favourite free-house then, maybe, a shag, a fight and a good old vomit.

[Anonymous Coward]

down the union..

We're under £2 for a pint of snakebite, fosters and such down our student union. A guinness woulds set you back a bit more though.

Looks like I'm going to have to poke the guys for another beer trip at this rate, we really need to stock up before this price hike comes!

[Crossbow]

Pfft.... £4 a pint? not even £4 a gallon

If like me you are already sick of being ripped off, brew your own beer

http://www.jimsbeerkit.co.uk

Everything you need to know, or want to ask can be found there

[Anonymous Coward]

Welcome to Canada :)

In Canada we pay around $4 a pint (16oz) and the gov gets about 1/2 of that.

[mahoney]

Title

Good thing I like drugs instead

:P

[John]

In Spain I pay..

8 Euros for 24 bottles of San Miguel :-D

I'm back in England for Christmas, my wallet is crying already..

[Stratman]

@Anonymous Coward

"Also, I am fairly sure brewing your own spirits is illegal in the UK"

Two points.

Beer is not a spirit (it isn't distilled). Brewing beer at home is quite popular over here.

Distilling one's own spirits in the UK is permissable with a licence.

[Steve the Yank]

High hops and Barley Prices

Gads! They put crude oil in major brand lite beer here! No wonder it taste like water!

I'll have to savor each sip or have the kiddees eat oatmeal.

I hope they like oatmeal!

Steve the Yank (Really an Irish wog at heart!)

[Teutsch]

Why the panic?

The crude oil, is obviously not going into hte beer, but rather into the machines making hte beer. Aluminium is also for the machines, and barley (a cereal) is used to make beer.

[John]

@Awwww. Poor wee breweries..

Too Right!!

Beer is made up of 96% water and if it cost's Joe Bloggs 30p a pint to make at home it probably cost's the brewers about 10p a pint to make in mass amounts! so even if cost's did double it wouldn't reflect much on the price. Blaming crude oil prices is just an excuse!

Three words: Rip Off Britain

This is interesting though! - http://www.pintprice.com/region/United_Kingdom/

anyway, I just saw that it's £2.14 a pint down under so i've had enough of the nanny state robbing me of my hard earn cash so i'm on the next flight out!

[Luge]

@ Kurt ref BEER PRICE CON

"I am a retired brewer and know what's what!"

Sorry Kurt, but I beg to differ. Whilst the maths and your component pricing may be roughly correct your ability to draw a sensible conclusion is possibly beyond you:

Many a numbskull who knows j**k s**t about running a business always quotes 'you can buy it much cheaper at the off licence/supermarket', 'look at the margin' and brilliantly conclude - 'its a rip off!'.

Try looking at the 'fat' margin profits that are made after taking into account all the fixed and variable costs in most pubs/restaurants and you will quickly find one of the key reasons that they have one of the highest failure rates of any industry.

The only people making a decent whack are:

1. The Tax Man

2. The Pub Freeholders (through rent and tied beer prices)

So lets all adopt your DO NOT BUY BEER approach and screw the publicans some more. And as GP's on beer are considerably lower than both wine and food we can boycott those as well just for good measure. Anyone else with any numpty ideas?? You of course have a free choice, so suggest you don't ever go to any pub and I then won't have the misfortune to meet you whilst enjoying my pint

And finally:

@ bluesxman and a few others.....

Wheat prices have more than doubled in the last few months so whether or not your 'wheat beer' has hops in it may not be your biggest concern.

and no, I don't run a pub.

[Luca Spiller]

The cheaper alternative...

petrol, it will probably get you drunk quicker as well.

[Simon Harvey]

Its OK for you poms ...

... down in 'straya our problem is that we don't have enough water to make the beer in the first place. Couple that with the ongoing drought (double whammy - crops failing and the fact it takes 4 pints of water to make a pint of beer) means that our national staple diet is going to go through the roof. its bad enough paying $5 for a schooner (about 2/3 of a pint) already.

The biggest consumer of water in SEQ (http://www.qwc.qld.gov.au/Water+restriction) is the XXXX brewery. If they cut the supply to that you're looking at a revolution here. There's no bloody way we're drinking that VB or Fosters crap.

[skeptical i]

Mmmmmm, beeeeer -- H. Simpson

Some points:

Not all American beer is dog's wee, just the Unholy Trinity (Miller, Coors, Bud) and most of their various sub- brands. There are MANY mighty tasty microbrews to be had if one looks beyond the big box mega grocery marts and the watering holes which cater to the get- pissed- cheap- and- fast frat boy/ chav crowd. Anyone fortunate enough to live in a town served by one of these microbreweries should be able to get a decent super- fresh pint at a reasonable price (with all money going to the brewery and not to the shipping company, distros, grocery marts, &c).

Sure, the price of a pint in a pub will always cost more than buying the equivalent at the mega mart, but from employee labor to benefits to taxes to licensing fees to insurance (I can't imagine that this is at all cheap), pub owners get jabbed in the wallet from all corners. So while I don't necessarily like having my poor wallet bled at the pub, at least the prices make a modicum of sense.

Homebrewing is, of course, much cheaper per pint, but it is a bit of work (a friend and I brewed one batch and it turned out OK, but I prefer to leave it to the pros). If there is a homebrew club near you, perhaps you could see about a "homebrew party" wherein everyone contributes (some time, some guided work) for a batch and gets a share of the results.

Bottoms up!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm drinking my Budweiser

at 1.50 a Pint and crying a tear at how bad it is.

[Mark]

Best deal in London

These days I'm a firm believer in Sam Smiths pubs in London (Cittie of Yorke etc). Against average City and West End prices all their beers are roughly "buy two, get one free" in comparison. Assuming you're not wedded to giant screens or chrome and glass, they're also some of the nicest pubs in London.

[Anonymous Coward]

No other option ...

I'll just have to start drinking the 22p lager before I go to the pub then.

[Paul C. Hartley]

@Martin Benson

>But how much is a pint of London Pride? or any other decent ale?

Nicely put. I would hardly call London Pride a decent ale either. Every pint of London Pride I have ever had has been warm and flat and tasted funny. It makes you wonder why they are so proud of it. The other London beers must be truely awful.

BTW - £15 will get you well and truely plastered as well as a tray of chips and gravy to walk home with on a Friday night up here in the grim north.

[Chris Bradshaw]

got this one beat

I live in Prague - a half-liter usually costs around 50p and always less than a quid. Now if I could just get the Czechs to make (and drink) real ale, I'd be set..

Their joke about British beer goes :

How do you make British beer?

Leave Czech beer in the sun for three days.

I've tried it, but it doesn't work :-(

:-)

[bluesxman]

Obligatory Withnail & I quote

"The wankers [on the street] don't drink it because they can't afford it!"

[Karim Bourouba]

@ bluesxman

but that refers to lighter fuel does it not?

Also, does anyone get the feeling anon coward either;

a) works from home

or is

b) not gainfully employed?

He seems to have drunk a fair bit through the afternoon on a wide variety of beverages ranging from poncey erdinger down to staple Budwieser.

How come you were not at your own brew??

[Jason Rivers]

no smoking causes higher prices

this, i'm actually sure, is partly to do with the fact that we're no longer allowed to smoke in the pubs, I know of 3 pubs that have gone bankrupt since the smoking ban, all 3 were pretty packed before hand. As a result of people not going to the bars, there pushing less barrels, and there fore they have to compensate.

My old local used to be very busy, went in there last week, there were 4 people in there. apparently they're surviving because of their poker evenings, but even that isn't going to hold them for long.

bring back smoking, and we might just see the reserection.

[Brian]

Welcome to Ireland

£4 a pint aint that bad. Equates to about €5.50, which is only slightly more than your cousins accross the water have been paying for quite some time.

I recently bought a pint of Guinness in Temple Bar (Dublin) for €5.20. GUINNESS!!!! It's literally brewed a 5 minute walk away!

As for the Americans/Canadians; $5 works out to £2.50, so, if the price more than double over here, expect that to be $10 a pint. Although, it should be noted that for Irish drinks in America, the Guinness is brewed in Canada. That's how they claim it's imported because it technically is. They just don't tell ye where from.

And speaking for drink, it's lunch time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bienvenue en Irlande

£4 = €5.55 at today’s exchange rate…welcome to the wonderful world of Dublin pubs. 800 years of oppression finally getting avenged, BUWAHAHAHAHAHAAA

Sorry. Of course, we sympathise. Just like we did when the smoking ban was introduced in Britain too.

[Anonymous Coward]

Last Call for Alcohol

Smoke cheap Mexican Dope, Bush does!...or maybe gold bars...whichever is cheaper. What's next, will everyone switch to sipping Sterno camp stove fuel from little aluminum cans for a cheap alcohol buzz?

[Eileen Bach]

Barter tendor

I think we could be onto something here. Why don't we barter it for Cruid Oil. We could refill the tankers and send them back east with crude beer. I mean the $'s getting a bit worrying and all that.

[Tim Lane]

End of the world

Aren't we supposed to lie down on the ground with a paper bag over our heads?

You Can if you want

Will it help?

No

Last Orders Please.

[Doug]

So what?

It's going to be a long cold and sober life ahead.

[Edward Pearson]

So what.

We'll just buy and drink more cans of cheap french lager, rather than going down the pub.

The lack of smoking in pubs, and the insane prices will just cause people to stop going.

[Anonymous Coward]

Hoegaarden

Hoegaarden is the way to go. Can't afford to buy it? Brew your own then - get down to http://www.hopshopuk.com. Our kid eh?