Cheap beer killing pub trade

[I1L2T3]

This is true. 20 years ago you could go into a pub in Sheffield and have a choice of Tetleys, Wards, Stones or Whitbread. They was usually only one mediocre draught beer available in most pubs along with the same lager as the pub down the street.

Now when I go into my local I'm confronted with a rack or 12 handpumps and a dazzling choice of other beers.

It is absolutely disgraceful that I have to spend so long sampling the delights on offer before I buy my pint. Before the change I knew before I walked in that I was about to get a pint of bland beer. Now I need to select which is best.

I think at any one time there are around 200 different hand pulled beers on sale in Sheffield, where as 20 years ago it was probably 6. The consumer has been badly let down indeed. NOT

 

But 20+ years ago the consumer was happy. The pubs were rammed full of happy consumers. Sure they were out to have a drink but there was something else too. Something that has been lost in many places - the idea of a pub as a place where a social life could happen. Pubs were hubs for sports and other recreation too.

 

Is it really better for people to spend their lives addled on cheap supermarket lager sat in their own homes eating rubbish while being pumped full of low brow tosh on the TV and brainwashed with fear-inducing news?

 

I preferred it 20 years ago. I like a drink as much as the next man but the idea that a wider choice of beers is ample compensation for destruction of our pub culture doesn't quite sit right with me.

[anywebsite]

Supermarket beer is not cheap.

 

£10 for 20 cans, presumably 440ml (I've even seen them trying to sell it in 330ml cans - What happened to the pint, the old 568ml!)

 

20% VAT @ £1.66.

20 (440ml) cans for £8.33 = 8.8Litres (just shy of two gallon)

£18.57 DUTY per hectolitre per 1%percent alcohol

So at 4.1% for 8.8 litres were talkin £6.70 DUTY

 

Shouldn't be no more than 10p per can!

 

Bloody rip off, government taxing beer to death. It's religious discrimination I tell thee.

 

Agreed. Expensive beer in pubs is killing the pub trade. Supermarket prices have gone up!

 

There are a few pubs that serve real ale for more reasonable prices, those pubs are doing really well.

[Shogun]

The monopolies and merger thing did not just destroy the quality of the beer, it also destroyed the whole way of life for pubs as the brewers had to let a lot of there pubs go to other independents who had no experience in the pub trade,the people they put in charge were most times out of town people who did not know any thing about the area spoiling the community feel to the pub, then its all down hill from there as the local nob heads take over and the regulars move away,no amount of cheap beer or choice of beers would bring them back,the next thing its the chip board curtains and that is the end of another pub