For a long time they were across the board but there has been a crazy amount of increases to the macros since 2020.
Thanks for this information.
I had presumed that craft kegs were dearer than macro kegs, simply due to scale.
Paid €7.80 for a pint of Whiplash Blue Ghosts and €7.50 for pint of Asahi in O’Neills Suffolk Street at the weekend.
For added lols, the BG was served in an Islands Edge glass!
Unless your beer is called Island's Edge.
Marketing BS works I'm afraid.
When in Brew Dock on Sunday, a group of about 12 English folk came in, real mix of ages, seemed like extended family. There were probably 6 pints of lager ordered. Options were the Galway Bay Helles, Bru Lager, Veltins or Madri…..of course it was 6 pints of Madri, without hesitation. I just found it boggling that a brand that was only invented 2 years ago as a fake Spanish beer could be that drawing of customer loyalty. A lot of people just do not care what they are drinking, beyond it being recognisable.
I was in Brew Dock on Sunday before the Bruce Springsteen concert and all seemed normal. All the beer the same, staff wearing GBB gear. Maybe the changes haven't come into force there yet or new owners waiting to use up stock etc
So are the Beer Temple and Brew Dock still going under separate ownership?
I loved it so much I immediately ordered a few kegs of Popular Global Beer for the pub.
You deal with an awful lot of aggressive cockney clowns over there trying to return keg beer because it is off (cloudy)
Thats some review by someone who should get out and experience more of life than mundane, bland etc beers served by people with no passion for what they do.
Terms like local lager always reminds me of this
Antelope is owned by Big Smoke who's next beer was called "Popular Global Beer" in his honour.
From Twitter last week:
"The next time the dickhead form Lemon and Duke and other publicans start pissing and moaning about Diego upping the price of a keg remember: a keg of a local lager is +/- €154.5+ VAT and a keg of Harp of Carlsberg is €179.4+ VAT, but the won't stock the former. Self sabotage"
A lot of publicans are clueless and when the papers and vintners tell them a keg has gone up so you need to charge 15c more they just do it blindly.
They then either put everything up or the macro passed the craft because they were not told to put it up.
Anyone have accurate prices these days as I'm a bit out of date. Macro was always cheaper on my experience.
But again, as L1011 said above, the wholesale price of craft beer is lower than the wholesale price of macro beer. The publican decided you should pay more for your pint of Ambush than a pint of Guinness because he thinks you're good for it, not because the Ambush costs him more. It didn't.
The only negative I have in craft beers is they took the prices offered by the established brands without the same marketing overheads. Beer is not that expensive to make, even in Ireland.
Nah, it is, if you're not benefitting from economies of scale. If you can guarantee you'll be buying x million tonnes of grain once it only contains y percentage of moisture, as opposed to the independent brewery who can only guarantee buying z thousand tonnes of grain, you're getting a much better price per tonne. Same with hops - the macros just don't use as much hops per keg as an indy making IPAs, and they still also benefit from economies of scale.
I hadn't noticed much over pricing in Limerick. Generally the macro passed out the Treaty stuff on the bars when the price went up.
In London I did charge more for craft regardless of the keg price sometimes because I knew I could and my job security was based on overall pub GP. So you over sold on some to undersell on others.
My own personal feeling is the GBB pubs deteriorated after one of the orignial business partners sold up. I remember when they just had the Oslo and Cottage in Salthill and he seemed like the hospitality expert in the partnership. With the other lad more focused on the brewery
A deal that requires you to specifically drop a rival product breaches competition laws in other sectors.
A lot of craft kegs are cheaper to pubs than macros at this stage, but the pubs charge the prmium
Pub I occasionally find myself in for music events always had a pale ale /IPA on tap. Was lways something there for me.
Now they've changed their taps and have 2 hazy/east coast/juicy/milky stuff. Probably just won't drink when I go there now! (snuble juice and big bunny the only non macros, now).
I absolutely agree with you there. I always try new beers.
Change/experimentation broadens the mind and taste buds
I know one person that won't drink anything other than Heineken, for no reason other than they just don't do change very well.
The only negative I have in craft beers is they took the prices offered by the established brands without the same marketing overheads. Beer is not that expensive to make, even in Ireland. I know selling on price is not a great strategy but it's normally the favourite way of getting a foothold In a new market or growing market share. I don't see how else you could compete with the incumbent brewers with big budgets. They immediately fought back with quasi/faux craft products themselves to put marketeer the true craft products at point of sale
Being able to sell in bulk and butter up clients with freebies is something that exists across commerce. It's not a reason to single out and hate breweries.
Thornbridge could give me a much better bulk deal than Orbit so should I hate Thornbridge ?
I drink in plenty of macro led pubs that have a craft tap so again blame the publican who takes the deal not the sales man doing his job legally.
Classic line I heard whilst working in the Bull and Castle and offering tasters to punters was, "Stick to what you know".
As if they were born drinking Heineken…
It's not just brand loyalty.
We are a terribly insecure and squeamish country when it comes to standing out or trying new things.
Our palette is incredibly bland too. Most of the country thinks black pepper is too spicy and olive oil was only for your ears up until about 2001.
Their ability to pay massive sums in freebies or even just cold hard cash to publicans to get rid of lines is theirs to blame.
I agree. Their dominance is a symptom, not a cause. The causes are the licensing system and drinkers' unshakeable brand loyalty.
We live in a country of free houses. I don't think the macro breweries are to blame for there not being independents on tap or in the fridges these days.
It's nearly 60 years now since the state first called the big breweries actions "anti competitive but not illegal". They have no intention of making it illegal.
It's a different set of firms doing it now, but the same results.
Even if the CPC done something about it all that would happen is the macros would go the English model and buy up the few biggest craft brewers.
Meantime, Camden and Beavertown have absolutely wrecked the craft offering in London by replacing rotational taps with bland "sessionable" beers.
I mean, the recent closures aside, things are a lot better than they used to be, 20, or even 10 years ago. You've a reasonable prospect of getting at least one (actual) craft tap in a decent number of Dublin city centre and even suburban pubs, even if it's just one token IPA. That just didn't happen in the past - the nearest you could get to 'craft' was a German weiss.
What I am seeing recently, though, is a good number of pubs that used to have one or two independent craft taps losing them to 'Cute Hoor', Open Gate/Smithwicks Pale Ale or Five Lamps taps. There just seems to be a big push by the macro breweries to reclaim all the tap space in pubs.
Not that the CCPC will ever do anything about it.
Awful lot of pubs out there where the manager or publican seem to have no interest in the bar trade.
Plenty of customers out there with reverse snobbery too. It's amazing how many adults I have seen being peer pressured into not trying something new. Wont ever go to another bar or try and drink. And I'm talking about in the cities where you have real choice.
The really weird one is Dublin though. I have definitely been I a lot of pubs there where there is a market for it. You can tell by the crowd and the scanning of taps but nothing on.
