Price of a pint !

I don't think it's just the price of the point that is the main factor, it's the overall experience.

For me you can trace it back to the millennium when the majority of pubs charged an outrageous entry fee and most of them ended up empty because of it.

A 1000 things have happened since then, but that was certainly the catalyst, IMO.

I also think MUP which was introduced under the guise of "public health" but really was the government batting again for the Publicans has spectacularly backfired.

'creamy pint' - For some inexplicable reason I can't stand that description. When I used to drink alcohol, I never thought of guinness as being 'creamy'. A foam top with liquid underneath. It certainly doesn't taste anything like cream either. Any hint of taste (that can be garnered because it's so cold) is more bitter. It's like a description that alcohol companies would dream up to get alcoholics who have given up, to drink again.

Anyway, back on topic. I guess as people who booze decrease, so must the price of alcohol increase. A death spiral.

As my oul lad says "As long as they don't stop making it"

If you're 18,19-30 that could be a point.A lot of pubs in my area do not open at the official hour but in some closing time gets stretched

I am sure there is, but judging by how busy Dublin City Centre is at the weekends, we arent near it yet.

I had Red Beamish in Waterford in John Mahers which was a real old school pub when the man was still alive. Maybe it still is but the man is sadly no longer with us.

Old School like in open after mass but not in the evening no phones no music no women jacks is a hole in the ground out the back that sort of place. John Maher must have been in his 90s. We're talking maybe 2010 or 2012 or so.

The Red Beamish didnt last there or anywhere for whatever reason I cant fathom becasue it was actually gorgeous. Really lovely ale like no other I ever tasted with a creamy head and it was so smooth and easy to drink. It was almost like a red stout but surely it must have been an ale since there is no such thing as a red stout right?

Anyone seen that in the wild at all these days? I'd love a pint of that.

No it wasnt like Kilkenny I had a few of those on the continent, too. Kilkenny is like a little harsher version of Smithwicks to me.

Red Beamish was like a red stout is the best way I can describe it. Like a Murphys with a bit of an ale taste to it and with a red colour. And really smooth and with a head.

Good few lads I know during Covid used out houses and garages to build pretty impressive pubs and bars, including pool tables, juke boxes, darts, fully functional tap system, proper bar fridges, etc.

They all take turns in going over to each others "pubs".

So they are still going to the pub reality, they just are not being fleeced blind for the privilege.

It is kind of gone full circle when you think about, old Irish pubs in a lot of cases use be converted parts of houses or an extended good room or an attached shed.

They stopped making it after Heineken bought Beamish.

Interesting discussion this - my uncle worked in a pub as a teenager back in the summer of 1975 he says that a round of 6 pints of Guinness was a few pence under £1.00 (one Irish pound) roughly 16 pence per pint !! Is this possible ?

The chart that loads of pubs have has 25p as the "1975 price" but there was just as much variation then as there is now.

16p is down as 1969 (decimal converted).

I can see a genuine shift towards Beamish lately, the recent jump from 5.50 to 5.70 for a pint of plain and no end to the hikes in sight... A lot of the old boys in the local have switched to it, it's at the point now where you don't have to ask the bar man if it's flowing when you go in, it definitely is, for €4.50 a pint you can't go wrong, plus it's not that absolute muck Murphy's.

4.50 is a provincial town price for Beamish, not country - it could be 4 in properly rural pubs. Cumiskeys on Dominick Street in Dublin is probably still under a fiver for instance.

You could still get Guinness for 4.40 in rural Donegal before this months price hike for instance; not been up since but I'm guessing 4.60/4.70 now.

Worth asking, you'll never get if you don't ask. Big psychological thing getting two pints for less than a tenner.