Possibly a thread elsewhere already but
Temple Bar has always been overpriced but €9 for a pint is pretty insane.
Roughly 90 pints per keg × 9 = 1800 per keg they must be making a pretty penny. I know rents, insurance, staff etc
Locally i paid €4.90 for a pint of Birra Moretti
So would or do you pay €9 a pint..
I've not got a great palate but I easily identified between draught Guinness and Beamish in a blind challenge - the coffee note in the latter was instantly recognisable. I might have struggled more between Murphys and Guinness and they've messed with the Beamish ABV since then but at the time it was chalk and cheese.
…..
Name an actual premises an a proper headroom of time to do it.
If they don't sell multiple - 4+ options - on draft, you're getting canned everything (and the premises has to agree to allowing outside cans in, unless they sell them themselves)
You can LOL all you want - you are going to fail in an actual double blind test, because everyone does. You'll only have one chance at saying something is Guinness, and realistically a 25% chance, in four products, of getting it right. But you also need to say what all the other products are too, because you've stated you can tell.
LOL
Cahersiveen, 6 o'clock. Be there or be square. 😋
Some people would drive you to drink…..
The cheapest pint preferably…..
So when and where then?
I've done it with Beamish and 0.0's.
Beamish tastes sweeter. It's not an unpleasant taste, but it's definitely different to Guinness. The same goes for a 0.0. which I will drink if I'm out during the week because of work. Murphys definitely has a taste of it's own. In fairness I haven't had a pint of Murphys in a while because it's so damned hard to get up here.
Trust me, as an alternative to Guinness I've tried others. They are not the same.
I challenge you to actually determining them in a double blind taste test.
You won't be able to.
In tests I've seen with 4 or 5 stouts, getting more than 2 right is basically unheard of.
Name a location and a time. I'll supply the stouts, but we'll have to find someone else to actually do the supply to ensure its double blind. And you'll be found out to be spoofing.
If somehow you are a super-taster (you aren't, though); that would make you absolutely not a normal consumer.
Nobody is "proving" your point and you're talking nonsense.
I can tell the difference between a Guinness, a Beamish, a Murphys, an Oyster and a Guinness 0.0. I can say that because I have tried them all…and other stouts too. Even my own homebrew.
That you say I would not be able to identify the difference just shows that you're talking nonsense.
Into the bargain, nobody said that it wasn't a "generic mass marketed stout" and nobody has said that it had "magic properties" either.
However it does have a particular taste, and it's one that instantly recognisable to people that like that taste, whether you like it or not.
You continue to prove my point.
I predict an even angrier response WITH EVEN MORE CAPITALS
I can guarantee you that you would not be able to identify Guinness in a double blind taste test of multiple stouts.
It is a well produced yet exceptionally generic mass market stout. It has no magic properties, despite people believing decades of marketing, and the recipe has been repeatedly changed over those decades - it is not the same product as sold under the same name even ten years ago let alone longer ago.
But due to marketing and mythos, Guinness drinkers think they're drinking something magic, and they will continue to let the makers of the product rob them. Which was my point to begin with.
But please do GET VERY ANGRY about this. It just proves me right.
It's not "proving" your point at all.
What part of "you have to LIKE THE TASTE of the drink" do you you not understand?
They can't afford it
Rather proving my point
That crowd will not change to another pint
Change to what exactly?
I've already said in order to change to another drink, you have to LIKE THE TASTE of the drink. It's not like changing from Ballygowan to another water.
Most people have a tipple that they like the taste of and they'll stick to it because they aren't mad about the other drinks.
It's not about "intransigence", it's about taste.
It would be like a scene from Shameless 🤣.
In my experience even the smallest breweries are cutting deals and handing out incentives so maybe it suits them or they just accept it because smaller suppliers are not even trying to compete with the top brands.
Even if it was made illegal the vast majority of pubs would still go to Heineken or Diagio. Publicans and customers are not suddenly go be all over craft beer because these deals stop.
How is there not a case taken against them by other brands?
Is that not clearly abuse of a dominant position which is illegal under EU Directive Article 102 ?
It can't just be the "apparatus of the state" because it happens in other countries in the very same way. These deals don't officially exclude anything which is what makes them legal.
They are certainly not illegal in other parts of Europe.
We need a coordinated professional protest movement. March into bars, get the Guinness bottles and kegs,
Bet Doran mmmmmm of drink some yes but most down the drain. Break up guinness lines on bar
Not all publicans are members though. Also, many of them are only members in order to get insurance discounts or to have backup in the case of discrimination claims against them.
None of them are willing to properly stand up to the big breweries, due to the likelihood that customers will just go to someone who isn't.
That there is why exactly the publican is held over a barrel - if you pardon the pun. That someone who isn't needs to be booted out of the VFI/LVA within 5 minutes of breaching the action. No comeback - and that needs to be made clear as day prior to any action.
The LVA/VFI need to have a much bigger clout in this game than they are displaying.
And they are the people fueling the price rises.
They are convinced that they can make at home drinking more expensive, e.g. via MUP which they full bloodedly supported and by lobbying for likely EU-level illegal differential duty on off-sales. And then that'll save them.
But it won't. And that's basically it for strategy.
None of them are willing to properly stand up to the big breweries, due to the likelihood that customers will just go to someone who isn't. When they get chances to sell stuff cheaper, they go for the easy option of making more margin cause its "premium" - most craft kegs cost less than the big brewery kegs do, but by **** are they ever cheaper as pints.
Intransigent Guinness drinkers, who believe every bit of folklore about their mass-produced pint, are a huge part of the problem here by the way. That crowd will not change to another pint, and hence it becomes impossible for a publican to stop selling it.
Additionally, any time they do some form of pro consumer action in unison, as rare as that is; they get threatened with anti cartel laws, e.g. there was a LVA price cut in the early days of the financial crash and they were told off for it.
Where are the LVA and VFI in all of this. They've been sitting back for the last ~25 years looking into the abyss at their industry sinking further and further and SFA in terms of action from them.
The Irish Pub is the last outlet remaining in every city, town and village across the whole country that can boast by and large they're family run units - the most of them are.
Almost gone are all the small independent family run retailers from small local shops, small local butchers, small local clothes stores, hardware stores and so on… even small farms are going.
The Pub has bucked the trend because it has been a very popular outlet throughout Irish history, but now it is seriously under threat too.
The VFI and LVA surely must looking at the trends of all of the above and see that pubs are next? If not - they are absolutely delusional. If they are - WTF are they doing about it?
There should be mass action by pubs to protest Diageo's and Heineken's stranglehold on the wholesale market. Refuse en masse to sell their produce any more, every single pub. Hit the bankers spelt with the W in the pocket. It's the only language they understand.
For it to work - every pub from Malin to Mizen need to get in on it. Cripple the suppliers.
Some will say that action will kill the pub. Well, might as well have the obituary tomorrow as the next day. It's coming anyways.
In nearly every other country, and indeed in nearly any other industry in Ireland except wholesale of alcoholic drinks, exclusionary deals like this are illegal.
We've had interesting test cases in such minor things as ice cream fridge access; but the alcohol drinks industry is protected from this by the apparatus of the State deciding that its all OK for some reason.
That Heineken and C&C are at the same stuff and see it as legit competition also reduces the potential challengers to comparatively small companies with tiny funds for legal challenges.
I believe you. Could be the next town they are targeting. At least you have a craft beer.
Diageo deal, 100k over 3yrs to remove all opposition taps. One craft beer remaining (local). Anyone doubting me just visit a popular Hen & Stag venue in Co Leitrim and its the only pub NOT serving Coors.
What illegal documents ?
There isn't anything illegal going on. It's like saying someone who takes out a Burger King franchise is breaking the law. Or a coffee shop that only sells one brand of beans is breaking the law.
No harm if any of these illegal documents were to "accidentally" be made public
My bad, sorry, read Carling as Carlsberg.
No longer calling BS on it, sorry poster.
Ok, thanks for pointing that out.
I can't read.
