I have been meaning to follow up on earlier pieces about the price of beer. In 2018, in this piece, I recorded a few milestones from over 40 years of drinking in pubs here in London. The price of a pint had not yet reached £6. In this 2022 Post I noted that we had broken through the £6 barrier sometime in 2021. And it’s now at least a year since we broke through the £7 barrier.

I first noticed it last summer, in a bar near Chalk Farm. The combined costs of my son’s bottle of Coke and my nothing-special pint of Pale came to over £10, without the addition of a packet of crisps. We were investigating a few music bars (Open Mics, solo performers and the like), before I dived in and decided to play as often as I could, as outlined in this piece. I asked, not for the first time, “Could you break that down for me please?” The bar-person, who seemed reluctant to engage in any form of verbal communication, told me it was £7.50 for the beer, and … Well, I wasn’t listening to price of the Coke. I wasn’t aware that I had ever paid £7 for a pint before, and here we were halfway to the next milestone, the unthinkable £8 pint.

My son and I checked out a couple of the acts, went to a pub in Kentish Town to see a solo performer play to about 4 people, then returned to the first bar. Because we said we would. I decided to have a half. And that cost £5. £5 for a half of nothing-special beer in a nothing-special bar near Chalk Farm. Initially the bar-person tried to charge me £7.50, again.

In the weeks afterwards we found ourselves in plenty of pubs where a pint of Pale, Camden Hells or Guinness was over £7. At one of our regular spots the usual price was £7.20. Most of the time my favourite barmaid would give me the staff discount (20%), taking the price of a pint back down to an even £6.

Most of the places we have been playing music recently, in West London, peg their beer at £5 a pint. For now at least. But somewhere, sometime soon, places not far from here will no doubt be charging £8 a pint. Maybe they already are.