Yup, mainly because pubs still haven't come to terms with the fact that a good percentage of their customers don't want, or can't drink anything with alcohol in it, their answer being a fizzy drink of some description or a bottle of chemicals that taste like a fruit juice.

Wetherspoons are actually quite good in the provision of non-alcoholic drinks in that they will serve half decent coffee right through the day and night, I just can't manage three pints of black coffee thats all.

Other pubs simply don't want to know - my local for instance stops serving food at 9pm and so stops serving coffee too, they do have a very tantalizing range of two fizzy drinks and two flavours of J2O to offer though - cretins.

In reply to Jerry:
Touche on spelling - you're right - acquaintances of mine make similar mistakes


Pity to condemn a vary successful company on the strength of a single visit, though, and on hearsay evidence at that.
Your ex- brewing trade chum may well have been right - bad barrels do occasionally get through. However a request to change the pints for another of the many beers on sale would have solved the problem better than reverting to Lager!
That's almost as poisonous as Coke!

It was worth the night out just to watch him trying to drink lager which in his workplace was always not so much a brewing process but just a case of mixing ingredients and chemically cleaning it a few days later especially in the build up to christmas when the supermarkets would turn the screws on the brewers to get millions of cases of cheap lager into the warehouses

I also hear you need a HazMat licence to transport it

Saying that though you're stomach is full of Hydrochloric acid and you could probably clean a bog or loosen a bolt with that stuff too.

I've probably had far more bad pints of coke than beer, eg when the gas cyliner is out, or the nozzel is on too far and its too strong, or too weak, or when coke and diet coke are mixed up

Same thing could be said about vinegar, wine or most things which are quite acidic

Heaven forbid that they ever serve me Diet Coke by mistake, its bad enough when you ask for Coke and they say "Its Cola is that OK" which translates to "Its not a brand that you'll ever have heard of but we'll charge you £3 for this shoite anyway"

And then of course,

"Would you like a load of ice with that so we don't have to put so much of this cheap fizzy syrup drink in the glass and can make EVEN MORE profit ?"

Thats the most annoying part. I once got chatting to a guy who worked at subway, and the average cup of postmix cola costs about 5p to the retailler.

To pay almost £3 for a glass is ridiculous

Its is, but keeps the world turning.

Landlords would see epic increased profits if their punters swapped to pints of post mix cola.

Can someone remind me how much is a pint of coke (of any description) in a pub?
How much of that is excise duty?
& you complain about pubs profiteering?
PS like Co'J I'm a fully paid up sandal wearing (only in the summer months) pensioner with a beard who's a fully paid up CAMRA member.
PS Co'J I only pay £15.50 for my annual CAMRA membership.

Oops - a slip of the memory - it is only £15.50 for over-60s membership of course - even better. That would buy you another 3 pints from Wetherspoons

I used to have a copy of the 1978 CAMRA Good Pub Guide that we used as a bible in that year, it had about three pubs in Leeds in it & most of our touring weekends were spent around Bradford (which had dozens), Keighley and Halifax which were both well represented.

Then I got moved up to Newcastle and had to forget all about good beer for eight years...

Somehow labs and real ale don't seem to go together - and most large breweries have forgotten how to brew real ale. I certainly have enjoyed some excellent real beer in Wetherspoons over the years.

i'm currently working in the area of sam smiths where real ale is still brewed in traditional slate squares. not really a drinker but the smells lovely!

Even the micro brewers have to get the chemistry bit together or you end up poisoning your clients - my mate has since been shortlisted for two small independant ale brewery jobs simply for that reason, its a chemists job when all is said and done which doesn't mean that you are brewing from artificial ingredients and chemicals, but it does mean that you are carefully controlling the brew constantly with the eye of a scientist - its not home brew.

you should work at our place. only two girls in the lab checking stock. we have only highly qualified brewers and organic products. everything is traditionally done.
compare it to john smiths over the road and that place is one big lab. there beer is all chemicals and water

And if anyone wants a cracking boozer to visit, may I suggest Kirkstall Bridge pub. Fantastic pub run by Kirkstall Brewery

I was in the Isle of Wight recently and they brew a local beer (that doesn't actually leave the island by all accounts) by Goddards called Fuggle-Dee-Dum. If you ever get the chance I highly recommend it. Also a Cornish beer brewed by Sharp's called Doom Bar - you can get it in Morrisons.

The Saltaire Brewery is also knocking out a few decent beers these days.

The existence of all the local microbreweries is down to the efforts of CAMRA in the 1970s standing up to the big brewers.
Without that outstanding consumer movement we'd all be drinking p*ss such as that produced by John Smiths.
Don't knock the beard & sandals brigade.

I think it's wonderfully ironic the way the whole drinking ,brewing industry has evolved.
When I was a kid growing up in Leeds there were several small breweries , all supplying local pubs.
From memory,they were hemingways , heys, byb and the two large breweries tetleys and whitbread. They have all vanished , obviously there is a rise in small brewers, such as osset,rudgate and a whole host of others.
You can imagine a situation a few years from now when some of these successful brewers expand, the huge brewing conglomerates like Heineken will no doubt buy them and the whole process will have come full circle.
Living just out side Tadcaster I use several Sam Smiths pubs, with the odd foray into York to the bluebell pub, or the swan on bishopthorpe road in York.
Both of these pubs have a good selection of real ale, my favourite is the Saltire blonde , the beer that is not the female variety.

Maybe not, Sharp's who brew Doombar - mentioned above - in Rock opposite Padstein in Cornwall, is now owned by the Coors group. But they have invested in the brewery to allow it to continue & expand it's real ale production.

Interesting.

Moorhouses for me. Every pint a winner.

The beauty about the current situation is that there are now so many real ale producers & micro-breweries that you're almost bound to be able to find something you like.

Had a pint of Tim Taylors Golden Best last night in the Old Steps - really good.