Posted on 12/24/2007 11:04:32 AM PST by Zakeet
The average price of a pint of bitter in Britain's pubs could increase from around £2.20 to as much as £4 next year, the industry has warned.
The massive hike, which is also expected to affect cans bought from off licences, is due largely to increased prices of key ingredients barley and hops - in part because farmland is being turned over to environment-friendly biofuels.
But brewers are also suffering from rises in fuel costs and the price of the metals used to produce kegs and cans. Kegs are now so valuable that they have become a target for thieves, who stole 60 million this year to melt down for their metal.
Mark Hastings, director of communications at the British Beer and Pub Association, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Food prices have increased dramatically and that has affected, for us, the price of barley and hops, which have rocketed tremendously.
[Snip]
Mr Hastings said the price hike came against a general decline in British beer sales, with some 14 million fewer pints a day being served in pubs than in the past.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailyexpress.co.uk ...
Malting barley topped $5 a bushel this year and is looking at $6. A bushel of barley is about 48 pounds.
One pound of barley makes about a gallon of beer, so a bushel of barley will make roughly 50 gallons - 400 pints.
So one pint of beer has about 1.2 cents worth of barley in it.
If they’re saying rising barley prices are going to drive a pint up $3.60, either they expect barley to be selling for $1,800 a bushel or they’re full of s—t.
Hops at $15 a pound are a few pennies a bottle.
The cost of beer is in the taxes, the capital equipment, the labor, and the distribution. On a personal drinking scale, the raw ingredients are so cheap as to be essentially free.
A $4 price hike at the tap may well happen, but that isn’t because of biofuels and farmers aren’t going to see but a few pennies of it.
Ontario's LCBO has scads of English beers. I notice a real eye catcher for the usual suspects. It is a whopping plastic bottle of Wells Ale. I have had no luck in the measure though. I have my supplies in for the visitors tomorrow, cannot be bothered to go down and check. The price? $8.95 Canadian dollars. Has to be 40 ounces but I stand to be corrected.
I would think that they have an eye on a certain customer. Why not? (laughs).Premium English beers 500 ml (16 oz up) are only $2.25 and as high as $3.45 Canadian. Halve that and you get the value in pounds.
Neither here nor there but Marstons brewed a "Pedigree" beer for $3.45.(1.7 pounds sterling). The store sold em' all out, once the tasters got to work. Bottom line - they cannot ship this stuff to Ontario for even less than store price and NOT make a profit.
We don’t plant all the arable land in the US now, so your concern is invalid with respect to a rise in the price of food. We pay farmers now not to plant crops. Further, non-food crops will end up making biofuels - they are more efficient (e.g. switchgrass). Stop the Malthusian BS, it just isn’t going to work out like that.
A Pint eh....the euronazis will have your hide.
Supposed to be all metric these days as dictated by the EEC directorate.
All commodities are getting more expensive. Even chocolate.
Wow, I’d have to greatly curtail my drinking at £4 (nearly $8 USD per beer).
LOL! I'll have to tell my broker and investment firms that chestnut.
You are absolutely uninformed as to the US commodities market.
It has made me rather well off, - as you might note in my homepage - and you would be very wise indeed to shed the thinking encapsulated in your last post like a dead skin.
The price of food is going to climb dramatically in the coming years and all of your uniformed thinking isn’t going to change that one bit.
I suggest that you study investments rather quickly before reality slams into you like a bull market going long in wheat. - my current positions, leveraged in LEAPS.
I was raised on a farm. I’ve heard this crap from brokers before. Cover your downside and don’t do commodities on borrowed money.
Not at my house. Malted barley prices haven’t moved in years at the brewing supply store.
Add to that that not all barley is suitable for brewing. Pricing for those varieties is now on the order of $1.50 a pound retail. Even adding in the fact that large brewers will get bulk rate discounts, you're looking at a pretty steep increase in barley prices.
So adding it all together, and loooking at it from a percentage standpoint, if your costs increase roughly 30-40%, then your prices are going to follow suit. Hardly seems out of line to me.
LOL, I went to Beeston Castle’s gift shop and bought a bottle of mead for a fiver as I’d never tried it, and it was really good! I split the bottle with my sister and we got a nice little buzz going on just a few glasses as I think it’s 14% alcohol, but it was a nice buzz nonetheless! It’s really sweet, but I quite liked it...the anti-fun brigade has called for prices of alcohol to be raised to keep it out of the hands of idiot hoodie yobs and teenagers who just drink to get violent and wreak havoc on the decent people who enjoy social drinking. So, it may not be just the price of barley and hops, it may also be the nanny state allowing a few bad apples to spoil to whole bunch...that’s how they “solve” things: ban it from everyone! A-holes...
Ping!
Your problem has been cured. You will no longer be able to drink unless you come up with a cheap way to convert ethanol to suds..
“I want an organization of food exporting countries.”
OFEC. I can only imagine how that would be mispronounced!
:)
I might have to start if this sort of thing keeps up.
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