Beer prices ~ just about inflation?

When I went to college in the early 1970s, the prices in the college bar were 13p for a pint of bitter and 11p for mild and, if I remember correctly, lager and Guinness were 15p and 18p.  Out of interest, I put those prices into the historical price converter (bottom of the column on the right), and discovered that if the price of beer had increased in line with inflation, bitter should be £1-30 and mild £1-10.  If only ...

Beer tax at more than £1 a pint must account for some of that, but not all. I suspect a lot of the excess inflation is because most PubCos are up to their eyes in debt taken out when they bought their pubs and financed the purchases by instantly mortgaging their entire estates.  The lower prices in Wetherspoons, which hasn't followed the standard PubCo 'model' of basing a business on as much debt you can get away with, are evidence that this is so.

So, as well as paying excess beer tax, we are paying to service massive PubCo debts.  Somewhere in all this we actually pay for the beer too, but it's a sobering thought that every pint we buy subsidises the PubCo debt junkies as well chucking our hard-earned cash (on which we have already paid tax once) into Treasury coffers.  Sobering, but enough to drive you to drink too.