The Society of Independent Brewers (SIBA) Northern region wll be holding its AGM in the Scarisbrick Hotel in Lord Street, Southport, this weekend. The Scarisbrick's connection with SIBA goes back to 2002.
SIBA will also be holding its regional beer competition, won by Southport Brewery last year, and putting on a beer festival with the beer sold at reasonable prices (£2 a pint last year). It will be a good chance to sample beers not often available in Southport; they should be on sale from around lunchtime on Saturday.
Like you I'd expected the ale to be sold for about the same price as last year.
ReplyDeleteWith 115 barrels to tap for the judging, and all having a shelf life of about/less than a week, I was surprised to discover they'd put prices up by 20% to £2.50 a pint.
Now correct me if I'm wrong but the Scarisbrick gets this beer for free, right?
And everything must go within a week, by my calculations?
Talk about popping a gift horse in your mouth. Landlord, you should be flickin ashamed of yourself.
In these turbulent economic times - and with the 'Spoons selling a pint for less than a quid - the least we could have expected was fair play and some good spirit.
I was surprised too, as were some others I was drinking with. I do think the Scarisbrick Hotel isn't the same since Tony Cafferkey died. The beer range in the Baron's Bar is less interesting than it used to be, seeming to be going for the "usual suspects" (to quote Casablanca), and the Baron's own quirky website is out of date. This pricing may well be the new management's latest step back towards standardisation and mediocrity.
ReplyDeleteI hope I'm wrong, but the public disagreement between Tony's widow and the hotel would seem to suggest that a more hard-nosed brand of commercialism is developing. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that row, I just couldn't imagine anything like it happening under the old regime.