Thanks to CAMRA members who scored their beer on WhatPub in 2018, we have information to help us to select pubs for the Good Beer Guide. 20% of those scores also had a price for the beer which allows us to calculate movements in beer price over the year. We had 1292 prices for real ales in any Cornish pub. It is well-known that Wetherspoon prices are consistently well below the prices in almost all other pubs, and we have one very prolific member who scores a lot of Wetherspoon beers. In fact, 43% of all the prices reported were for beers in Wetherspoon pubs. Therefore it is helpful to show the price trends for all pubs and also without the Wetherspoons. The results by month for 2018 for the average, highest and lowest price per pint plus the number of prices are shown in Table 1 and Figure 1 for all pubs and in Table 2 and Figure 2 for pubs excluding Wetherspoon.

Table 1 Beer prices for all pubs by month in 2018

Figure 1 Beer prices for all pubs by month in 2018

Table 2 Beer prices for pubs excluding Wetherspoon by month in 2018

Figure 2 Beer prices for pubs excluding Wetherspoon by month in 2018

The trend in prices for all pubs between 2013 and 2018 is shown in Table 3 and Figure 3. For 2017 and 2018, the trend for non-Wetherspoon pubs is shown in Table 4 and Figure 3.

Table 3 Annual beer price trends for all pubs

Table 4 Annual beer price trends excluding Wetherspoon pubs

Figure 3 Annual beer price trends for all pubs from 2013 to 2018 and average prices for pubs excluding Wetherspoon for 2017 and 2018 only

The low average price for the whole of 2018 for all pubs was caused by a disproportionately high number of Wetherspoon prices. The average price of beer excluding Wetherspoon before 2017 would be higher than the values for all pubs but we do not have the data to complete the table.

So, our limited data shows that the price of a pint in a non-Wetherspoon pub in Cornwall in 2018 was £3.57, and for all pubs was somewhere between £2.92 and £3.57. If we get more scores and more prices reported in 2019 then we can calculate a better survey next year.

Steve Barber, Cornwall NBSS Coordinator