Me and "the boy" are creatures of habit - but also creatures of guilt when it comes to drinking.
One day a week we go to the Belgian Bar after work (no more than 5 minutes from TRHQ) it's so much more about the place and the people than the beer. Unlike any other place we go, we seldom taste lots of different beers - I tend to stick to IPA and he will try something different but usually comes back to IPA for a second. Beer at the BB is usually followed by food a few doors down at Anema e Core which is a family run restaurant where the front of house is led by a woman with a prodigious memory for our orders. Also, even with the new front of house staff we've rarely taken off our coats, let alone sat down before someone asks "Montepulciano?".
Our other places of regular pilgrimage are the Crown, Bottle Grove, and Ninkasi.
We feel really bad if we don't visit them all at least every other week.
Last week our Thursday trip to BB and Anema we passed someone who called to the Boy and said "how are you"...the boy looked momentarily confused before he added "I run the Hurst Arms". We had a chuckle with him and then felt guilty we'd not been there for a while.
Today, I was reading an article about the landlord of the "Bag of Cats" (ok, nails) in Bristol and reading it I realise I'd drunk with him at every pub he's managed in Bristol (right back to the Smiles Brewery Tap). He's a proper grumpy old landlord but with good reason - people often come and sit in his pub because it's a Bristol institution but they frequently don't drink - they just chat with friends who are drinking.
It makes you realise just how hard it is to be a publican because people want everything and there's a bit of a received wisdom that beer in a pub should be cheap.
We've become a lot less price sensitive in the last couple of years - he still does a calculation but is much less likely to grumble about the price, or not buy the beer than he used to be.
Watching Cloudwater go through financial difficulties - and this is a very well respected brewery which prices on the high side for their product - it's important to remember that small breweries and pubs/bars are not privatised utility companies who never seem to share the increased cost of their product (because people can't help but buy them) - these are people who seldom get very rich for years of investment and brutally hard work.
The independent breweries and bars/pubs need us to pay fair rates for their product - not only the production but the cost of running places we want to sit and drink and cultivate the culture that leads to "regulars" being greeted with "I've got this lovely new beer on - it's a Black IPA" knowing it's your favourite beer style.
