I’m headed across the pond for a rugby tour in August, and am running my budget. We are used to paying $4 to $6 for a draft pint here at home, what should we expect in both big city London pubs, and sleepy village locals?
Caveat: I neither drink, nor go to pubs. Average around £3 a pint for average beer. Cheaper in the North of England by about 30p; about £3.30 in London.
It’ll vary where you go. I’m in the Midlands, and I’d say it’s between £2.50 and £4.00, depending on the pub and what you drink. I don’t drink any more, but I’m out with people who do often enough to know.
Where are you going on the tour? That could make a difference.
Never been to London, but my gf has. She went with a coworker and told me prices were comparable with what we pay in PA. One quirk she mentioned was that bartenders offered them “lady glasses” (half pints?) which she scoffed at. They appreciated her scoffs.
Lots of cask beers available.
Looks like it is comparable to our $4-6 pint drafts here in New England. Our itinerary is Worcester to Machen to Twickenham.
Steophan, do you live near Rugby? We are trying to fit in a stop there on the trip from Heathrow (plane lands 830am) to Worcester (where we are to be welcomed by the RFC at 3pm). Does that sound doable? I was figuring just a photo op at the plaque and a quick lunch at a chippy.
Sadly I don’t (by English standards, where 20 miles is a long way), and I don’t drive so I can’t say how realistic it is. Maybe start a Cafe Society thread about where to go, and where to drink, and hopefully you’ll get some more information there.
Looking at Google Maps suggests about 1.5 hours from Heathrow to Rugby, and just over an hour from Rugby to Worcester, so it’s probably doable, depending on what transport you have.
Thank you Steophan, for the good idea I will start that thread. This one has answered my OP question, an I should follow SDMB protocol 
Be aware that, as discussed in another recent GD thread, an Imperial pint is 25% larger than an American pint.
(… Unless EU has forced Britain to switch to metric pints… :smack: )
Heathrow-Rugby does involve braving the horrors of the M25, which can add a silly amount of time to a trip sometimes, but if there’s no holdups at the airport, and the traffic’s OK on the M25, then it’s fast motorway (or A road the size of a motorway) all the way.
It should be fine, so long as there’s nothing major going on on the roads.
Also remember that you don’t tip after each pint so that keeps the cost down relatively speaking.
Last pint I bought was over £4. I think it was £4.20. I live in London. Not big city pubs in the West End, but more zone 2 pubs outside Central London. Pretty steep, eh?
Luckily I keep drinking them so I forget about the cost.
You don’t need to tip at all in pubs in the UK. You should tip in restaurants though.
Although it is acceptable to ask the barperson “…and one for yourself?” Especially if you have just ordered a large or complicated round of drinks, or have been in the pub for a while and have bought several rounds.
They will then either take a small cash sum for themselves, or buy themselves an actual drink.
This is by no means expected, but is usually appreciated (well it certainly was by me when I worked a bar as a student).
Depends on the pub, and depends on the drink, as people have said. A lowish-end pub chain like Wetherspoons will have quite a few beers in the £2.50-£3.00 range, but I saw someone order a Peroni the other day in another pub and get charged £6. He was outraged (quite rightly, IMHO) and some words ensued.
For London, where I live, it’s not far off £4 or maybe £4.50 tops. If you’re paying more than that I think it’s a ripoff - and that’s for a good beer, I think.
And yeah, tipping. A really good idea is to read the incredibly entertaining ‘Watching the English’ by Kate Fox. It gives you a breakdown of all typical social interactions in England and what’s running through an English person’s mind when it takes place. Primarily it’s about class.
Basically, offering a tip indicates servitude of the pint-giver to the pint-receiver so it makes us awkward. So a better means of tipping is to offer to buy the server a drink themselves - this changes the context from servant-recipient to a favour being returned.
Seriously, pick up that Kate Fox book. It’s hilarious and illuminating. As an Englishman myself it explained so much about how I behave!
However, be aware that many pub managers will frown on their staff actually drinking then and there - the barman/lady will take your money and record it in a book/on the till for later consumption when not actually tending. This may or may not apply if the bartender is the landlord/manager, though.
Or in the old days, the barman might pour himself a glass of cold tea… 20 shots of whisky a night would hinder totalling up the till.
I second that and now I have to find my copy and read it again.
Alternatively, as long as it’s not too large a sum, you could ask the barperson to “keep the change”. As above, the premise is that you’re not bestowing a gift, it’s just that you really don’t want all those fiddly coins jingling around in your pocket you understand.
Look, it’s complicated. Probably best to get a native to buy the drinks 
But really, hardly anybody does tip the barman when buying a pint in a pub. It’s just not a done thing. As others have said, a pint of bitter will be anything from £3 to £4.50, with the higher end of that in central London. Bottled beers, which are often barely over half a pint, still seem to cost as much as a pint.
Yes it’s quite expensive for an American but the price is tempered by the fact that (a) a pint is larger over here (although I think some US pubs do serve “British pint”?), and (b) you don’t have to hand over an extra pound each time the barman flips the lid off a bottle