Because people are lazy, the stuff which is advertised so much is more popular.
That’s probably the main reason!
I would have thought the popularity of Fosters was at its height about 20 years ago.
It doesn’t seem to be any more though, as isn’t available in as many pubs as it used to be, from my observation.
Vile stuff anyway.
Perhaps it’s popularity is declining. In east Kent though it seems to be in most pubs I’ve visited.
Clever advertising and cheap and high margins for the pub, a "session beer" Hofmeister was such a popular session beer until withdrawn from the market.
Has Fosters taken the vacancy of Hofmeister?
When beer stored at the brewery approaches its sell by date and the flavour is declining , the brewery will sell the beer to the pubs at a low price.
An end of shelf life "is deteriorating" flavour seems to have been "brewed-in" to Fosters and a pint of Fosters needs that deep chilling at the tap to anesthetise the taste buds to make it drinkable
Hofmeister is still around, if it’s the same one you’re thinking of. In fact, I’d never heard of it until it started popping up in quite a few pubs in east Kent over the last couple of years. That seemed like a decent lager when I’ve tried it, and I believe is imported from Germany rather than brewed here.
I was well into my 20s (on a trip to Prague in the late 90s) before I discovered that there was such a thing as decent lager, until then I thought the likes of Fosters, Carling, Stella, Carlsberg (all as bad as each other as far as I'm concerned) etc were the norm
I think that’s similar to how I discovered decent lager. I started off with cider and ales, as I always thought lagers were cheap, nasty and very bubbly. Trips to Germany and Czechia changed that!
Would any connoisseurs like to suggest a premium lager I might like?
It’s hard to think of premium lagers that are both decent and easy to find.
When going for lagers, I tend to go for the slightly more expensive German lagers, such as Paulaner, ABK, Bitburger, Krombacher, Hacker, and even rarer than that the Czech beers such as Pilsner Urquell, Budvar (the original Budweiser!) and Krusovice which are all brewed in Czechia. Sadly Staropramen is brewed in Burton-on-Trent and doesn’t taste as good as the Czech version.
Becks seems ok. It’s brewed in the UK but apparently to German Reinheitsgebot standards.
I have plenty of Shepherd Neame pubs in my neck of the woods, and I think their Spitfire Lager and Whitstable Bay Blonde Lager to be rather good. Some Shepherd pubs also have Hurlimann on tap, which they brew themselves under licence.
Brewdog’s Lost Lager is pretty decent I think, but I haven’t seen that in many pubs that arn’t Brewdog pubs. A lot of the lagers/Helles/pilsners that are produced by small local craft breweries tend to be rather good too, but not often on tap.
If the pub doesn’t have a lager I like, I tend to go for traditional ales or ‘craft’ IPAs - or a Kentish cider
.
.
Social habits have changed for good, the demise of the five-day working week Monday to Friday working, weekends off, killed the high lucrative Friday evening and weekend drinking, Lunchtime drinking at work has gone the same way, Supermarket beer is so cheap too.
Will the Pub trade ever recover?
We may lose pubs a lot of pubs over the winter and next few years, but I really don’t see them dying out completely. Over the last few months, I’ve seen (and been in) some very busy pubs.
I dont know anywhere less than a fiver a pint for lager
Still a quite a few places, for now. There’s a pub in east Kent that has ABK, a decent German lager, for £4.90 a pint.
I even got a pint of lager in a Samuel Smiths pub in London for £2.60 ish ! Although it was a low-alcohol beer and didn’t taste great, but still…
). Tasted virtually the same as the normal alcoholic version. Some supermarkets sell their darker dunkel version too.
