If that's your experience then yes, you may have a valid complaint against that specific beer. There are a couple of things that get to me in these threads though.
First, the unwarranted expansion of that to include all beers, eg. "I had this expensive beer and didn't like it, therefore all expensive beers are overpriced/rubbish". Admittedly, price and quality do not necessarily correlate but that does not mean that all expensive beers are overpriced.
Or this variation: "My homebrew is better than any commercial beer and I can make it for 50p a pint, therfore all craft beers are overpriced/rubbish". Imo this stems from an often self-imposed or willing ignorance and so not really worth arguing with (although apparently I can't help myself).
Oh I wouldn't for one moment judge all beers on the basis of a few, whether expensive or inexpensive. That's like drinking a pint of Green King IPA and announcing that all inexpensive beer is flavourless bilge, when I really rather enjoy Fuller's London Pride and ESB (neither of which are particularly expensive). I wouldn't just judge it on whether I like it personally or not either overly, more a case of if it really is poor quality. If it's a style that should be a malt flavour based one, I expect malt flavours. If it's hop driven, hop flavours, yeast driven, yeast flavours. If all I get is a flavour that is best described as, well, slightly fizzy water, then that to me is a BAD beer, whether expensive or inexpensive. If I taste what can only be described as kit twang, that's going to get judged pretty harshly too... lol
I suspect though that some people drink beer to get drunk/their buzz on as cheaply as possible, and I suspect these are the folks who are going to judge anything slightly more expensive than cheapo bargain booze as overpriced. For me, it's only overpriced if it's a) genuinely poor quality or b) identical to something I can buy for a lower price. It does get silly though when people compare beer made by very small operations that is made with high quality expensive ingredients, with huge care and craftmanship, to that mass produced by a huge brewery with zero care or craftmanship, UNLESS the small operation has made the mistake of producing something that tastes identical to the mass produced product, as why the heck would they want to do that? It'd be like Belgian monks trying to produce a beer that tasted just like Fosters, then selling it for £12 a bottle! lol To not get a genuine label of overpriced, your product needs to actually be different, and in a good way.
I think it's just very fashionable though to jump on the "craft is just a label they put on to rip us off" bandwagon, thanks in part to a few macros and not so great micros doing just that maybe?
As to saying my homebrew is better than any commercial beer, no just some of it, and then only to me as it's brewed to my own personal tastes. It's like going into a restaurant, sometimes the food isn't going to be cooked to your personal tastes and preferences, doesn't mean it's a bad restaurant, or make you a better cook than the chef, just means they're cooking the food to somebody else's tastes and preferences. Like when my dad started having a go at the waitress in our local, complaining that the veg was under cooked. It wasn't, it was cooked perfectly, just very slightly el-dente the way it should be cooked. He likes his veg cooked to mush though.... He also thinks that 4.2% is strong beer, and insists that back in the day Watney's Red Barrel was THE best beer.... lol I've also brewed some pretty awful beer... lol As to 50p a pint, no idea as I don't price my brews like that. I brew because I enjoy brewing, and to see if I can produce ever more delicious (to me, my family, my friends etc) beer, not to try to make it on the cheap. If commercial beer is so bad though, how come there are so many people trying to clone it? So many books out there been sold full of clone recipes? Some of it, well yeah to use it's awful, but there are people who like it! I know people who LIKE the taste of Fosters (I have a book with a clone recipe in it... lmao)... I myself used to like the taste of Budweiser (I swear they changed it though!), there must be people out there who like Green King IPA, maybe they can't stand hoppy beer?
No, I judge a beer on it's own merits, but will say that sometimes you don't have to spend a lot to find a good beer. These threads will always pop up though, either somebody fancies a troll, or somebody is just of the mindset that paying more than £2 a pint for beer isn't right (which if they'd brewed all grain, makes less sense, as then you know the work etc that goes into producing a good beer, and I'd love to know where outside of Weatherspoons (spit) you can find good beer for under £3 a pint now...). Now, when you get post code variations in price on the same beer, that's a different story.... I still remember paying £2 for a pint of the same beer that was £1.35 at home (1996 and it was Fosters).... THAT is overpriced beer.... lol
When we lived in Stafford for example, one of our favourite pubs was The Sun, owned by Titanic, a micro brewery, so yes it cost more per pint than your average Green King or whatever, but the beer was delicious! We'd sometimes pop in to the one owned by John Jpoule's & Sons (another micro) and enjoy a more expensive pint there... We didn't often go into spoons or the like, even though we had CAMRA vouchers. When we moved to Wolverhampton, at first we'd drink in places like The Posada (an independent) as they served guest ales from around the country (not cheap) and were one of the first in the region to sell Brewdog (before they became well known...), then we discovered The Vine Inn in Wednesfield who are owned by Black Country Ales (another micro brewery) and again serve guest ales from various micros as well as BCA ales, and The Great Western (owned by Holdens). My wife was lucky enough to also visit Hail To The Ale too, a micro pub with it's own on site micro-brewery.
As to loving Stoke On Trent, I was born there, and heck no... :p
