Bitter drinkers in Oxfordshire will choke when they see the findings of a new pint price survey.

For the county's pubgoers are paying some of heftiest prices in Britain for their ale, according to the 1999 Good Pub Guide.

The average cost of a pint in Oxfordshire stands at £1.84, compared with £1.53 in Lancashire and £1.70 in neighbouring Gloucestershire.

And local drinkers will be feeling even flatter on learning that they now pay just 8p a pint less than the sky-high London average. But the no-punches pulled beer guide (published by Ebury Press at £14.99) suggests we can lighten up about one thing - Hook Norton, brewed in north Oxfordshire, is included among the guide's exclusive band of Local Heroes.

For when it comes to pint prices it seems small can still be beautiful. The price of the prize-winning pint is a good 20p below the average price for the region.

Hook Norton director James Clarke, said: "It is interesting that a small traditional company like ours can maintain a competitive edge. And our unit costs are higher than bigger businesses with most of our pubs in villages." He said Hook Norton usually sold for about £1.60 in most pubs, going up by just 5p from last year. The Good Pub Guide blames the big four national brewers for forcing up prices by an average of 9p a pint in the past year. The rise comes despite the fuss brewers have been making about cheap beer flooding across the Channel and the present low cost of malting barley, lower in real terms than at any time since 1970s.

A pint of Morrells bitter, which will soon no longer even be brewed in Oxford after the brewery's £48m sale, now normally costs between £1.75 and £1.81 a pint. The Abingdon-brewed Morland Original is priced on average at £1.80, after a recent rise.

Simon Barnes, tenants business manager at Brakspear of Henley, said it was inevitable that Oxfordshire pub prices would be among Britain's highest.

He said: "There is bound to be a price differential. Property and pubs are cheaper in the north. Profit margins up there do not have to be as great."

He said a pint of Brakspear best sold for between £1.75 and £1.90 a pint with tenants free to decide their own prices. The guide found the cheapest beers in Lancashire, while Surrey was the most expensive area at £1.94 a pint.

The editor of the guide, Alisdair Aird, claimed that the extra amount that pubs and brewers were taking in beer prices above the general level of inflation cost pub-goers an extra £200m a year.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.