When I am made President of Drinks I am going to make it mandatory for all pubs to offer $8 pints of a selected stock beer at all times. The beer must be selected from a range of approved everyday beers – no cleanskin “house lager” skunk beer bullshit that puts rats in your brain – and the only price deviation that will be legally permissible will be Happy Hour-related reductions. Furthermore, there will be a $12 cap on all tap beers. Doesn’t matter what kind of farty, gout-inducing pinecone double IPA you’re offering. $12 is the maximum. Brewed it with single origin oyster truffles? $12. Had to commission a submarine to drag it across the bottom of the Pacific in order to maintain optimal atmospheric pressure? $12. Need to hire a shaman to exorcise the keg demons because it was brewed on top of an ancient burial ground? $12 maximum, buddy. That’s all your allowed to charge. To that end, a prominent Australian journalist getting charged nearly $100,000 for a single beer in an English pub would be an example of a beer crime punishable by life imprisonment, under my benevolent, frothy rule.
[jwplayer PTSpeyo8]
Sports scribe Peter Lalor, in England covering the on-going Ashes series, apparently found himself on the rough end of a six-figure blunder at a Manchester pub a few nights ago, where a single, solitary froth monster wound up costing him nearly one hundred thousand human dollars.
Lalor was at the Malmaison Hotel in Manchester for a quiet one, and soon discovered after he paid that the pub had, somehow, charged him $99,983.64 for the cold one. At that price, you’d want to bloody hope it was tasty.
The story goes that the error was the result of a lack of reading glasses and a lack of staff experience, and it’s an error that’s apparently taking some time to resolve.
See this beer? That is the most expensive beer in history.
I paid $99,983.64 for it in the Malmaison Hotel, Manchester the other night.
Seriously.Contd. pic.twitter.com/Q54SoBB7wu
— Peter Lalor (@plalor) September 5, 2019
It was a quiet Sunday night when I made the fateful purchase. I asked a young barman if he had anything that was not an American craft beer or Eurolager. I wanted something a little British.
He had no idea. Said he’d only worked 6 shifts at the establishment.— Peter Lalor (@plalor) September 5, 2019
Anyway, I didn’t have my reading glasses when she presented me with a bill for the beer and when she had some problems with the machine I didn’t think much of it, but it was eventually resolved, I said I didn’t want a receipt and she went to leave.
— Peter Lalor (@plalor) September 5, 2019
She kept giggling, I told her it needed to be fixed and fixed right now. She ran to get her manager who took the situation far more seriously and went about attempting to arrange a refund.
She told me somebody would be in contact. Three days later I’m still waiting.— Peter Lalor (@plalor) September 5, 2019
It really is baffling that both Visa and our bank would allow such an amount to go through unquestioned.
And, guess what? They agree that there is a refund in the system but it will take 9 working days for it to go through.
In the mean time there’s a massive hole in my finances
— Peter Lalor (@plalor) September 5, 2019
Putting aside the fact that this is a very roundabout way of bragging that you have an extremely large bank account, I think we can all agree that a $100,000 bill on a single Froth Whitlam is a very spicy meat-a-ball.
Since the story broke, the hotel is reportedly being “very helpful” with Lalor’s money issues. But the real lesson to be learned here is probably very simple: $8 pints of stock beer should be enshrined in law at every Australian pub.
It’s the common sense vote, people.
