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Most expensive beer bought

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Mitchell Hurd

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Hello everyone. I thought I'd create this thread and see what people's takes are.

On Twitter, it was said that last night someone in a Manchester hotel had been sold possibly the most expensive beer - at £55,000!

Surely it was a case of the barman or barmaid typed in the extra 2 zero's and forgot to put the decimal.

If I had £55,000 I'd rather buy many things than buy the best-tasting beer in the world :)!
 
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Busaholic

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That was one hell of a tip for the barmaid - 'take something for yourself' just acquired a whole new meaning :lol:
 

thejuggler

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Story is also on BBC.

Makes my £10 for a pint in Bergen 10 years ago look excellent value. I refused to pay £16 in Oslo a couple of years later.
 

IanD

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To add insult to injury, his credit card company also charged him a £1000 foreign currency transaction fee. Must have a huge credit limit though to allow that through.

Paid £10 of my own money for a bottle of raspberry stout the other week - better be worth it!

Once we won a £50 bar tab in a quiz in The Draft House in Milton Keynes (now Brewdog). We bought three bottles of beer with it - His Majesty and Her Majesty by Yeastie Boys were £22 each for 750ml, both a bit disappointing. I think we got a Kwak with some of the change.
 

Mag_seven

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Makes my £10 for a pint in Bergen 10 years ago look excellent value. I refused to pay £16 in Oslo a couple of years later.

Was just about to say that I paid about £11 for a bottle of beer on a Norwegian train a few weeks ago.
 

306024

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Story is also on BBC.

Makes my £10 for a pint in Bergen 10 years ago look excellent value. I refused to pay £16 in Oslo a couple of years later.

£18 in Oslo three years ago. Only had the one for some reason.
 

Royston Vasey

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To add insult to injury, his credit card company also charged him a £1000 foreign currency transaction fee. Must have a huge credit limit though to allow that through.

Paid £10 of my own money for a bottle of raspberry stout the other week - better be worth it!

Once we won a £50 bar tab in a quiz in The Draft House in Milton Keynes (now Brewdog). We bought three bottles of beer with it - His Majesty and Her Majesty by Yeastie Boys were £22 each for 750ml, both a bit disappointing. I think we got a Kwak with some of the change.
He is a journalist, it may well be a company card which often has no limit. I had no limit on a company Amex I had a while ago.
 

IanD

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He is a journalist, it may well be a company card which often has no limit. I had no limit on a company Amex I had a while ago.

Could be but the BBC article says he rang his wife and the money had come out of their account, sounds like maybe a debit card.

BBC Article said:
An Australian cricket journalist was mistakenly charged £55,000 for a single bottle of beer in a Manchester hotel.
Peter Lalor ordered the £5.50 Deuchers IPA at the city's Malmaison hotel before being stunned to discover he had been charged £55,315.12 (A$99,983.64).
Mr Lalor, who was in the city to cover the Ashes series, now believes he drank "the most expensive beer in history".
A spokesman for the hotel apologised and said an investigation had been launched.
However, the money left Mr Lalor's bank account and he says he was told it would take 10 business days for the refund to be processed.

The journalist, who writes for The Australian newspaper, said he had alerted the barmaid after having a "sixth sense that something had gone wrong".
"Australians find England pretty expensive usually, but this takes the cake," he said.
"That's a lot of money. I'm just a cricket writer, I don't earn big bucks and it's costing me in interest."

Writing on Twitter, he said: "I didn't have my reading glasses when she presented me with a bill. I said I didn't want a receipt and she went to leave.
"Something, however, made me ask: 'How much did I just pay for that beer?' She checked, covered her mouth, started to giggle and refused to tell me, saying only there had been a mistake and she would fix it.
"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."

Two mornings later, Mr Lalor says he took a call from his wife to say the money had indeed left their account.

Mr Lalor, who also writes about beer for his newspaper, said: "To add insult to injury they charged a £1,000 transaction fee. Until the money comes back I won't rest easy."
A hotel spokesman said: "We are currently carrying out an investigation into what took place. We have been in contact with Peter to apologise and ensure this has been resolved as quickly as possible."
As for the beer itself, Mr Lalor said that at least was a success.

"It's a good beer," he later tweeted. "The original version of it won a heap of awards, including the Supreme Champion Beer of Britain, but if you are thinking that no beer is worth the best part of 100,000 dollars, then I am inclined to agree with you."

A spokesman for Visa said the "unusual" case shows how important it is to always check details of payments and receipts.
He added: "Visa does not make decisions to authorise payments. It is the responsibility of a cardholder's bank who will make a decision based on a number of factors including the funds available.
"We will work with both the cardholder's and merchant's banks to help resolve this error."
 

Busaholic

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I bought a bottle of Thomas Hardy's ale thirty or forty years ago for £10 which was supposed to be kept for ten years before opening. I had a cellar in my then house where it resided. After the decade was up I opened it and..... not even an anti-climax, it was a putrid gloopy disgusting mess which you wouldn't have touched with a bargepole.
 

Tetchytyke

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He paid £55,315.12, apparently.

So now we know the beer was £5.53 and his PIN is 1512.

My most expensive beer is either the £13 for a pint of Peroni at the Atlantis in Dubai or the €24 I paid for two 330ml bottles of Heineken at Ushuaia.
 
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He is a journalist, it may well be a company card which often has no limit. I had no limit on a company Amex I had a while ago.

Are you really the famous English comedian Roy „Chubby“ Brown? !!

The most expensive I have ever paid for bier was of course in London.
 

thejuggler

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I bought a bottle of Thomas Hardy's ale thirty or forty years ago for £10 which was supposed to be kept for ten years before opening. I had a cellar in my then house where it resided. After the decade was up I opened it and..... not even an anti-climax, it was a putrid gloopy disgusting mess which you wouldn't have touched with a bargepole.

I have two bottles of Whitbread Celebration Ale which was released in 1992. I've been tempted to open one, but never have.
 

davetheguard

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Was just about to say that I paid about £11 for a bottle of beer on a Norwegian train a few weeks ago.

And I thought I'd done badly with a small bottle of imported Belgian Leffe Bruin, in a top floor hotel bar in Narvik in 2016: also £11. Needless to say, I only had the one beer that day, and given the current strength of the pound, or rather otherwise, I'm unlikely to be visiting Norway again anytime soon.
 

Harbornite

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Seeing some of the above posts makes me feel better about spaffing roughly £7 on a Pint a few months ago. Not a surprising price considering it was from the craft beer co. place in Brixton but at least it tasted good.
 

Tom B

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He paid £55,315.12, apparently.

So now we know the beer was £5.53 and his PIN is 1512.

Quite! If using a card, I am fastidious at checking the amount displayed, especially on hand held PDQ machines where, by virtue of the human element, mistakes will be more common.
 

xc170

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And I thought I had been ripped off when I paid £4.50 for a bottle of Newcastle Brown on Saturday...
 

61653 HTAFC

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Worst for me was £7.50 for a pint (can't even remember what brand), around 2003. It was at the Astoria in London, the sweat-filled acoustic deadzone that it was. Dread to think what that would be in today's prices, which is why I haven't looked it up.

Can't believe anyone was actually upset when that place got Crossrail-ed! <D

Outside of London, Yates's in Leeds (and elsewhere) sells Desperados for £6 a pint. Nicer than from a bottle or can, but not that much nicer!
 

87electric

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My obsession with Imperial Stouts has seen me pay well over £20 a pint. Obviously you don’t drink it in pints but in thirds at £7 a go.
A beer brewing American friend did have a $50 bottle of stout in his reserve and he generously opened it for us both to savour.
 

185143

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Dearest I can immediately think of that I've paid was £5.50 for a Peroni near Cambridge station.

Though something tells me I've paid £5.60 for a Stella, likely at either Crewe or Man Picc...
 

LowLevel

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160 quid for a bottle of Lanssens Belgian lambic from about 1960.
 

Macwomble

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A bottle of VB cost me the equivalent of £10 when I was working in Singapore eight years a go. Shocking.

Average price for a pint in Singapore is around 12 quid nowadays (as I found out earlier this year) even "happy hour" cost around 9 quid.
Hong Kong ain't too cheap either at around 9 quid a pint.

On the flip side....Fiji Bitter was around £1.50 a pint (locally).
 
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