I was at a friend’s house last night, enjoying some bottles of Great Divide’s Hades, a 7.8-percent Belgian Ale. After a few hours, we decided to grab dinner at bar in Columbia Heights. It was late and I knew I had to work in the morning, but I was in the mood for another beer. So I tracked down the bartender and had this conversation:
Me: I’d like to order the worst beer on your menu: a Miller Lite.
Bartender gives a contemptuous look and begins filling a glass from the tap. It’s pure foam.
Me: You don’t sell many of those do you?
Bartender: It’s the first one I’ve poured all night.
Bartender puts aside the foamy glass and fills a new one. He finishes and pauses before handing me my beer.
Bartender: Don’t worry. . . it’s triple hopped. (Delivered with contempt.)
We all know that beers like Miller Lite are lacking in a lot of ways, but is it right for a bartender to ridicule a customer for ordering one of them? There’s a time for any beer and, for me, last night was Miller time.