Skip to content


Big Duvels

Showing up at a bar (especially your favorite bar) at 12:45 AM or so often proves to be most entertaining. When we got to the Toronado around that time, Avery and I noticed a couple of groups of people who had obviously been there for many, many hours. At one end of the bar were three guys who kept making the heavy metal devil sign with their fingers and headbanging along to the jukebox, no matter what kind of music was playing. Every so often they would let out a few whoops and order another (large) bottle of a Belgian ale. By the time they ordered their last one, they were in need of a designated pourer in a major way. One of the guys started to pour the ale into a glass and missed it completely, eventually pouring half of the bottle’s contents all over the bar. They all just laughed and kept headbanging.

Just then a twenty-something from twenty-somewhere rushed over, pointed above the bar at the rather long and dusty row of all the empty display bottles, and excitedly asked for “one of those big $50 bottles” (of Duvel, a Trappist Belgian ale), at which point Avery turned to me and said “I always thought that bottle was a joke!” This bottle is HUGE. Huge enough to keep 10 people drinking for a couple of hours. Two feet tall kind of huge. Be aware that it is now 1:00 AM, there are only five people in their party, and Duvel is meant to be sipped, not chugged. Needless to say, they somehow managed to finish the entire bottle. The purchaser then raised it over his head and turned the empty bottle upside down in drunken triumph. “You guys rule“, said Johnny the bartender, somewhat patronizingly.

Posted in The Barfly Chronicles.


0 Responses

Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.



Some HTML is OK

or, reply to this post via trackback.