Punters braved howling wind and stinging rain at Dumfries on Saturday for their first poured pints in two months.
The beers were flowing at the Bank Bar and Tapas restaurant in a double-tops move by owners Laura and Adam Scott to save pouring the kegs away and to raise money for charity in the process.
Laura said: “We have been coming down to clean the beer lines to avoid the lager sitting in them and going off — and when we were doing that, we realised we needed to come up with some way of getting rid of all this stock.
“We had just taken a new delivery right before lockdown and everything was shut down. There are eight weeks life in a keg and 90 pints in it, so we thought of selling it at cut price before it was out of date and giving the money to the NHS.
“Every pint, from Birra Moretti to Tennent's to Staropramen, was priced at £1.50 and we poured them into plastic, see-through tumblers which came with lids.
“They were basically takeaway pints and we put them in carrier bags because they could not be drunk on the premises or out in the street.”
She added: “It was August last year that we opened the place and we also have the Dolce Vita up the road.
“The landlord has been good to us here with no rent to pay during this situation.”
The original plan for the takeaway pints-out-the-pipe event was to run it last Saturday and then again this weekend.
But Adam revealed that all the lagers are virtually gone.
He said: “We ran out of cups before we ran out of lager!
“We had bought in 650 plastic cups and when they were gone we were down to probably the last 30 pints so we probably would not have got rid of that anyway.
“We raised a total of £975 and it was a great success. That money will go to Dumfries and Galloway Infirmary’s Alexandra Unit for cancer patients.
“We had a friend, Peter Williamson, who died in February this year aged 86 and he treated us like his family. He was a major part of our lives and our kids’ lives.
“We have two daughters —Alexa aged eight and Giorgia, who is four.
“Peter was in the Alexandra Unit and they really looked after him, so we wanted to give something back.”
He added of the bumper beer day: “It was really good and helped bring a bit of normality back to people’s lives even though they could not sit in and drink inside the bar.
“But with the banter between a few people, it felt like a bit of normality.
“And with the German football shown live on television, we got a lot of guys in and it flew from there. They bought the pints and headed back to their homes.
“The beer was only going to go down the drain, so this raised money for a good cause — and I thoroughly enjoyed being back at
work.”
One Dumfries couple who took advantage of the chance to savour a pint poured from the pipes was Neil McLean and Lisa Galloway.
Neil said: “You cannot beat a good pint. I work for the gas board and I can hardly remember the last time I had a poured pint, it was a long time ago and obviously before the lockdown.
“It was probably the beginning of March, so this is a great idea. And with the money going to the NHS it is even better.”
Lisa said: “I work as a pharmacy technician up at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary and I think it’s a brilliant idea selling off the beer for the NHS.”
