The Grinch that stole Guinness

This, as you may have guessed, is an important time of year for us Shark Guys, as we enter the Christmas drinking season and prepare ourselves for yet more tales of drunken Santas, holiday office party chicanery (For our Holiday Office Party Tips click here), and the related reasons why it is best not to include mistletoe at a party where lower-level managers are known for their "Russian hands and Roman fingers" after too many dips into the spiked punch. (For a fuller treatment on this very theme we recommend that you check out the “Festive Cheers: Hooch on the Holidays” chapter of our “The Man Who Scared a Shark to Death: and other true tales of drunken debauchery").

What makes the holidays memorable – aside from family tensions reaching the breaking point and the prospect of imminent financial ruin in the New Year – is, of course, booze, and brewers around the world have smiles on their faces at this time of year that have little to do with stirring religious convictions or sentimental remembrances of gassy mall Santas passing out candy canes and charging 10 bucks a pop for photos. The steady flow of brewer’s booze into pubs is one of those systems that we take for granted, but it is crucial to properly enjoying the holidays and meeting its stressors with rosy cheeks and a good disposition.

Recently, a thief in Ireland stole a record haul of booze from the Guinness brewery, thus throwing this delicate and vital link between brewer and boozehound into jeopardy. According to The Irish Times, the thief drove a truck into the Guinness Brewery, hitched it up to a trailer with 450 kegs of beer in tow, and drove off. In addition to 180 kegs of the black gold, the thief also made off with 180 kegs of Budweiser, and 90 kegs of Carlsberg.

It may be argued that the thief did the drinkers of Dublin a favor by limiting the flow of Budweiser into the city, but in the case of the black gold or “a sandwich in a glass”, as it has been known to The Shark Guys during particularly festive times, the theft was just a cruel, Grinch-like blow to the city.

The thief remains at large, and no doubt living large with all that ill-gotten hooch – 40,500 pints or 64,000 euros worth (the math here was easy as we too measure our money out this way) – at hand.