Would you pay nearly half a million pounds for a beer? Someone out there did pay that much money for a bottle of ale, making it by far the most expensive in the world.

And, as with any ripoff beer, there’s a fascinating multi-faceted story behind why the booze was so expensive, according to Ladbible.

To begin, Allsopp’s Arctic Ale is not the best beer ever made, with some rather unusual characteristics.

It all started on eBay in 2007 when an Oklahoma bidder paid roughly $304 (£257) plus $19.95 postage from a Massachusetts vendor.

The bottle itself was accompanied by an ancient laminated handwritten note saying that the bottle was brewed for the polar expedition in 1852 and was handed to a Boston attorney named Percy G. Bolster in 1919.

The trip of this ale began in 1854, when the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror went out to seek routes between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, passing through the Arctic Sea and focusing on the uncharted regions of the Northwest Passage.

Unfortunately, their journey was cut short when they became stranded in the sea ice near King William Island, which is today part of Northern Canada. The sailors had no choice but to abandon their ships, but none of them returned home.

At the same time, the British government tasked the Allsopps brewery with developing an ale fit for the frigid Arctic conditions. Allsopps then devised a powerful, sugary, north of 11% ABV brew that they claimed was impervious to the coldest conditions.

This ale was aboard a rescue expedition that set sail in 1852. The mission was unable to locate the Erebus or the Terror. The beer then became an antique and made its way onto eBay.

When the eBay buyer from Oklahoma learned about the story, he relisted the item on eBay with a Buy-It-Now price of $150,000 (about £126,900) and free shipping. It wasn’t long before the bidding began, and the vendor quickly removed the starting price. It was $360 after two days. It was more than $2000 on day 6. On the seventh day, 23 bidders boosted it to $78,000, and on the last day, 74,000 people watched the auction. The ancient ale was eventually purchased for $503,300.

We don’t know if the final buyer actually opened it and sampled it, but this Allsopps ale is still the most expensive beer in the world.

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