Yes, beer in high-end pubs tastes better and here is why

High-end bars cannot be frequented. They are like high-end restaurants. You cannot dine at a high-end restaurant every day because it is prohibitively expensive. High-end restaurants typically offer multi-course gourmet meals, sophisticated service and a premium dining experience. 

They are so exclusive that the clientele is willing to part with huge amounts just for the experience. For the vast majority of people, these places are reserved for special occasions such as important birthdays, marriage proposals, and signing monumental contracts. 

The same applies to high-end pubs. If you are trying to picture the kind of bar I am referring to here, please forget all those that sell a bottle of beer below Shs10,000. Those are regular pubs; average. And yes, the beer served in these areas simply tastes better. Whoever invented beer intended it to taste the way it does in top-of-the-range pubs. Which begs the question, why?  
To use the food comparison one last time, food served in a high-end restaurant expectedly tastes great because it is cooked by highly trained, high talented, highly experienced chefs. Beer is beer. It is all the same. It came down the same conveyor belt at 3am on the morning of last Tuesday. 

Every bottle was crafted by the same brew master using the same formula, except that one beer ended up at Nalongo’s shop by the street corner, while the other ended up at Mezo in Kololo. Yet the beer that ends up at the latter place tastes like heaven, while the one that ended up on the streets tastes like kikomando. And there is a reason. 
I once had a chat with a Nile Breweries brew master, Moses Lubega Musisi and asked him why this is so. I had initially assumed that there might be a special arrangement where the fancy bars are checked off a list before sending them his special batch. 

He almost chocked on his water when he heard me say this. He told me that beer taste can be influenced by storage and refrigeration. The corner shop is more likely to be using a poor quality, unreliable fridge, that cannot tell the difference between temperature, while a high end bar is more likely to have a top of the range fridge. This is the only trick, the brew master told me.
  
“Beer has to be kept at a constant temperature with no fluctuations that are bound to occur when you are trying to ‘mise’ on yaka or if you experience power outages,” he told me. That is the scientific explanation.  Now onto the sociological and psychological reason, which I would like to opine, is a very important contributor to beer taste. We can all agree that beer served by a 20-year-old Miss brown-thigh is bound to taste better than the one that is served by a 39-year-old shopkeeper. There is something sweet about eating from the palm of a hot girl whose smile is genuine. Presentation influences taste after all. 

There is something gourmet-esque and satisfying about being handed a pre-chilled beer glass. Only high-end bars have enough refrigeration space to chill their beer glasses. When she places the cup coasters (one for your glass and the other for the bottle) in front of you before pouring the ice-cold beer out, your taste cannot help but be biased. It is a treat. And when you tip her (for being hot than for the great service - ahem), the next time you lift your beer to your lips, it tends to taste like fermented honey. 
 
The service, let us face it, is just superb at high-end bars. I mean, for instance, they do not have to pour your beer into a chilled glass, but they do. It probably has some scientific reasoning behind it, like ensuring that your beer keeps cold, until the last drop, but the service tends to make your palate appreciate beer more deeply. 

And when you look around and see all those great-smelling people, being present here makes you feel like you are more decent than you probably really are. And that, my friend, is the reason beer tastes better at high end bars.