“Beer is my coffee” is one man’s reported defense when he was arrested in Florida for his 9th DUI on Thursday. 58-year-old Phillip P. Jordan was arrested for felony DUI in Marion County after he drove out of a KFC fast food restaurant.

The Marion County Sheriff’s Department discovered that he had seven previous DUI convictions in Georgia and another DUI conviction in Florida. The last was in April 2000.

Deputy Steven Simpson was already at the KFC when an employee reported a drive-up customer in a pickup truck who appeared to be seriously impaired to point of almost falling over. He pulled over the driver, who said that he was picking up the food for a friend.

Jordan then allegedly explained to Simpson that he’d drunk an Icehouse beer for breakfast because beer was his coffee. Oops.

I don’t think the deputy needed much more evidence, but he did give Jordan field sobriety tests — which the beer for breakfast fan failed — before he finally arrested him for impaired driving.

The pickup truck’s owner Ann Terrell had a slightly different story, which she shared with a local reporter from the Ocala Star-Banner. She said that Jordan had driven her to a store, then vanished in her vehicle while she was shopping.

Terrell said she had no idea that Jordan was that drunk or that he’d had so many previous DUI convictions. She doesn’t sound happy, and she said that she wasn’t going to post Phillip Jordan’s $15,000 bond.

I don’t blame her.

Getting arrested for one’s 9th DUI while driving a “borrowed” truck probably isn’t the way to keep a lot of friends, even in Florida.

And it probably doesn’t help Phillip Jordan’s case that he admitted to a deputy that beer is his coffee.

[Phillip Jordan mugshot by Marion County Sheriff’s Office]

[beer photo by LucidN21 via Wikimedia Commons]