The only thing this beer-loving perv has brewing is jail.
Former city teacher Dean Bethea, 56, was convicted Thursday of plying a 16-year-old student with alcohol at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in a bid to seduce her.
The panel of six jurors didn’t buy Bethea’s testimony that he had ordered two beers at once for himself in the Met’s balcony bar during the Dec. 4, 2015, outing.
Bethea, who claimed to have downed seven bottles of Lagunitas Pils in total while the high school junior drank water, bowed his head as the jury foreman announced “guilty” to one count of endangering the welfare of a child.
It took the panel about fours hours to reach their verdict after the misdemeanor trial.
Judge Ann Scherzer ordered court officers to take the pilsner-loving pedagogue — who faces up to a year in jail — into custody immediately, pending his April 20 sentencing.
“There has been a major change in circumstances in this case,” the judge said in Manhattan Criminal Court.
“The defendant is facing what is a long jail sentence for a person who has never been in jail, and I do think remand is appropriate.”
Prosecutor Pierre Griffith argued in his summation that the only reason Bethea would order two beers at the Grand Hall Balcony Bar was to give one to his youthful target — not to drink both himself as he and his lawyer insisted.
“He now wants to double fist?” the prosecutor asked, incredulously. “That doesn’t make sense. He orders a round of two beers because one is for [the victim].”
Further, the prosecutor said, he ordered five other beers — each of those one at a time.
And Griffith didn’t shy away from bringing up the teacher’s caddish history. The former English professor at Western Oregon University was fired after attacking the ex-boyfriend of his 21-year-old girlfriend, who had also been a student.
Once at the prestigious Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science and Engineering, Bethea dated his victim’s older sister after they met at a parent-teacher conference — and didn’t let his live-in girlfriend curb his extracurricular activities, the prosecutor said.
Defense lawyer Matthew Myers insisted that the young girl must be lying because she didn’t remember that the two beers she drank had a pungent flavor.
“She didn’t even know this beer is crazy bitter,” the attorney said. “Americans don’t even drink this beer, it isn’t Bud or Coors Light, it’s bitter.”
He also argued that seven brewskis was nothing for the beer aficionado who tossed back four to six German pints on a typical weeknight.
The graying Fulbright scholar testified Wednesday that the young girl had lured him to the Met under false pretenses to confess her love, and when he rejected her, she made up the allegations.
But the pretty brunette told a different story, insisting that her lecherous teacher ordered her two beers then started hitting on her.
“He began to compliment me, telling me I was very smart, beautiful,” she said. “He told me that when he was with my sister, he wished that our ages were reversed, so I was old enough for him to date. He said he felt this way since I was a freshman in his class.”
She told him that she had to go home, but he insisted on walking her to the subway station then tried to kiss her. She rejected the creepy advance and reported the incident to cops.
Bethea was removed from Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science and Engineering after his arrest and reassigned pending the outcome of his case, according to the Department of Education.