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Great price including first of beers: make it bitter? (8)

Ross

I believe the answer is:

acerbate

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'bitter?' is the definition.
(thesaurus)

'great price including first of beers' is the wordplay.
'great' becomes 'ace' (ace can informally mean very good).
'price' becomes 'rate' (I've seen this in other clues).
'including' is an insertion indicator.
'first of beers' becomes 'b' (1st letter of 'beers').
'rate' placed around 'b' is 'rbate'.
'ace'+'rbate'='ACERBATE'

'make it' is the link.
I am not very happy about this link. Some or all of it may belong to another bit of the clue.

Can you help me to learn more?

(Other definitions for acerbate that I've seen before include "distress" , "Put out" , "Exasperate" .)

I've seen this clue in The Times.
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