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まあ ごめんなさい。 この子 安酒の匂いがに苦手で。。。

"Ah, I'm sorry. This child is bad with the smell of cheap sake"

And his answer is

あ 匂っちゃったか~ 安かろう美味かろうなんだけどな ひっく!

"Ah, it stinks"

What exactly is the meaning かろう+ かろう+ なんだけどな?

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安かろう美味かろう is a one-off parody of 安かろう悪かろう, which is a common set phrase. かろう is an uncommon inferential (or "volitional") form of an i-adjective:

So the literal meaning of 安かろう悪かろう is something like "seemingly cheap, seemingly bad", hence the idiomatic meaning of "you get what you pay for". You won't see this ~かろう~かろう pattern outside of this set phrase, so you need to learn it by rote.

In your case, 安かろう美味かろう is the opposite of 安かろう悪かろう, so the intended meaning as a parody is "This drink tastes great for the price" or "You get more than what you pay for".

~なんだけどな is just "It's ~, isn't it?". 安かろう美味かろう is being treated as a long noun phrase.

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  • It also seems to me that the speaker insists that the sake tastes better when it's rather cheap...
    – rk03
    Sep 21 at 2:25
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    @rk03 You mean "The cheaper, the tastier"? That could be a possible interpretation depending on the context. I'm not sure if such a correlation is explicitly stated in this situation, though.
    – naruto
    Sep 21 at 2:33

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