More Sad News

As our Beautiful British Beer Scene reels from the shock news of the closure of Beer Ritz in Leeds (and my best wishes to Zak, Ghostie and the team), even more sad news reaches the Boggle Newsdesk.

Nichols Ltd, manufacturers of Panda Drinks, recently discontinued their Panda Pops fizzy drinks, saying that having a sugary carbonated drink in their portfolio was contaminating the rest of the Panda brand. As the informed reader and recent visitors to Cooking Lager's blog will know, the Panda Pop bottle has been beloved of the Beautiful British Ticker as a means to collect field samples for later testing when located in a source-rich environment.

I assume it will take some time for this to filter through to our Beautiful British Ticking Community, as I believe they carefully clean and re-use bottles (I imagine they also keep the market for Milton baby bottle sterilising fluid quite buoyant). However, before they go on a panic buying spree to scoop up the last remaining stocks of Panda Pops, they don't need to be too alarmed - Nichols still have Panda Still Juice Drink and Panda Still Flavoured Water available. The names don't roll off the tongue as easily though... I salute the demise of an iconic brand.

In other news (not sure if this is sad or not), Delaware USA brewer Dogfish Head have announced they won't be exporting beer to the UK or Canada this year, citing increased demand in home markets. They are also withdrawing from distribution to four US states. The company and head man Sam Calagione have built a reputation for brewing off-the-wall beers, including resurrecting recipes allegedly 3,000 years old. DFH was recently featured on US Discovery show "Brewmasters", which will have increased awareness of the brand amongst non-geeks, and presumably has contributed to their growth.

My Name Is Sid, And I Just Drink Beer...

The Boy Dredge has used his latest HopPress article to announce to his readers that, in 2010, he will 'rate' beer. His blog also has a link and a cover piece. He is asking his HP readers when they stopped being "just beer drinkers" and started rating.

I did it the other way around, as I mention in my review of Phil Parkin's worthy and entertaining Beertickers: Beyond The Ale film, and, to respond to Mark's question, here is my further testimony...

When I first started to frequent real ale festivals in the early 90's, I made half-hearted attempts to keep track of the beers I'd tried, those I'd liked and those I'd prefer not to try again. I didn't have a formal system - just notes in the festival programme. Once I started to broaden my beer perspective and finally got online, I became aware that there were whole cyber-communities based around sharing beer reviews, experiences and news, and I took the plunge and signed up with BeerAdvocate. With a predominantly US-based membership, it seemed a good way to keep up to date with the fast-moving US craft scene, and I made some good friends.

However, after a year or so, I noticed that I was becoming less interested in the experience of beer, than the thrill of trying to track down the latest new release, or high-scoring tradeable bottle. I was emailing friends in NYC and asking them to go out of their way to track down this bottle or that, and I realised that there was an unsavoury, dick-waving aspect to these communities. The awarding of points or karma for the beers you rated, no matter how coherent your review, established ticker hierarchies and distorted perceptions of how knowledgeable a member might be. Worse, the main sites began to pander to the spin-off from this sort of thing, and set up trading forums. Now, beer hoarders and obsessive raters could use the site to facilitate trades. Worse, the new members seemed to be most excited around this aspect of the community. I finally ditched the BA account and now prefer to enjoy my beer without thinking about getting one-up on somebody in Pig's Knuckle, Arkansas.

There will always be tickers, but my view is that there are different types. I have a general fondness for 'our' tickers. However, having worked GBBF and seen at close quarters the locust-like behaviour of the RateBeer crowd, you do have to wonder where the love and/or appreciation of beer comes into the equation as the hive seeks its 1 oz. of ale to rate. They attend every session during the entire week, and I would not be surprised if you told me that they try every beer. You can't fault the dedication, but what's driving them? Love of beer? Or those lovely rating points?

So. Am I "just a beer drinker" because I stopped rating beer? I still sample lots of lovely beer from different parts of the world, and I've spent time and money travelling to some wonderful and often beautiful places (Mark is off to Russian River soon as part of his West Coast travels, and I'm jealous because I know what's in store) to indulge my favourite pastime. But I can't be "just a drinker".

I may not be able to look back and statistically compare my first draught RRBC Consecration to the first time I had Supplication from the bottle. I can tell you that the first time I tried the latter, I was moved to describe it to my beery friends as the best beer I drank during the year of 2005 and that moment remains special to me as the time I discovered one of the finest beers ever brewed, whilst the former was supped with friends and the RRBC proprieters on a sunny Sunday November lunchtime while they entertained old friends from the legendary New Albion Brewing Co. Is that a less reliable way to recall a beer than to reduce it to a series of scores for clarity, mouthfeel and head retention? If there's a diminution, it's surely from being "just a drinker" to a rater, who must learn to reduce his experience to a group of numbers and a dry analysis.

Don't do it, Mark. You'll lose touch with a part of yourself if you stop feeling the beer.

Beerticker: Beyond The Ale - A Film...

Pete Brown previewed this on his blog last weekend, and, intrigued, I purchased the DVD.

I have to admit to a conflict over beer ticking. For a couple of years, I was a member of the US-based website BeerAdvocate, whose most active members, while racking up huge beer review numbers and earning 'beer karma' for their efforts, routinely met up and had social events where they'd share beers and chat. Of course, some of the online chat was unbelievably inane. I lost count of the number of posts asking what was in members' fridges. Some US-based BA members tended to look down on their apparently less socially-adequate fellow beer-lovers over on website RateBeer, a site I never joined but which seemed to be focused heavily on ticking rather than appreciation. However, these places seemed to be the virtual pubs where discourse over the merits of beer might be had, and indeed, today I count many of these fellow-travellers in beer as good friends.

I made a half-hearted attempt to review the new US beers I was eagerly trying on my travels, as well as the UK beers I routinely supped, but after a while I realised that I was developing an unhealthy obsession with chasing beers which had, somehow, become must-have. To me, I was being drawn over to the dark side of my love of beer.

Since those days, I've had some antipathy towards the tickers. I've been known to agree, with malice aforethought, with the opinion that RateBeer really ought to be called HateBeer, since pursuit of rare beer seems to matter more than appreciation, and that rating points are everything. At the same time, I've spent some time with the small posse of London tickers who regularly travel a circuit including the Market Porter and The Rake at Borough Market and The Wenlock Arms. Tony Marten (pictured here on Glyn Roberts' Rabid About Beer blog), TiaMariaJim and Einstein are sociable and engaging drinking companions, if sometimes a little eccentric.

So, I was keen to view Phil Parkin's documentary. He was able to hook up with four of the best-known tickers in Britain and, to give his film a narrative thread, decided that he would take up the hobby and aim to tick 500 different cask ales by the end of the film. His journey steeps him in British beer and pub culture and tradition, and takes him around much of a now-familiar landscape. He brews a modified version of Jaipur at Thornbridge, gets a lesson in brewing history at Burton, investigates whether his hobby is in the sights of the health lobby, and muses over the large number of pub closures, even as sales of traditional cask ales show encouraging signs of growth. He finds himself agonising over the fine line between beer appreciation and simple ticking, he pops up on ale trails and pub crawls, on cellar runs at local festivals and at GBBF, and on his quest to tick those 500 ales, he seems to undergo a Damascene epiphany and find a desire to support British ale and pub traditions. The film closes with him meeting friends at the Steel City Beer Fest, implying an aim to spread the word about good beer.

Conclusions? A must-see for anybody who is interested in British pubs, beer and brewing. The narrative allows the film to inform the viewer on the state of our Beer Nation while affectionately providing an insight into an eccentric pastime. It even made me like Gazza Prescott.

While I still think that some aspects of ticking are bad for beer, I think I'm coming around to the view that these individuals are a barometer, a welcome reminder that the state of craft brewing in the UK is in pretty good shape, and that the scene would be the poorer if, instead of 500-plus brewers producing the new ales they relentlessly pursue, we had a handful of multinationals offering us the same factory-produced beer.

You can get more info, find out about a public screening in Sheffield and buy the DVD in time for Xmas, here...