An Ambition FulPhilled

I am shamed. A scrolls-distance ago on this wordstring I vomited up a few elongated paragraphs about my booze obsession. I burbled on that my desire to try different beers had rendered me socially maladaptive – or a ‘ticker’. Well, I lied. I have since discovered that my condition isn’t even worthy of a citation in a footnote, in the appendix, of the diagnosis - I met Phill The Pint, a man who has just notched up 5000 unique ales.

I knew him already, of course I did. He was ‘that bloke’. You know how pub acquaintances work. Names are rarely exchanged despite the various eruptions of whinge, bile and wind that pass for human interaction in pubs. And so even after a year of sitting two stools down from him, I thought of him as the chap who sounds like Dr. Phil Hammond.

In fact, didn’t that always strike you as odd in Cheers? So they made the boast in the title song but if the show had any basis in reality the final scene wouldn’t have been Sam flicking off the lights, but Carla checking Cliff’s grey nametag.

Anyway the above comparison to the pathologically unfunny Dr. Phil is unfair. And not just because of the extra L, this Phill’s material has more of a Les Dawson feel to it. Not the final-honed highly affectionate gags creamed over by the cardigans on Britain’s Best Ever Comedians That We’ve Got Clips Of, it is more the sweepings from Channel 4’s 50 Masters Of Misogyny.

But Phill is a proper ticker. And there are three ways of verifying this fact. One is that he always drinks halves. The second is that he will willingly enter a Wetherspoons. Thirdly and finally, he carries around a list of every single draught real-ale he’s ever had.

But it isn’t some pocket book with copperplate script and ornate illumination on the A in Abbey. It is a print out - a cold and unromantic collection of perforated pages seemingly time-warped straight from the wheels of a daisywheel printer. Not for Phill the now BNP-endorsed delights of Excel, because these perforated pages conceal in their six-inch thick folds and 9-point lettering, the immense number British-only draught beers that he has tasted - A heavy testament to one man’s battle against his liver, the Amstrad PCW8256 and LocoScript.

And I mention this not because it makes me feel better that I keep no such dead-tree record, that at least my computer doesn’t have a green-screen or that I’ve done it with a girl. Instead it is because last Wednesday Phill finally broke through the 5000 beer-barrier with the help of Chris from Twerton's The Royal Oak and five West Country brewers who created one-off beers especially for the man himself.

And for that I applaud Phill, while also coughing up an almost inaudible ‘nerd’.

Tick, Tick, Gloom

It’s when the glass is half-empty that the problem begins. After each sip my eyes start to REM across the room, scanning the pumps, darting towards the beer board. Conversation collapses as familiar logos and names are sought, identified and ignored. Instead of deploying wryly-observed anecdotes from my day, mental Post-Its are re-read as my Rolodex of recall is ransacked.

Hello. My name is Alex and I’m a ticker. I wasn’t always this way. I used to be happy with one pint of something nice and then another, and perhaps one more after that. Each drink was the same as the last, each sip tasting identical to the one before. The only other flavour allowed to pass my lips was the sting of salt supplied by a bag of peanuts. Or for those truly special occasions: an away win or a date - a packet of Golden Wonder.

But all that has changed. I went here. Now I’m as likely to repeat a real ale as the BBC are to repeat How Do You Want Me? a sweet little sitcom that contrasted the crushing mediocrity of Simon Nye‘s writing with the unkempt wonder that is Dylan Moran in full bemused flow.

But why would you always stick to the same beer? Unless that particular pint is so utterly transcendent that its absence causes your liver to weep chunky tears of blood and iron. Because there is a whole world of drinks out there, and discovering them won’t happen if I stick with the same ale time and again. The perfect pint will always escape me if I get a ‘usual’. And so I need to keep searching, I need to keep sipping, I need to keep scanning. Like The Littlest Hobo of beer, but with slightly less body hair, I’m always moving on.

And now after years of quiet enjoyment, it is starting to become a problem. No longer am I happy in good pubs with good music, good food and good conversation. I keep wanting more. Once I’ve sampled all the regular ales, tried the guest beer and seen what is coming on next, I’m itching to move again. I’ll even trade in a fireside seat on a damp Friday night for the remote chance that the next place will have something different, something darker, something unusual.

There are limits though. I don’t write down all the beers I’ve tried in a little book. I don’t score, rate and rank every pint I’ve ever had using a system as fiendishly rule-bound as the latest New York dating manual. I don’t maintain a database of any kind, well unless this page counts… and it doesn’t. I also don’t drink halves. If I’m going to try a beer I’m going to either enjoy right to the bottom of the glass or make sure that I wince my way through the next half an hour.

Logically I should be happiest at a beer festival, but I’m not. Yes, I enjoy the variety of the ales on offer and yes; I like the chance to taste beer from breweries that I’ve never heard of in distant places. But beer festivals are shit. Nice drinks don’t make up shuffling around drafty and dusty community halls, blinking under harsh sodium lighting and enduring ‘good time’ Zep and Creedence covers bands whose limited talent is only matched by their limited understanding of sacrilege.

So the question has to be asked. Am I alone in this affliction? And are we scoopers just OCD box tickers who’ve grown out of football stickers? Do others out there wonder if there more to beer than just the brown Bests offered in so many pubs? Do you go out of your way to try something different or is good beer about enjoying the familiar, and lots of it? When your pint is half-empty are you happy with the same again?

When The Tied Comes In

Despite many CAMRA members holding Greene King in the same regard as the rancid fluff that escape from Satan’s bellybutton, here is a scintilla of proof that buying a pint of Green King IPA isn’t actually the same as booking yourself into the bridal suite at the Hades B&B. Or not quite.

The Good Beer Guide listed Woolpack in Mildmay Road, Chelmsford are holding a beer festival on the 4th, 5th and 6th of September. Despite being a tied house, Greene King have allowed publicans Dave and Maggie to include twenty of guest ales, to sit alongside nine of their own beers.

Entry is free and all of you scooper/tickers can see a provisional list of beers here.