musing

In the final minutes of “BEERTICKERS: Beyond the ale” documentary filmmaker Phil Parkin announces he still has some unfinished business.

When he began making this movie had no aspiration to be Morgan Spurlock (the protagonist in “Super Size Me”). “I never actually intended to be in the film,” he wrote in an email, “but became so ingrained in the content that I felt the viewer needed someone different, a non-ticker, to lead them through.” He set a goal to reach 500 ticks, and at the outset of the Sheffield Beer Festival he has 472.

Drinking No. 473 he talks about the lessons he has learned, but by No. 479 he is looking a little dazed as he wonders if friends who are to meet him will show up. And I’m thinking, “Dude, don’t do it.” Twenty-eight half pints (the “official” size for ticking as champion ticker Brian Moore explains at the beginning) amounts to about two gallons of beer even if you get a few short pours in there. This does not seem like a good idea.

In fact, his friends do arrive, it gets dark and the organizers call time after Parkin orders No. 492.

“Yes, I drank far too much that day, we arrived at 2 p.m. and I didn’t leave until around 12 or 1 a.m. if I remember correctly,” he wrote. “Much of that footage didn’t make the final cut. I drank far too much. Eek.”

The documentary started out to be an examination of beerticking, also known as scooping, a hobby he viewed as akin to trainspotting. It turned out to be about UK drinking culture, real ale and pubs. About a culture and people easy to care about. Maybe this makes me a hardass, but when Spurlock kept ordering to excess in “Super Size Me” I felt no empathy toward him.

When Parkin looked at his clock at 1:50 on morning and realized feeling like shit was part of the process my head also hurt. And who wouldn’t want to have a pint in a pub with Mick the Tick, listening to him play in a skiffle band in the pub where ticking may well have started?

British beer culture comes off all the better because this was not shot through a gaussian lens. Mick the Tick staggers a bit from time to time, and Dave Unpronounceable and Gazza (two of the other ticking principals) have a few rough edges.

Parkin gets a little rah-rah goofy when he visits the Thornbridge Brewery and helps brew a beer, but it works because by then he has begun to consider the difference between appreciation and accumulation. “I could have only one (beer). I wondered if it bothered the other beer tickers,” he comments before going on to the next tick.

In an email he reiterated that ticking doesn’t necessarily include keeping tasting notes, and for some “it’s all about the numbers. Quite sad in some cases as the appreciation of beer goes out of the window.”

Perhaps. But listening to Mick the Tick talk about beer I don’t really care if he can tell me if tick No. 24,612 tasted like fresh oranges on a June evening or brussel sprouts. As Parkin’s images illustrate so well, in the pub friendship, sharing and community are as important as the beer itself.

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You can find copies of “BEERTICKERS: Beyond the Ale” here and here.

Brian Yaeger asks if “consistency is the fifth ingredient in beer” (the first four being those specified in Germany’s beer purity law).

I find it easier to think about time as an ingredient. It adds to cost of production, and it influences the quality of the resulting beer, just like barley or hops. A beer that lagers six weeks occupies tank space that could have been used to produce three two-week lagers. Decoction makes a longer brew day. Beer properly bottle conditioning in a warm room is beer that could already by bringing in money were it otherwise carbonated.

In all fairness, Brian’s post is really intended to be more about the importance of consistency. There’s a New Beer Rule (#4: The god of beer is not consistency) about that, but he’s reminded me of the need for further discussion about the difference between quality control and blind devotion to “consistency.” That’s going to have to wait a couple of weeks, because there are comments from brewers somewhere in these boxes (or others) I want to include.

But a quick hint where I’ll be going. I’m far less bothered when a brewer changes the blend of hop varieties in a particular beer based on the quality of a particular crop than when he or she is dry hopping a beer and she or he doesn’t understand how that can affect diacetyl reduction. A little more or less marmalade on the nose this month is OK. A little more butter in the mouth is not.

Back to filling boxes.

* This is the reflective, toned-down version of how Darren of Beer Sweden really felt at the conclusion of the European Beer Bloggers Conference 2011: “I believe I have just witnessed the genre of beer blogging come of age in London and stake its claim as a credible and indispensable media source of the future.”

He understands the bloggerstalkingaboutblogs dynamic, at the end writing, “I apologise if this post is a little too much blog and not enough beer.” But, my goodness, such enthusiasm. So one more excerpt: “What I learnt has left me in no doubt bloggers are the vanguard of modern beer media.”

* Those are bold words, but Mark Dredge (who obviously isn’t biased because he acted at UK organizer, but that doesn’t mean he has to sit silent) is inclined to agree. Be sure the read the comments that follow.

* Dark Lord Haiku Contest. From STL Hops. Four winners. Four different vintages of Three Floyds Dark Lord. One stipulation. You must pick up the bottle in person in St. Louis.

* The case against the em dash. “According to Lynne Truss—the closest thing we’ve got to a celebrity grammarian, thanks to her best-seller Eats, Shoots and Leaves—people use the em dash because ‘they know you can’t use it wrongly—which for a punctuation mark, is an uncommon virtue.'” Isn’t this something that should be discussed at a blogging conference?

* “High alcohol wines lose both focus and complexity.” Could the same be said about beer?

* When brewery suppliers go vertical. Thomas at Geistbeer Brewing Blog considers the consequences for both homebrewers and small batch brewers.

* The return of the wanderer. Jack Curtin has made it home from the Wild West. I point this out because Jeff Alworth suggests we all give Liquid Diet a link to boost Jack’s Wikio rankings.

* Wallace, Idaho. Why wasn’t there a brewery at the entrance of the Wallace RV Park when we passed by during our Grand Adventure?