I’m a lifelong beer nerd and enjoy trying all different types of beer. A few years ago I stumbled across a smartphone app called “Untappd” that has a huge database of beers, breweries, pubs, etc. It allows you to ‘check in’ a beer when you have one. You can also add a score, a comment, and a photo if you want but I mostly just check in. Last Saturday at the Siren Craft Brewery tap room I checked in my 3000th unique beer, their Santo which they describe as an ‘Indian Pale Lager’.
When you’re a paid-up ‘supporter’ of Untappd you can log into their web site and download a spreadsheet of you entire beer history. I did that and played around sorting in different ways to come up with these factoids:
[ul]
[li]Number of countries of origin - 42[/li][li]Most represented country - England with over 2500[/li][li]Most represented location - my local the Prince of Wales[/li][li]Lowest avb - 2.2%[/li][li]Highest abv - 32% Brewdog Tactical Nuclear Penguin[/li][/ul]
There’s a bunch of reduced alcohol beers in that range, too, though those don’t seem to be available or popular here in the US. (It’s between non-alochol and lite beers.) Also, some lambics can get close to that, although the fruity Lindemanns ones seem to have a floor of 2.5%.
I figure that I have drank beers in over 40(?) different U.S. states and at last count 19 different countries, and of course I make a point of trying something I am unfamiliar with and is not available in my home market (growing up in Utah, land of the 3.2% Blues, it became something of an obsession) but I am no longer able to stomach many microbrews, as they mostly seem to be heavy, fillling and solid, so I tend to ask for local pilsners and lagers, usually asking what most of the locals drink (here in Europe, often pubs and bars, even large ones, have only a couple of taps, so usually just one “light” beer and one dark, unlike in the US, where you are able to get a Bud, Coors, Miller and Pabst draught all at the same place) but luckily, pils and lagers are ubiquitous here, so there is no shortage of choices all in those styles.
I am sure that I have tried at least 50 different varities each of Polish and German beer in the last couple of years, and close to that of Belgian and Czech brews. I am also a huge fan of Dutch pilsners, but there are seemingly only about a dozen major brewers in the Netherlands, although they too have hundreds of small craft breweries.
Never bothered to track my consumption that closely, but when my favorite pub closed down a while back I was “on the wall” 3 different places: The 100 Club (100 different beers consumed), the Hogshead Club (500 of the same beer consumed {Sierra Nevada Pale Ale}) and the Hall of Fame for General Overall Alcoholism (having opened and closed the place on more than 5 occasions.) I still have the plaques in the study at home.
Yeah, that’s one of those “low alcohol/reduced alcohol” beers I mentioned upthread. That beer appears to be an APA. I’m curious as what the OP’s impression of it was. I’ve never had it, but I have enjoyed many a fine Mikkeller brew.
In a strange coincidence it was exactly 2 years ago today that I checked in that 2.2% Mikkeller so I don’t remember much about it. Many of Mikkeller’s pale beers fall generally into the West Coast IPA style so it was probably like that. It wasn’t a beer I chose, it came as part of my beer of the month club. If I see it again I’ll try it.
After approximately 840 days I’ve now reached 4000 unique beer check-ins on Untappd. Number 4000 was All Systems Go from Lost+Found brewery in Brighton.
A lot of breweries in the UK really stepped up their web-shop games so getting beer throughout the lockdowns was pretty easy.
