Beer Saturday and the Epic 5000th Beer

I've been on Untappd for a long time. I want to state that upfront so that you don't think I'm some sort of hopeless drunk or anything. I also share a lot of beers, and have a lot of tasters. I mention all of this because this is a story of how I drunk (and checked-in) my 5000th different beer.

Now for anyone who uses Untappd you'll know there are badges, badges for all sorts of things, but the most important of all at the unique beer badges 5000 is 'Epic', it's the first one you'll get for your first beer as I did on the 9th of April 2011, and then you'll be 'Apprentice' for 25th - which I got on the 23rd of April 2011. Then your 50th ('Journeyman' 3rd of May 2011, I'd like to state I was on holiday at this point hence the quick drinking, plus everything is new) 100th (8th of June 2011), 200th (Aug 8th).

It took a year an a few days to get to 500 unique beers (April 23rd 2012) and then 10 years to add another 4500. Along the way there was the Extraordinary badge for 1000th beers on May 2013, and 'Elite' on November 18th 2016. So it's a long time better drinks for badges.

So you want it to be something special right. But that is difficult because it's a brand new beer how do I know it's going to be good. Sometimes I'll land it on a special event like my 1000th which was a Australia's biggest beer festival - GABS. Sometimes it's whilst I'm on holiday like by 2500th which was at a Bar in Yokohama in Japan.

But I'm not heading overseas again for a while, and GABS is still 4 weeks away and that's not going to work, but it was my Birthday and we were going away for it so that's the date and location sorted. But then what beer , it needs to be important, it needs to be good, but it also needs to be something I've never had before, and of course it needs to mean something.

I examined the cupboard, I thought about some of my favourite breweries, I disregarded most of them and settled on Moondog who are a Melbourne brewery and have been pretty important in my beer journey - I've drunk 158 of their beers - my first was early on in my Untappd life - back on the 11th of May 2011 - a Brown Ale that was checked in by a grand total of 25 people.

And the beer, well that's a little more difficult, Moondog are generally pretty good but they do make the odd misstep. But I had a trick here - The Black Lung series. This is a Barrel Aged smoked stout they bring out each year - I've drunk Black Lung 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10 and this is number 11 so I know they are good.

So there it is the journey to 5000, all the planning and all the work and then I get to sit in a beautiful Australian bush scene on a Sunday afternoon and drink my Black Lung, which is smokey, a result of the peated barley, a little bit spicy, likely the whiskey barrels it's lived in and boozy as all get out at 12% - In an ideal world this would should have probably aged for another 6 months or so to take the edge off a little but hey it was a pretty darn good day.

And this it was time for checking in - which I couldn't do because I was in the country and had no phone reception - of all the things I'd planned somehow it hadn't dawned on my that the moment I step out of Metropolitan Melbourne Vodafone stopped working.

There was nothing for it, I had to sit back, drink my beer, contemplate life and check it in later. As I drank my mind wandered to my next beer badge - 'Uber badge' for 10000 check in by my reckoning I'll be writing that post in the early 2030's (or maybe a robot will be doing it for me)