2000 beer and cider labels

2000 beer and cider labels (2024: 13/26)

This drawing is to commemorate the 2000th beer and cider label in my collection. Seventeen years ago (around May/June 2007) I inadvertently started collecting beer labels, I didn’t intend to at the time, it just sort of happened.

I was in Kingston Wetherspoons having a drink before seeing the third Pirates of the Caribbean film, an instantly forgettable film (but I learnt this week more people worked on these films than were ever pirates). Whilst there we were perusing the drinks menu, and there were a lot of unusual beers I’d never heard of. I remember there was a selection of Eastern European beers, for some reason I picked a Ukrainian wheat beer called Weissbier Etalon. It was an odd choice as back then I wasn’t very adventurous when it came to food or drink, this was probably the first time I tried a wheat beer, and I doubt I liked it much (it’s now one of my favourite types of beer). I can’t remember anything about it to be honest (still my only Ukrainian label sadly).

I’m not sure when this progressed to collecting labels, after working my way through the Wetherspoons list it was just something I did occasionally. Then slowly I started going out of my way to get new ones, it wasn’t easy back then, craft beer wasn’t such a thing, and I only really drank lager. Eventually I had to branch out into real ale, the cider, then Belgian beer, then stouts and porters, until eventually I’d drink any beers (but I’m still not a big fan of IPA’s). It’s become too easy compared to the early days.

So since then, somehow I have ended up with 2000 of them. I have labels from 68 countries, and I have labels from all but one English counties (I still haven’t made it to Rutland). I have labels from 30 European countries (33 if you include the individual countries of the UK), and 20 American states. 152 labels are from ciders.

So this is the 2000 beer label in my collection. It’s from the Southey Brewery in Penge, one of my local breweries and the one that I have the most labels from (46 labels!), and it was a very, very nice beer (as all of theirs are).

My favourites for each type (right now, this will change):
Stout - Lefthand Milk stout
Lager/Pilsner - Pilsner Urquell
Wheat beer - Blanche de Bruxelles
Trappist - Chimay Blue
Cider - Burrow Hill Medium
Alcohol free - Guinness 0.0

Thanks to everyone who put up with me trying to discretely remove labels from empty bottles in pubs and restaurants before anyone took them away. Now I’ve got to 2000 though, would it be best to call time on this ridiculousness?