Why is it bad to be a ticker?

If tickers do what they do because they enjoy it, then more power to them, no harm done. However if they tick because they think they're going to impress anyone, they might want to think again.

 

Depends on your definition. I tick beers cause I like keeping track but reviews are not my thing. I'm sure that is frown'd upon but I accept that my beer knowledge is street smart not book smart. Taste is king for me and that is a very subjective thing. One thing I won't do is refuse to have a known good beer because I have had it before. Every choice I make considers my options and I make the best choice for my money. Often times it doesn't jibe with BA opinion. For example, there was a thread bagging on the Quintemitre series from Stone. I just had the 15th anv BIPA in the lowland scotch and highland scotch barrels and enjoyed them both. Each to their own but I will play along. The bad thing about ticking is you realize the beer close to you tastes just as good or better and take less effort and money to drink. cheers.

 

I am a ticker and a hoarder. Sue me

 

This. You can't rightly claim to have seen the movie if you've only watched the trailer. It's Beer Drinking 101, folks, and really not too hard to understand. The BA guidelines are there for a reason.

 

Because the next beer might be better than that "world class" beer I just passed up.

 

I couldn't agree more. Life is too short to drink the same beers all the time. Try as many different beers as you can. One of my favorite things to do is go to my go to beer store and by 3 or 4 new beers at a time ( usually between a buck fidy and two bucks. A pretty cheap experiment and experience! Also at my go to beer store you can sample up to 4 different growler beers for nothing. 0 cents. I'm with you. Tick on!

 

Well said.

 

Tickers... gotta... tick...

 

And cause you ain't a scaredy cat!

 

Crumbles up the sheet of paper with half written lyrics to the song entitled 'Damn it Feels Good to be a Ticker' and tosses it at the trash can.

 

Whatever floats people's boats...

I personally try to strike a balance between the new and the old these days. Beers are being made faster than I can drink them now, and there are already so many wonderful beers out there that I love. I don't care if I never try every beer, but I do care if I miss out on something awesome that might be my next favorite.

 

I only have issues with tickes when the tick is more important than the beer. That every time you go out, you have your note pad with you and take a sip, write some notes, sip again, take more notes and not be part of the actual converation/gathering. If that is what you want to do, go sit in the corner and tick away. Now, I know some sneaky tickers, the ones who use their smart phones and send themselves notes and think nobody notices. One of my "semi-regular" drinking buddy does this and I think it is funny when he does. I could honestly give 2 shats of how someone else "enjoys" their beer. IMO, drinking beer is a social event, so not being social because you have to write down everything about the beer you're having, you are no longer being social. There is my 2 pennies.

 

Tick is a four letter word to some people.

 

I don't understand. If you're going to spend tons of time and effort hunting down a beer, why can't you spend 5 minutes writing about it?

 

Same reason why obsessive compulsive dissorder is bad to 99.9% of us...

I remember reading about some dude a year or so ago that left his grandmother in the car for 5 or 10 minutes to tick a 2oz pour at a buddies place. Got a lot of laughs but in reality, those were some seriously phucked up priorities.

 

I agree 100%. Nothing wrong with trying new stuff. But if I know beer from XYZ brewery is awful, then I'm just pissing away good money by continuing to buy each new crappy bottle of swill they churn out. So e people are more optimistic than me, that is just my two cents.

 

It's funny. I actually had two beers today at a brewery I hadn't been to before. One of the beers, I'd had a few times, but the other was a seasonal I hadn't had before. I dutifully ticked the first beer (the one I'd had) on Untappd, but I didn't have 3G (let alone LTE) signal on my phone, so I lost interest before my search query resolved on the seasonal one.

So...moral of story...you can be a ticker without being OCD.

Of course, if there were a BA app, I might have a problem. :-0

 

yup. this exactly. to me trying new stuff isn't about tallying, collecting ticks, etc, but simply experiencing different beers that i might really enjoy, comparing and contrasting various flavor profiles and seeing what new breweries are bringing to the table. you never know when you'll discover a new gem. however, my old, proven favorites will never be a stranger to my glass either. i think cbeer nailed it - the operative word here is balance.

all that said, it's no skin off my nose how others choose to enjoy their beers. to each his own and all that.

 

Last Christmas I had a 1 oz pour of 2002 La Folie. Damn right I ticked that.

 

This is how I understand the origin of the term. It's from the UK (where they "tick" items on a checklist, whereas most Americans would say they "check" them off, sometimes even literally with a "check mark" next to the items written on a page) and I first heard it used among the birdwatching community but I imagine it is probably used in other hobbies there, as well (trainspotting, etc).

A ticker, is defined on one Birder site. as:

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It IS a negative term (at least originally it was) - used to describe a person more interested in being a "Ticker" than a "Birder". So, it is surprising that so many BA's adopt the term proudly, even though most of them seem to NOT fit the original usage at all. A true "Beer Ticker" does not care about "beer" (certainly would not write an in-depth review) but only in adding one more tick to their list. A true "ticker" probably wouldn't even bother to read, and certainly not reply, to most threads on BA, other than to find new "ticks". Simply keeping a list of the beers one has drank, or wanting to constantly try new beers shouldn't make one a "ticker".

Where - for me, at least - the line does gets fuzzy around here is people who, for instance, in that thread about a new strawberry flavor faux "Margarita" FMB from AB said they'd "tick it" even though they have no interest in such a beverage and knowing full well that they will write a scathing "review".