OR: A NICE WAY TO SPEND THE EVENING. It started back on March 19, 1971, when Dale Van Wieren of Lansdale, Pennsylvania, sat down after work and opened a bottle of Dinkelacher Black Forest Lager, a quality German beer. For some reason that he can’t recall, he also wrote down the beer’s name, the characteristics of the brew, and gave it his personal rating on a 5-star scale. Oh, he saved the bottle, too.
And thus started his odyssey of having a different beer every evening from that day on, and dutifully chronicling the experience. Over the years he has sometimes had several different brews on some days, often visiting breweries and talking to the brewmasters while sampling their formulae. While many of his tastings have been taken from draft taps, he has still accumulated more than 7,500 different beer bottles.
Dale Van Wieren with some of his thousands of
beer bottles. (Philadelphia Daily News photo)
This past Saturday November 21, a milestone was reached when Van Wieren tasted and recorded his 10,000th beer. A special party was held at the nearby Sly Fox Brewery and Restaurant where the brewmaster had designed and brewed a special batch of Dale’s 10K Brew. After the room full of celebrants watched him taste the suds and then record the experience, a round of applause broke out followed by rounds of Dale’s 10K for everyone.
Van Wieren isn’t near to being the most prolific sampler, however. There is a couple in Maryland who have chronicled 18,000 beers and the unofficial champ. in Britain who has 40,000+ tastings recorded.
The Philadelphia Daily News tells all about that as well as Dale’s story in an interesting ARTICLE HERE. Read it all to learn about some of his more remarkable discoveries.
The folks at Sly Fox also have a webpage devoted to Dale’s exploits that includes the story in Dale’s own words on how he got started and some of the interesting things that happened along the way. CLICK HERE to read that story.
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