Tickers

Evening all,
I've just read a piece on a good session beer by someone who made a vaguely insulting remark about beer geeks. Now I'm sorry but beer geeks, tickers or spoogers, call them what you will are an integral part of my business and most of them are very nice people.
If you have not heard of Tickers before then I'll tell you what you're missing out on. Generally these people, and most of them ARE people, with one or two exceptions, collect beer, that is to say that they scour their favourite beer haunts looking for new beers to try. They note down the name, the brewery, the abv and where they drank the beer. Almost all of these people are retired, hence having the time to do this. There are various types of these beer-enthusiasts too...
1) People who will not drink anything if they have had it before.
2) People who will drink something even if they have had it before.
3) People who 'bottle' the beer into an old plastic soda bottle of some sort.
4) People who rate beers, usually on the internet with sites such as Ratebeer or Beer Advocate.
Most of these people are hugely interesting guys (and gals) and have loads of tales to tell about the industry as a whole(Pic above is Tony Martin, King of tickers). They are the salt of the earth and frequent various watering holes in order to sate their appetites for new beer.
These folks are helping to keep the british brewing industry alive and because it's beginning to thrive again, they will keep coming in and they will always be welcome.
Cheers to the beers boys and girls.
Look out for the new film (not widely available in cinemas) about beer tickers, I'm really wanting to watch this, if only to do a bit of customer spotting.
I'm off back to work now, later folks!