Man hits his mark: 1,000 beers

Jay Heckman joins the 1,000-beer club at Mahaffeys Pub.

Rob Kasper

There are many milestones in life. Among them are graduating from college, landing a job, drinking 1,000 beers.

Jay Heckman passed the beer landmark in rare style last week at Mahaffey's Pub in Canton. A cheerful crowd toasted the 25-year-old Thursday night as he enjoyed Sierra Nevada Anniversary Ale. The beer, a bottle of a new release from the California brewery, was slightly different from the draft version of the brew he had downed a few days earlier when he officially reached the 1,000-beer mark.

Unlike many rec-room beer drinkers who believe they have easily downed 1,000 beers in their careers, Heckman reached his total by sipping 1,000 different beers over three years. There were no repeats. He paid for the beers, estimating the undertaking cost him at least $6,000.

"It is all about variety ... in beer drinking and in every part of my life" Heckman repeatedly said of his sudsy achievement. "When I go into a restaurant, I order what I haven't had before. I like to have that knowledge, to know what things taste like." Beer drinking, he added, is "a good social hobby."

Heckman commutes to College Park, where he works as a bartender at the Santa Fe Cafe, an establishment that serves only bottled beers. His bosses, he said, have asked him to select a new beer or two for the cafe menu.

There were rules that governed this endeavor. Heckman's two encounters with the Sierra Nevada Anniversary Ale, for instance, added two notches to his tally, one for the bottled version, one for the draft.

Moreover, there was an official scorekeeper. It was Wayne Mahaffey, owner of the Dillon Street pub that prides itself on pouring a frequently changing array of beers. Each time Heckman or any member of the pub's beer club bought a beer, the name of the beer and drinker's club membership number were recorded on sales slips. After the bar closed, Mahaffey would tally the sales slips' data and punch them into a computer. A running tally of who had tasted what was displayed on the pub's Web site. Last week when Heckman was the first to hit the 1,000 mark at Mahaffey's, his closest competitor, Sean Small, was at 820.