The WhatsApp group trying to collectively sink one million pints
Meet the group sharing photos of their journey to sink a million pints
Plato asked how we define justice. Aristotle wanted to know what makes a good life. Einstein questioned if God plays dice with the universe, and Darwin wondered why species change. These questions changed history and laid the foundations of humankind’s place in the universe. Who are we? What do we stand for?
In August 2024, five young men in a London pub asked a different question. How many beers had they enjoyed in their lifetimes? Ten thousand? A hundred thousand? How long would it take to drink one million?
One of these men is Charlie, a 31 year old TV producer from London, who I meet for a pint. I wanted to know whether he was serious about trying to drink a million beers. “We were talking and the conversation turned from how long it would take to how we could actually do it,” he tells me.
In 2024, he set up a WhatsApp group called One Million Beers Please, and invited a handful of close friends to share pictures of every frosty beverage they drank in a bid to reach a million. “The rules were simple and haven’t changed: each pint posted is added to a total, no one chats online, the only interaction between members is through emojis.”
Can a group of Brits sink a million pints?
The pub has gone digital
Horns were locked when a belligerent group of French saboteurs posted endless pictures of red wine; they were silently, ruthlessly expelled. Recently a contingent of Papua New Guineans posed with beers raised next to a fish the size of a Nissan Micra.
At its best, the group feels like an extension of the pub, a way to feel a sense of community while I enjoy a beer alone. Ste, a 41-year-old music rights executive from “the North” sums it up perfectly when he tells me it’s about companionship: “Life can be beautifully simple sometimes”.
The group is explicitly not about drinking to excess. As a nation, we may sink billions of pints every year but any suggestion the nation’s pubs, those bastions of British culture, are purely for binge drinking would be doing these great institutions a disservice.
Some of my earliest memories are weaving between the knees of my parents and their friends under pub tables after a Sunday roast. Some of my closest friendships were forged surprisingly sober around the fire at The Lord Tredegar in Mile End.
A ‘no pressure’ social media platform
But this is a troubling time for Britain’s pubs. The British Beer and Pub Association estimates that nearly a fifth have called last orders for the final time since 2010, and 2023 alone saw the closure of 500 boozers.
The state of the industry is laid bare on the website ismypubfucked.com, which shows how the proposed hikes to business rates – now reversed, gladly – would have affected the nation’s boozers, with the worst-affected facing tax increases of more than half a million pounds. One Million Beers Please is a way to offer support, both moral and financial.
There are now 857 members. They have access to a fully stocked merch store (caps come in at £25 a pop, although there’s a MOTM – Man of the Match – branded version that will set you back £100,000), a schedule of meet-ups and events, including a much anticipated game of Ou Est Le Poulet (involving teams of drinkers scouring local bars for a person in a chicken suit), as well as quiz nights.
Sponsorship of the football team Old Boys Clapham FC means bespoke shirts are also available, and members can add venues to a Google map signalling the best boozers around the world. Ashleigh, a 37-year-old social media strategist from Biggleswade, and her partner have made huge contributions to the ever expanding Google Maps list.
Imitation pint groups have now spawned
“I consider it a ‘no pressure’ social media platform,” she says. “No words, no ‘content creation’, no obligation except one pint per month. I’d rather scroll our group chat than Instagram.”
Over pint number 92,004 – a perfectly poured Guinness in the inimitable Coach and Horses in Soho – I ask Charlie how he feels about his idea going viral. “People are forced to focus not on what they disagree on but what they have in common,” he says.
“People are more atomised than ever, they’re looking for community wherever they can find it. We’ve had meet-ups between members everywhere from Stratford to Sweden, from Brixton to Barbados.”
The race to one million beers has been replicated by imitation groups. There are now half a dozen rival chats offering some friendly competition – most are British but there are reports of an Irish offshoot – and there have been instances of suspected espionage.
The thing that sets One Million Beers Please apart is its admins. A diligent, humorous and creative group of people nurturing – and occasionally pruning – this spiralling phenomenon, they monitor the count and are the only ones allowed to write messages.
These include Beer of the Month shortlists, announcements and polls for meet ups. The rest of us use emojis to react to posts, with one little symbol feared above all else – the abacus that signals a miscount.
A purge of members occur every few months
There are a few rules to avoid expulsion. Pints are preferred but bottles and cans are permitted. Half pints, ciders, and alcohol free beers are banned. Drinkers must be of legal drinking age and there is to be no discrimination of any kind.
Luckily this is not a regular occurrence, although in the early days the riff-raff were quickly banned. WhatsApp’s upper limit of around 1,000 participants means a purge occurs every couple of months. To keep the dream of one million beers alive, fresh legs must be subbed in: those who don’t post or remain dormant risk their place.
While meet ups have only been hosted in the capital so far, Manchester and Nashville events are in the works. When people meet in-person they are known only by their preferred pint and emoji (mine is the top hat and Guinness).
On a recent London outing I was chatting with Alex, a burly Scotsman, who up until that point I’d known solely by his online moniker, the eye-of-Sauron emoji. We joked about the absurdity of our goal, and the constellation of characters joining us, fellow pintsmen and women brought together by a fleeting idea conjured up by strangers 14 months earlier.
Forget the meaning of life: let’s get down to the big question. How long will it really take for one thousand friends to drink one million beers? Charlie reckons 13 years, but no one can know for sure whether he will ever hit the target. Who cares? What we know for sure is that we’re together, right now, raising a pint to friendship.