To hell with doctor’s orders. I’ve been jabbed, probed and dosed, and they still can’t knock this flu. After three weeks of phlegmy coughs and other horrible bodily secretions – a period in which I faithfully avoided all malt refreshment – I’m plunging head-first into the Joe Sixpack Winter Blahs Treatment, certain to cure whatever ales you:

Take one bottle of beer, remove childproof cap, empty contents into glass, chug three times daily.

Ahhhhhh . . . It may not fully relieve the symptoms, but it helps soothe the pain – the pain I must share with you as I admit one huge personal failure for 1996: I did not drink enough beer.

Last January, I publicly boasted of my intention to taste 500 different brews in ’96. It was rash bombast, I now concede; at the time, I assumed I’d have little trouble sampling 1.366 different beers every 24 hours (this being a leap year, I’d get an extra day).

I visited specialty delis and warehouse-sized distributors, nabbing local newcomers like Gravity Pale Ale and Red Bell IPA. I knocked off dozens more at beer festivals. A trip to New Orleans scored me Abita Turbo Dog and Rikenjak Muscadine Lambic – a pair of brews that are virtually impossible to find in the Northeast.

By May, I was on track: 200 beers copiously logged on my laptop, and all those wonderful Oktoberfests and holiday ales ahead.

But my lofty goal would not be reached.

I suspect I tasted over 500 beers this year. But, dammit, I lost count!

I’d forget what I had last night. I’d draw a blank when, the next morning, I tried to decipher scribbled notes on a cocktail napkin. The porters and stouts ran together, and attempting to remember the names of all those red ales gave me headaches.

I failed. And I’m ashamed.

But ’tis a bittersweet feeling, for 1997 is right around the corner, and I’ve got many new brews to consume. Before ’96 is past, however, here’s my Beer Year in Review.

BEER TRAVELS

Discovering the microbrew capital of the East Coast, Portland, Maine . . . Sipping warm New Amsterdam ambers during a rain delay at Yankee Stadium (the pennant-drive game never re-started, but we hardly cared) . . . Nearly proposing to the soon-to-be Mrs. Sixpack while half-crocked in a Bowery bar (I waited till I was fully crocked, later that night) . . . Finding three different brewpubs within walking distance of my hotel in Atlanta after spending the day chasing the suspected Olympic park bomber . . .

DRAFT-DODGING

Watch out if you see a guy load a cold keg onto the bartop and pound an ale-splattering tap into the bung. You’re apt to get a face full of beer spray.

It’s called a firkin – a keg that drains by gravity alone. With no CO2 or even air pressure to pump the beer out of the keg, the brew seems flat but fresh and extremely tasty. It’s not for everyone, but the whole bizarre scene – toting a heavy keg across the room and hammering it atop the bar – is a wonderfully silly diversion. Firkins are on tap at a few local pubs, including Sugar Mom’s (225 Church St., Old City) and Dawson Street Pub (Cresson and Dawson streets, Manayunk).

In Fairmount, at Bridgid’s (24th and Meredith streets), local beer guru Jim Anderson has taken a good idea and given it the Rube Goldberg treatment with a contraption they call the Down Draft. Upstairs, in office space that is otherwise used for his Beer Philadelphia newsletter, a keg of Yards ESA is tapped. The beer line runs through a hole drilled in the floor, down 10 feet of PVC pipe to the bar below. It’s the same idea as a firkin, with gravity moving the beer, but Anderson has the windows open upstairs to keep the keg properly chilled to 55 degrees.

3 TOP BEER EVENTS OF ’96

1. Victory Brewing Co. in Downingtown went into full production. Their Hop Devil ale was the best new beer of the year.
2. Belgian beer on tap. Philadelphia now has more Belgians than anywhere outside Brussels.
3. Distributors started accepting credit cards.

TOP BEER EVENT (PERSONAL)

It had to be the summer morning I spent in the tiny Manayunk building where Tom Kehoe and Jon Bovit make their Yards. A fresh ale in my hand by 9:30, I spent three hours talking about women and beer while I watched Jon clean out the brick-encased brew kettle.

These guys are the envy of Gen-X brewer-wannabes: They scraped up just enough cash to buy a bunch of used equipment, tested a few recipes and almost immediately blew everyone away with their English bitter. They made it look easy, but I’m here to tell you slackers that they bust their tails, often working 18-hour days.

Three months after that morning, their bitter ale was my wedding beer. If I forgot in all the commotion, here’s a toast to Jon and Tom for a Happy New Year. And good luck in ’97, as they move into a new, larger brewery down the hill.

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Get ready to pay more for your beer, Pennsylvania.

The Legislature just revived an old law that almost certainly will jack up prices to fatten the wallets of beer wholesalers.

Wholesalers are the select middlemen who, under state law, “import” beer from brewers and re-sell it to retail distributors. Each has exclusive rights to brand names within geographic regions, so that, in Philadelphia, for instance, there’s one Anheuser-Busch wholesaler (Penn Distributors), one Coors wholesaler (Antonio Origlio) and one Miller (Clement & Muller). The wholesalers carry other, less popular brands, too, but the Big Three is where they make most of their money.

Since Bud, Miller and Coors basically taste the same and benefit from massive corporate advertising campaigns, competition between wholesalers frequently focuses on price. We usually drink whatever’s cheapest, so wholesalers offer one-week discounts to distributors with the understanding that the savings will be passed on to the consumer.

That’s the way most business works in America. It’s called capitalism.

But competition is hard work.

To avoid it, wholesalers can talk with each other and secretly agree to avoid ugly price wars. Several retailers have told me they’ve received notices from wholesalers within hours of each other that contain identical price hikes for competing brands. Maybe it’s a coincidence, but it smells like price-fixing, and it’s illegal.

Illegal, that is, unless the state government steps in and does the job for the wholesaler. Then it’s called price control.

That’s what the Legislature just OK’d.

House Bill 2257, now awaiting Gov. Ridge’s signature, requires wholesalers to maintain prices for 120 days at a time. No more one-week specials, no possibility of a price war that could drive down the cost of a case of beer. With a 120-day freeze, wholesalers can set higher prices today without fear of getting undercut next week by their competitors’ limited-time bargains.

Beer wholesalers have a different spin on this law. Jay Goldstein, executive director of the Pennsylvania Beer Wholesalers Association, tells me the bill will actually “secure good pricing for the Pennsylvania consumer.”

First, he says, price controls are designed to prevent the Big Three from selling their beer at a loss to drive out smaller, regional brewers, like Yuengling. Secondly, he says, nothing in the law would prevent retail distributors from cutting their own prices to the consumer.

Frankly, I’m not sure what to make of Goldstein’s first argument. I trust Bud, Coors and Miller about as far as I can toss a keg. These guys would like nothing better than to increase market share at the expense of the little guys. But Pennsylvania hasn’t had price controls for two years, and last time I checked, Yuengling was doing just fine, thank you.

The second argument is hogwash. Retail distributors generally scrape by on a minimal markup of about 15 percent, so they rarely cut prices without some help at the wholesale end. Almost all these retailers are small, family-owned businesses that, because they are prohibited from owning more than one license, do not have the clout to demand lower prices from wholesalers. Just as you and I depend on competition between distributors to get the best price, retailers rely on competition between wholesalers to get their best deal.

And now the Legislature has voted to end the competition.

If this strikes you as patently anti-consumer, that’s the way the courts see it, too.

In 1994, a federal judge ruled an similar price-hold law unconstitutional under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The judge said the state had no good reason to control prices and, even if it did, had failed to appoint anyone to supervise those controls.

So this bill calls for establishing a new bureaucracy within the LCB that will monitor prices and be headed by . . . that’s right, a Beer Czar!

The governor’s office won’t say which direction their boss is leaning. You might expect Ridge, a Republican, to reject this bill as unneeded government intrusion into commerce – it will cost $300,000 to operate a beer-pricing board, to be funded by licensees (who will undoubtedly pass the cost on to consumers).

But don’t forget, this is Pennsylvania politics; Joe Sixpack asked Bob Warner, the People Paper’s campaign finance whiz, to crunch a few numbers on his Pentium, and he found that beer-related interests have contributed nearly $50,000 to Ridge in the past three years.

That’s a nice piece of change, Guv, but I urge you to veto this bill. Instead, you should ask the attorney general to investigate illegal price-fixing.

And if you do sign the bill, give me a call. Czar Sixpack – it’s got a nice sound, don’t you think?

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A good pub is like a good dog. Friendly and honest, it never fails to cheer you up or bring you back down to earth. And when it dies, don’t mourn its passing. Just remember the good times and go find another.

One of my favorites died a couple of weeks ago. Before  Joe Sixpack moves on to his next watering hole, here are a few words in memory of the Khyber Pass.

The true age of the Khyber is a matter of some dispute, but I believe the place already was drawing ales when Philadelphia hosted America’s centennial. It almost certainly hadn’t seen a mop since the Dilworth administration, so it was no surprise when L&I pressured the owners to get the place into shape. (I’d prefer not to know the precise extent of these problems if for no other reason than that we shouldn’t speak poorly of the dead,  unless his name is Nixon.)

And besides, the grunge was part of Khyber’s (I hate to use this word) charm. Papered with yellowed photographs  and postcards, the paneled walls had the feel of a English gentleman’s card-playing club that had been trashed by Alex his chums from “A Clockwork  Orange.” The john was suitably graffitied with anarchistic slogans and telephone numbers. The juke box was loaded with Kenn Kweder, Ben Vaughn and others who had played the place. The back room where the bands  played was dark and private; more than once, I smelled reefer. The dart board was free.

A huge wood-sculpted, mirrored liquor cabinet behind a long bar was the focus of this pub. Even under half-empty bottles of Cutty and crumpled cash-register receipts, it was a handsome piece of furniture. How many times had patrons, lost in thought, stared at the cabinet and seen their own faces? I smiled when I saw mine and sipped at a pint of Bass.

Some pundits have lamented the passing of  the Khyber as a sign of Philly’s declining local music scene. I can’t speak to that, other  than to acknowledge that they played their rock and roll loud — very loud.

But to me and  other beerheads, the Khyber had more firmly earned an early reputation as the best place in the city to find a thoroughly obscure bottle from some distant land. Somewhere in my attic, I  have  an old Khyber menu that lists no fewer  than 200 different brews from Ireland, Japan, Denmark, Germany and Australia. My first Belgian trappist monk-brewed Chimay, my first English Old Peculiar and my first — and only — Swiss Samichlaus (at 16 percent alcohol, one the world’s strongest lagers) were served by Khyber bartenders. Other local spots, notably Copa Too!, now offer killer selections of imported bottles. But Khyber Pass was the first by two decades.

More recently, the pub dabbled  in an extended selection of  draught beers, pulled from a Rube Goldbergesque tap system that purists claim fouled the suds. Maybe it did, but I never noticed. And when Khyber got the city’s first keg of Sierra Nevada Big Foot Ale or Bateman’s XXXB, beer fans — purists included — lined up for those wonderful brews.

And, no, they weren’t snobs. The sign proclaimed, “No Crap on Tap,” but you could still get a decent glass of  Rolling Rock.

The good people who drank at Khyber — the locals from Old City, the pierced-nose grunge-boys, the beerheads — will find other saloons around town to take the Khyber’s place. Maybe another bar will re-open at the same location.

For now,  I’m left with the memory of sitting at a wobbly round table at the front of the pub with a couple of friends, munching on a free happy hour hoagie and trying decided between one good beer… or another.

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So it’s Sunday night and I’m trying to find an Eagles score on the tube when I hear possibly the worst news a guy could hear under any circumstances, but especially those circumstances under which, having just consumed, oh, about two dozen different brews at a local beer festival, that fella has assumed a face-down position on the couch of his choice.

Stay tuned, the TV says, for an exclusive report: THE SHOCKING TRUTH ABOUT MICROBREWED BEER!

What is it this time? Cancer? Botulism? Gout?

“Ohmygod, I’ve poisoned myself,” I moan.

“No kidding,” says an unsympathetic voice in the kitchen.

“Really – Stone Phillips says so. That microbrewed stuff is demon swill . . .”

Now, I’m not sure if I got it straight, but according to this exclusive investigative report by “Dateline NBC,” it turns out that microbrewed beers aren’t really made by singing elves. Some of these so-called hand-crafted beers are made, surprise, in huge factories owned by large corporations.

The practice, called contract brewing, is a dirty little secret that’s been plaguing the microbrew industry since the early ’80s, when New Amsterdam Brewing Co. of New York City figured out it was cheaper to let F.X. Matt of upstate New York brew its lager. Nobody much cared about contract brewing until supposed micros like Boston Beer Co. (maker of Samuel Adams) and Pete’s Brewing Co. of California started brewing beer by the truckful at factories in Pittsburgh and Allentown – the same places that turn out dreck like Iron City and Stroh’s.

I always thought it was a bit of a game. Slick Madison Avenue types come up with cute labels that profess adherence to 600-year-old brewing techniques that use all-natural ingredients, and then in small print admit the beer was actually made in Wilkes-Barre, which I believe is the Official Armpit of Pennsylvania.

But at least one TV news show, and many people in the industry, see it as a scandal.

“It’s a little unfair,” says Gene Muller, who last week opened the area’s newest brewery, Flying Fish in Cherry Hill. “They’ve got the marketing muscle that we’re never going to have . . . I think it’s dishonest . . . The other things is, if you contract, you don’t have the brewery. We’ve got real brewers here. A contract brewer is just a guy in a suit with a case of beer.”

Some of this controversy might sound like jealousy among small brewers who would love to be making as much money off beer as has Boston Beer’s Jim Koch. And some of it is hypocrisy. One of the leading critics of contract brewing is Anheuser-Busch, which – worried that contractors are cutting into its specialty brew division – is pushing a petition with the feds to force them to come clean. Meanwhile, A-B won’t tell you if the beer you’re guzzling was brewed in its St. Louis plant or one in Newark, N.J.

Jeff Ware, the president of Dock Street Brewing, which contracts its bottled beers at F.X. Matt, says A-B is merely looking to sully the reputation of small beer companies. “Anheuser-Busch spent a generation killing off small breweries and they thought they put an end to it. Now the only way for them to grow is to steal market share from the specialty brews.”

Even to Joe Sixpack, this is inside baseball. If you happen to enjoy what you’re drinking, who cares who made it? (Unless, of course, it’s Coor’s – but that’s a gripe for another day.)

The best beer I tasted last week – Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout – came out of F.X. Matt. When I sampled Philly’s first keg of the deep-roasted brew at Bridgid’s (24th & Meredith streets), the place was full of beer drinkers drawn by word that the precious brew had finally arrived in town. None of them seemed put off by the stout’s lineage.

Likewise, I expect beerheads to line up for the Triple Bock at Samuel Adams Brewhouse (1516 Sansom St.) when it goes on tap on Wednesday. That’s right – this strong ale (a stunning 17.5 percent alcohol) is a contract brew, too. The wort is cooked at a California winery, then fermented at the brewhouse.

Confused? Well, while I continue my search for last week’s Eagles score, here’s a run-down of local micros that are contracted. Clip and save this list. Or, better yet, toss it in the trash and go sample these brews for yourself. The label might lie, but your tongue always tells the truth.

• * Neuweiler of Bethlehem, made by Stroh’s.
• * Penn Pilsner of Pittsburgh, made at Jones Brewery, Smithton.
• * Stoudts of Adamstown, 12-ounce bottles made at Lion; draught and unpasteurized champagne-sized bottles produced at its own micro.
• * Tun Tavern of Abington, made by the Lion Brewery.
• * Ugly Dog of West Chester, bottles made by Lion; draught produced at its own micro.
• * D.G. Yuengling & Son of Pottsville, brews its Black & Tan at Stroh’s; all other lines produced at its own brewery.

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Sunday marks the end of Oktoberfest, the 16-day Munich beer-drinking celebration that honors the 19th-century marriage of some Bavarian crown prince. The fest is a sanctioned citywide event in which the government encourages its citizens (and tourists) to consume mass quantities of excellent lagers served by large-busted women. They shut down schools, close offices and run naked through the streets.

You know, America sure could use something like that – something to loosen our tight-butted, humorless, who-stole-the-dream, millennium-fearing, downsized psyches. A festival in which, for the common good, our leaders open up the taps and tell us to drink, drink!

Unfortunately, the nearest we get to the ritualized consumption of alcohol is the NFL.

Here’s the scene: Hours before gametime, thousands of fans chug Coors and Bud, certain the Eagles will stomp the Cowboys. They roam the parking lots with suds-filled plastic cups, boiling with testosterone, setting up the enemy for the kill. This is all well and good, for it celebrates our manifest destiny and honors our expansionist heritage.

Naturally, the Eagles lose, and all these fans go home to wake up wondering why we couldn’t expand into the end zone. Yo, manifest this: We don’t have a quarterback.

Now, in Philadelphia, you’ve got to figure this is going to happen more often than not. In my lifetime, at least, the Eagles have a losing record; they’ve won just one NFL championship since the invention of television.

You have to ask yourself: Why bother with all that pre-game posturing if you know that, most of the time, you’re going to go home a loser? In fact, it occurs to me that football is a lousy reason to drink beer.

We need an event that ends happily, a celebration in which – even in the midst of a nasty, mind-sapping hangover – we can smile pleasantly and say, “Damn, that was fun.”

I’m thinking, maybe, Oct. 26, which happens to be Joe Sixpack’s wedding day. I’m not a crown prince, but hell, who is these days? America deserves an officially sanctioned beer-drinking festival. America needs Sixpackerfest!

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If Sixpackerfest doesn’t catch on, allow me another suggestion: Attend a local beer festival.

You can find one within driving distance nearly every weekend.

Locally, the next big one is the Philadelphia Craft Brew Oktoberfest ’96, at the Electric Factory (421 N. 7th St.), on Oct. 13. Tickets are $22.50 at the door, but you can save yourself five bucks if you purchase them in advance at Jake & Oliver’s House of Brews (22 S. 3rd St.)

Here’s some advice if you attend this or any other beer-tasting event.

1. Have a system. Get a program and decide which beers you’d like to sample first.
2. Bring something to write with. Guaranteed, you’ll fall in love with at least one brew and, by the next day, forget its name. Then, for the rest of your life, you’ll wander the streets asking strangers, “Yo, what’s the name of that beer? You know, the reddish-tan one with the bubbles . . .”
3. Get your money’s worth. ‘Nuff said.
4. Eat food and drink water. Those small samples add up to a big wallop.
5. Use public transportation or bring along a designated driver.
6. Wear a beer T-shirt, the more obscure the better. They’re great conversation-starters and, guys, I’m told the ladies dig ’em.
7. Carry a cigar, the more obscure the better. You don’t have to smoke it, but everyone will ask you where you got it. And, guys, I’m told the ladies dig ’em.

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Speaking of beer events, the Great American Beer Festival just wrapped up in Denver with a decent showing by some local micros.

Independence Brewing Co. won a bronze medal for its golden ale and a gold for its Oktoberfest, called Franklinfest. Stoudt’s took a silver in the Bock category for its Honey Double Mai Bock (the non-pasteurized version in 25-ounce bottles, not the more familiar 12-ouncers that are contract-brewed by the Lion brewery in Wilkes-Barre).

The biggest surprise was the gold that Valley Forge Brewing Co. of Wayne took in the strong ale category for its imperial stout. Beerheads have shrugged off this shopping-center brewpub as a nonplayer in the local beer scene; we may have to reconsider with a few swallows of their black brew.

If you’re a diehard mainstreamer looking for something that won’t challenge your taste buds while you maintain that girlish figure, trawl the cheapo aisle at the distributor for this year’s gold medal American light lager. It’s Pabst Genuine Draft Light, edging out Coors Light and Bud Light for honors as the brew most likely to be confused with tap water.

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Saturday morning around my place frequently is accompanied by the sweet smell of malt and cigar smoke. But this isn’t the morning after a Friday-night poker game. It’s Joe Sixpack’s rowhouse brewery, hard off Girard Avenue in historic olde Fishtown.

Just a few blocks from the spookily vacant Christian Schmidt & Sons brewery, I cook up some of the meanest ales you’ll ever taste.

Now, that’s no invitation for you freeloaders to show up on my front stoop with a mug in your hand. You mooches can go make your own beer – it’s about as easy as barbecuing on a Weber grill, and it’ll cost you only about 15 bucks a case.

Like many home brewers, I got started in the early ’80s, back when the only decent beer you could find was an import or a dusty case of Schmidt’s Prior Double Dark. My man Jimmy Carter helped solve that problem in 1979 when he signed a federal law permitting households to brew 200 gallons a year. Why the feds would ever allow anyone to brew the equivalent of a six-pack a day is beyond me; possibly they never figured us beer-drinkers would push ourselves away from the bar long enough to make something we couldn’t chug for another month.

But making beer is quite easy. Plus, you can drink beer while you do it.

There are just four basic ingredients: water (Schuylkill punch out of the tap is fine), grain (usually malted barley), hops (for aroma and bitterness to cut the sweetness from the malt) and yeast.

When you boil the water, malt and hops, it fills your house with a dizzying sweet smell that’ll have your dog dancing and your neighbors singing. Cook it for about as long as it takes to smoke a good-size cigar, let the mix cool, toss in the yeast and watch it bubble. That’s fermentation, folks – a truly wondrous process that converts sugar into alcohol and turns your friends into drunken idiots.

Home brewing, you see, is a sacred event at the Sixpack household – a tribute to the gods, a celebration of nature’s essential elements, undisputed evidence of the evolution of man from knuckle-dragging ape to master of his domain.

And, more than that, home brewing is at the very root of America’s beer revolution. Simply put, without home brewing, there would be no microbrewing industry.

I ran this theory past George Hummel, the guy who owns Center City’s Home Sweet Homebrew with his wife, Nancy Rigburg. Over a bottle of his smoky, very tasty homemade Scotch ale, he observed: “Once you drink your own, it occurs to you that fresh beer is better than stale beer.”

It wasn’t long, Hummel says, before home-brew fans demanded better beer. The megabreweries weren’t making it, so home brewers opened their own joints.

I can’t think of any other industry that was created solely by consumers who tired of a mainstream product and invented their own, better brand. It’s as if motorists, sick of driving ugly, inefficient gas hogs, opened factories to produce their own sporty coupes.

Check out your own favorite micro, and I’ll bet it’s run by a homebrewer. Sierra Nevada, Pete’s Wicked – their founders got started brewing five-gallon batches on their kitchen stoves. Locally, most city brewers learned their craft at home. Eric Savage and Victor Novak at Dock Street, and William Reed at Samuel Adams were customers, Hummel says. Jon Bovit, the co-owner of Yards in Manayunk proudly adds, “I bought my first kit at Home Sweet Homebrew in the late ’80s.” He and his partner, Tom Kehoe, are using the same recipe they developed when they were college students.

Thankfully, most craft brewers have not forgotten their homebrewing roots. Boston Beer Co., for instance, is distributing three beers under the Long Shot label that were brewed from the winning recipes in the World Homebrew Contest. Most micros gladly share their recipes with do-it-yourselfers looking to re-create their favorite beer, and some even offer free supplies of their own hops, the plant that provides the distinctive “spice.”

Unfortunately, the expansion of micros has slowed the growth in home brewing. Beer-drinkers now can find quality brew almost anywhere, so why bother to make your own?

That’s the kind of question you’d never ask if you’ve ever poured a perfect ale that you made yourself. Rich, refreshing and honest. Modern man doesn’t get many chances to confirm that he is, indeed, meister of his domain.

Sixpack on tap

1. Anderson Valley Highrollers Wheat (Boone, Calif.), Jake & Oliver’s House of Brews, 22 S. 3rd St.
2. Samuel Adams India Pale Ale (Philadelphia), Samuel Adams Brew House, 1516 Sansom St.
3. La Trappe Dubbel (Belgium), Bridgid’s, 726 N. 24th St.
4. Flying Fish Extra Pale Ale (Cherry Hill, N.J.), Khyber Pass Pub, 54 S. 2nd St.
5. Dock Street Imperial Stout (Philadelphia), Dock Street Brewing Co., 2 Logan Square.
6. Gulden Draak (Belgium) barleywine-style ale, Copa Too! 263 S. 15th St.

A note from Don: This is the first Joe Sixpack column. It was named the best column of the year by the North American Beer Writers Guild. Second place went to Michael Jackson, who was my beer-writing idol. He congratulated me and we remained friends till his demise.

Twenty years ago, on a cold night in a central Pennsylvania college town, I fell in love with beer.

Underage and mildly buzzed after a coupla Genny cream ales, I leaned on the bar and watched my roommate try to pick up a sorority sister. The front door swung open and in limped a guy with a dog.

“What’ll you have?” the barmaid asked.

The dog said nothing.

The guy said, “Fill ‘er up.”

She reached for a mug, but before she could pull the tap, the guy said, “No, fill this.”

Then he leaned over and twisted off his leg beneath the knee, and stood it on the bar, his workboot and red-striped sock still in place.

The barmaid didn’t miss a beat. She grabbed the hollow plastic leg and poured the tallest draft I’ve ever seen.

“On the house, pal,” she smiled.

He grinned and took a guzzle, the suds sloshing down the side of his calf and into the boot. He wiped his mouth with his sleeve and passed the leg to the guy on his right.

Everyone at the bar that night took a slug, till we drained the beer past his ankle and out of his toes.

I fell in love with beer that night – not just the taste (obviously, for this was Genesee), but the whole frothy world of saloons and beer gardens, of ales and lagers, of sassy barmaids and honest pints.

And now, 20 years later, the Daily News is going to let me write about it.

They call me Joe Sixpack. Just a reg’lar Philly guy who enjoys downing a good brew almost as much as the Phantom Rider likes straphanging on the Frankford El.

Unlike SEPTA, the local beer scene is actually on the move.

After decades of shutting down its historic but hopelessly outdated megabreweries (Schmidt’s, Ortlieb, Esslinger), the city has opened up more than a half-dozen microbreweries and brewpubs in the ’90s. A dozen others have cropped up in the ‘burbs.

All of them are producing fresh, imaginative brews; some of them – including the hoppy bitters from Yards of Manayunk and the malty fests from Stoudt’s of Adamstown – are classics.

Around town, a score of beer outlets and quality pubs bolster the local selection with micros from the Pacific Northwest, Colorado and New England. Meanwhile, Philadelphia has a growing reputation as the Belgian capital of America, as that country’s once-obscure lambics, abbeys and reds are now often stocked at neighborhood pubs.

Coors and Bud and Miller still dominate the scene, but the bottom line is that, for anyone who really cares about what he or she imbibes, this is the best time in the entire history of the universe to drink beer.

Maybe you’re thinking, hey, that’s a mighty bold statement coming from Joe Sixpack. Isn’t he the kind of guy who satisfies himself with a can of Coors?

To be perfectly honest with you, I haven’t swallowed a drop of that crap since Wilson Goode was mayor. Right now, in fact, I’m sipping a perfectly chilled La Trappe quadruppel out of a snifter, the better to snort the yeasty waft of alcohol.

But that doesn’t make me a stinkin’ beer snob.

To me, a snob is the guy who refuses to taste anything other than the same brew he’s been drinking since his first fake ID, who is utterly convinced that mankind is incapable of inventing something better than rice swill.

Joe Sixpack – he’s the beer drinker who, upon entering a taproom, searches the row of draught taps for something different, something that just might grab hold of the taste buds and seduce the cerebral cortex. Once satisfied, he grabs a handful of quarters for the juke box and calls “next up” on the pool table.

A snob? Yo, cut me a break. If you don’t believe me, well . . . the Cowboys suck, all right?

Now that the testosterone is out of the way, pop open a cold one and enjoy the column. Because the Daily News, God bless its soul, has passed us a leg-full of beer, and we’re going to drink it dry.

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The other paper can have its wine columnist. Today the Daily News introduces Joe Sixpack, Philadelphia’s first columnist to write about the beverage of choice among People Paper people. With the city enjoying a veritable beer renaissance, Joe Sixpack will explore the ales and lagers, the brewers and the taverns. Catch him here every other week, or look for him at the end of the bar.

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