Can you make a cake with Special Brew?

On Monday I drank Special Brew for the first time in 20 years as part of the tasting round of the Beer Geek quiz at Craft Beer Co in Islington.

On Thursday a colleague handed me a recipe for a 'Chocolate and Beer' cake. I scanned the recipe to see where the beer fitted in.

Service, please!

Which is more important: good quality product or good quality customer service?

Are both equally important to you? Can you tolerate one without the other? We’ve had a few interesting experiences with customer service recently which have left us pondering those questions.

Beers out of the West

The CAMRA Bristol Beer Festival 2013

We should probably warn you in advance: this is going to be an epic post - we consumed a LOT of beers.

This was our second beer festival of 2013. Our first was at The Hope (Carshalton) a few weeks back and very good it was too. This one was on a larger scale and required some forethought and planning. First, we co-opted our friends, Neil and Slick, to purchase tickets for the Saturday afternoon session well in advance. Next, some careful travel planning by Emma to select suitably convenient yet not extortionately priced train tickets.