Wednesday 16 June 2010
Drinking Beer Swap 2
Tuesday 6 April 2010
Beer Swap Update
Friday 19 March 2010
Announcing: The Next Beer Swap and Twissup!
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Thursday 3 December 2009
Drinking Beer Swap
Sunday 15 November 2009
Swapping Beer
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I eventually settled on sending Hopdaemon’s Skrimshander, Whitstable Brewery’s Raspberry Wheat, Westerham’s Little Scotney Pale Ale and Harvey’s Star of Eastbourne. I won’t tell you what they are like, that’s up to Sam Lanes from Real Ale Reviews. I also put a little bottle of Biddenden cider in for him to try as a bonus extra. My box arrived up north a few days ago (although sadly Skrimshander didn’t survive the journey, oops – I’ll send a replacement or two). I know a box is on its way to me – I can’t wait to receive it and drink them! There are still a few weeks left to send, receive, drink and write. I think Beer Swap has been great fun and I love seeing all the #beerswap hashtags coming in (I keep it constantly on my tweetdeck). I’m surprised at how well it’s been taken up and I’m sure there’ll be another in a few months time. For now, what it’s done is show me just how willing we are to share what we have and how eager we are to try new things. It’s also shown that I must look at what’s made on my doorstep as it’s really quite good.
Tuesday 27 October 2009
Beer Swap: Buy, Send, Receive, Drink, Write!!
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One idea which has come up (thanks to Tania) is using a beerswap blog to collect everything together at the end and allow everyone to post what they got and what it was like. This is a good idea so if we can work out a good way of doing that then we will. Existing bloggers could just copy and paste from their blog or add a link across.
Here’s the list of Beer Swappers, twitter name followed by a link to their website:
markdredge - Visit website
chilliupnorth - Visit website
edwards80 - Visit website
terryfen
steelrazor / HopZine - Visit website
RichardMackney - Visit website
reluctantscoop - Visit website
unclewilco - Visit website
tania_nexust
BGRTRob / HopZine - Visit website
petebrissenden - Visit website
SeanEClark - Visit website
woolpackdave - Visit website
WindsorBeerFest
ToonBeerFest - Visit website
the_beer_bear - Visit website
kristym809 - Visit website
danfgough
adamcroft - Visit website
mitcheladams / thatchersarms - Visit website
Loiscarter
fletchthemonkey / realalereviews Visit website
Samlanes /realalereviews - Visit website
Alan Walsh realalereviews - Visit website
AlexanderWright
Simon beervikingrules - Visit website
Dylan beervikingrules - Visit website
beer_jomila
wine_scribbler - Visit website
terry_tibbs - or here
Darren blogobeer - Visit website
robsterowski - Visit website (thanks again for the awesome logo!)
Adam Bruderer
Neil Chantrell - Visit website
We’re delighted to have so many taking part and what better way to use social media than to swap a few beers around and then talk about them?! We’ve done our bit and now it’s over to you to buy and send and receive and drink. You all know the rules (if not then look here). You all know the 4th December deadline, which means it’ll be good to post your beer off in the next 2 weeks. In the meantime, keep twitter busy by using @beerswap and #beerswap so then we can all track the action. Hopefully you'll all enjoy some great beers in the next few weeks.
Go!
Friday 23 October 2009
Beer Swap: Here It Comes!
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The idea for this is to share beer. It’s about giving and receiving the best bottles which are local to you but which are not easy or possible to get further away. The aim is to drink some new beers and then to write about them, either in blogs or on twitter. It’s all about sharing.
And here are the important pieces you need to remember, one more time: Send four bottles of beers which are local to you. Local means within about 30 miles of where you live, if possible. They must come from at least two breweries. If you brew your own then you can send that, commercial or homebrew. They must be good beers – quality is more important than it being ‘the most local’. Don’t worry if someone in the same area as you wishes to send beer from the same brewery - it doesn’t matter because it’ll be going to a different recipient. Go for bottles which the recipient is unlikely to be able to get hold of in their area (just because you live near Badger’s doesn’t mean you should send one because they are in all the supermarkets). Please package them safely; no-one wants to open a box of broken glass and stale beer. And finally, when you receive the beer then say thank you and enjoy them and tell everyone else about them.
In order to pull it all together, this is the next step: email your name and the delivery address to [email protected]. Also, tell us your blog and twitter names if you use them. And, if there are any areas that you particularly want/don’t want to drink from, then add that too. If you wish to use Collect Plus to send/receive then indicate (check the website – but be warned that we send liquid/bottles at our own risk, and so on…). We are compiling the names and putting the draw together but we need to know exactly who is in. A lot of people have said yes, but we need a hard yes, a definite ‘I’m in for Beer Swap!’ And only come in if you can definitely do this – we don’t want someone to go without! The deadline is 6pm on Monday 26th October. We will then get details out of who you send to on Tuesday 27th October. Then we have four weeks and a few days to send/receive and drink.
One thing which has been looked into is postage. The strike could cause problems. Parcel Monkey and Collect Plus seem like decent alternatives and Andy and Mark from Real Ale Reviews had some success with Collect Plus (the deal with Collect Plus is that you post/pick-up from selected stores or centres and you can check where these are online – it’s £4 to post a box of beer).
We have also made a decision on the drawing of who sends to who as we have now opened out to everyone – bloggers will be paired with bloggers, tweeters with tweeters. This is important because we want to create interlinks on the blogs. I’m sure if some tweeters wish to write guest posts then there will be bloggers around who will oblige.
Use #beerswap and send tweets to @beerswap or @chilliupnorth and @markdredge. We have a posterous too so send pictures to the email/twitter and we will deal with that. But first of all, send us your name and address (and where you want/don’t want beers from and if you wish to use Collect Plus) to [email protected] so we know who wants to play (and don’t worry, we’ll keep your addresses safe).
On Tuesday (hopefully!) you’ll find out who you send to, so get buying the beers!
As this is a collaboration with Andy at beerreviews he will be posting the same blog this morning. Have a good weekend everyone, drink well!
Saturday 17 October 2009
Big Blogger Beer Swap: The Next Steps!
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1. The number of bottles? I’m going to say let’s do four. It’s probably better to go for a moderate number for a few reasons: cheaper postage, cheaper to buy the beers, quicker to drink them, shorter blog posts.
2. The type of beer you send is totally up to you, but I’d say make it the best local stuff you can find. Don’t just send any old crap because they brew down the road, get the good stuff. And try and go for a bit of variety, so send beer from at least two breweries. And if you brew your own then feel free to put that in too.
3. How the hell do we select who sends to who? This is the tricky thing logistically. I think the sensible starting point is to create as North/South divide and draw between them. I also think it’d be better if it’s all interlinked, so you don’t just send and receive with the same beer brother. I think randomly drawing names works, so maybe Andy (or here) and I could do a live draw over twitter.
4. Finishing dates. You need to send, receive, drink and blog by is the 4th December (blog it any time in the week before) and then we can do a little round-up for the 6th December. I think this works…
Anyone with any more ideas then throw them in. Anyone who hasn’t said so yet and wants in, then let me or Andy at Beer Reviews know. I will post next week about the next step, which will be drawing the names and sorting out who sends to who. Until then, buy the beer and use the #beerswap hashtag in twitter so we can keep track of everything!!
And a huge thank you to Barm/Robsterowski for the logo – it totally rocks! I’ve got another idea which needs a logo so I might drop you an email… I can only pay in beer though!
Tuesday 13 October 2009
The Big Blogger Beer Swap!
This idea has been bouncing around for a few weeks now (thanks to the thirsts of Andy at Beer Reviews, nee Beer Blog, and Mark at Real Ale Reviews who inspired the initial discussion) and I thought I’d open it out to everyone… The Big Blogger Beer Swap!
Here’s the deal: I live down south and rarely get to drink local beers from other parts of the country, which is a terrible shame. If you live up north, or west, or east, wherever, then you might not have tried any of the beers which I can find any time I go to the supermarket or farmer’s market, so… why not just arrange a big swap, so that we can all try a few new beers!?
What do you think? Would you like to take part? If you are up for it then just let me know by commenting below, telling me the rough area that you are in, and I’ll sort it out. I think a box of 5-6 local beers (the best ones in your area, not just any old crap) would be perfect, just put them in there safely and send them to the other blogger, then receive your box sent from another blogger, drink and a few weeks later we can have a big, interweaving blog-up about it (plus the tweets in between, of course). Easy.
If you are in, then how should the swaps be chosen? Do you want it: secretly drawn (I’ll draw it, request addresses and then email the relevant details on), drawn at random (a lottery which I’ll record and post online and you can then contact the other person to arrange everything), drawn so the person you send to also sends back to you, or drawn with specific regional organisation (for example, I might fancy a box from the North East, so I’d choose someone from there; you might want a London/South East set, so you’d request someone down this way).
And let’s set some preliminary dates: Two weeks to organise the idea and get people together; two weeks to get the beers bought and sent; two weeks to drink them; a week to write and post and collate everything together. That leaves us around the first weekend in December, so a little pre-Christmas treat. How’s that for everyone?
Who’s in?!
I don’t know whether to open this out to include Ireland and Europe as the postage step-up would be a big increase. Any thoughts on that? I don’t want to exclude people... I guess if you’d be happy to ship outside of the UK, or happy to ship from from Europe in, then just say and we’ll see what we can do.
If, like Dave and Stu, or any other brewer (home or commercial), you want to send some of your own beers, then go for it, that’s cool.
And if anyone would like to come up with a logo then that’d be good – it doesn’t have to be anything special, just a beer bottle with the title in there, or something, I don’t know… then we can try and make it a yearly thing? Hell, this could even just become a general beer-swapping forum, for bloggers and drinkers, one and all!
Any other ideas for this? Just email or comment...