We’re on Twitter and Facebook and you can email us at boakandbailey@gmail.com.

We like beer, we like brewing. We live in London Cornwall. We’re not professional beer-writers and make no claims to be — we’re bloggers and rank amateurs at that. UPDATE 6/9/2012: we’re writing a book which we’re hoping might sell for actual money and have recently accepted commissions to deliver some talks on beer, so that makes us beer writers, kind of, doesn’t it?

Bailey is a bloke — that is, a man; Boak is female — a woman.

We’re CAMRA members, but not bothered about getting a full pint glass if that means we don’t get a head. We drink and enjoy some keg beers but tend to prefer cask ale.

We are happy to call ourselves beer geeks.

UPDATE 12/4/2012 — who does what?

• We manage the blog and Twitter account jointly, although, at the moment, Boak tends not to do anything during working hours.
• There have been times in the past when one or othe other of us has been more involved while the other was busy at work, or just a bit bored of beer. In 2010, we had our first wobble when we were both a bit disengaged at the same time, which meant the blog took a short hiatus.
• We discuss what we’ll be blogging about at breakfast, dinner and (more usually) in the pub. We both write posts and review each other’s work, which is how (we hope) we’ve achieved a fairly consistent ‘voice’.
• On the rare occasions we don’t have a ‘corporate’ view, we provide individual bylines so you know that whether it’s Boak or Bailey talking.

UPDATE 6/9/2012 — naming and shaming FAQ

• Why don’t you talk about beers you don’t like? We do, more often than we mean to, actually. Generally, though, we prefer to write about other things, e.g. beers we have liked and things about beer and pub culture that we find interesting.
• But bad reviews are fun! Not for us sensitive types.
• Are you saying other people shouldn’t write bad reviews? This is just about us, not about anyone else. What other people do is their own business.
• So how come you do criticise big brewers? We’ve tried to explain this in a longer post. In short, if a brewery is very small or just starting out — if our review will have a disproportionate influence on the ‘buzz’ — we tend to hold back if we don’t have anything nice to say. If a brewer is huge, well-established, their beer is selling well, and our views are part of a huge buzz, then we don’t feel so bad about it.
• But if these people can’t brew, they shouldn’t have started a brewery, or be selling their product. You’re probably right but, as they have done so, we don’t want to be the ones to publicly humiliate them over it.
• How are they meant to get better without feedback? We’re giving them feedback, in many cases, but we’re doing it in private, rather than in front of the whole office, causing them to run out in tears and go straight to HR. (We send emails, and love being asked for feedback.)
• So you’ll say a bad beer is good if it’s ‘craft’? We’re not fibbers! If we don’t like it, we probably won’t write about it at all.
• Excuse me — I couldn’t help but overhear. You gave my beer(s)/pub(s) a right slagging off. How come? Sorry. We probably felt really strongly about it at the time. Have we also said lots of nice things about your beer(s)/pub(s) on other occasions? In which case, it might be a swings and roundabouts type of thing.