2013

• Shepherd Neame sent us bottles of their India Pale Ale, Double Stout and 1698. (We didn’t think 1698 or the IPA tasted right and have told the brewery; the Double Stout was OK, but we won’t be blogging about it.; we blogged about all this here.)
• Comida’s PR firm sent us a sample of La Soccarada which we blogged about here.
• We attended a ‘sample sharing’ tasting session organised by Darren Norbury at which we tried beer from Wells and Young’s, Rebel Brewing Company and Harbour Brewing, free of charge. (We blogged about the Rebel and Harbour beers here.)
• Darren was sent samples of Fuller’s Vintage and Brewer’s Reserve and passed a bottle of each on to us.
• Ed Wray of the Old Dairy Brewery sent us a nearly-complete collection of CAMRA Good Beer Guides to help us with our book.
• Kevin Bagshaw sent us two bottles of his award-winning home brew.
• Bath Ales sent us one bottle of Gem and one of Rare Hare. (We haven’t blogged about these.)
• The Sebright Arms sent us a sample of their Pure Evil black IPA brewed with Redchurch Brewery.
• When we went to interview them for our book, the Wild Beer Company gave us tasters of several beers, and a box of assorted bottles to take away.
• Dog’n'Bone sent us a copy of Mark Dredge’s Craft Beer World.

2012

• Ed Wray sent us four bottles of beer from the Old Dairy Brewery just before Christmas. (We haven’t drunk them yet.)
• We received a sample of Bateman’s Vintage Ale. (We wrote about this here.
• We received a sample of Shepherd Neame’ Christmas Ale. (We wrote about this here.)
• We were given two trade tickets to the Great British Beer Festival by CAMRA in August.
• Ed Wray sent us some small samples of brewers’ invert sugar for reference; we sent Ed a bottle of our 1912 Cornish Stout.
• St Austell sent us a 750ml bottle of Big Job double IPA. (We blogged about it here.)
• St Austell also gave us “VIP” tickets to the 2012 Celtic Beer festival (free entry, free beer from a limited range). We paid for some of the beer we tried at the festival. (We have written about it here.)
• Aurum Publishing sent us a copy of Britain’s Lost Breweries by Chris Arnot. (We didn’t blog about this.)
• Dominic Driscoll at Thornbridge sent us some E150 caramel colouring for use in brewing a historical beer recipe.
• We received a sample of Fresh Hop from the Old Dairy Brewery. (We liked it and Tweeted about it.)
• We received the gift of a book about yeast from Dominic Driscoll at Thornbridge because we wrote this. (We have not blogged about this.)
• We sent a bottle of homebrewed beer to Dominic at Thornbridge, receiving a bottle of Thornbridge beer in return. (We have not blogged about this.)
• We received a gift pack of Belgian beers from Giftsofeurope.com. (We have not blogged about this but have given them feedback.)
• We received four bottles of beer from Sainsbury’s PR, in relation to their Great British Beer Hunt. (We blogged about them here.)
• We received samples from Grain Brewery which we took to this tasting session.
• At that tasting session and another earlier in the year we tried beers from Wadworth’s, Sharp’s, St Austell, Rebel and several other breweries; those samples weren’t sent to us, but nor did we pay for them, and we have referred to them on the blog and on Twitter.
• We received a bottle of Flat Cap Beers ‘Ted’. (We blogged about it here.)
• We received several bottles of an early ‘test’ version of Harbour Brewing IPA. (We did not blog about these but gave them feedback.)
• We received four bottles of beer from Brewdog’s PR company (2X Punk IPA, Hardcore, Zeitgeist). (We did not blog about these, though we have frequently mentioned Brewdog on Twitter and our blog.)
• We received a bottle of Sharp’s Eden Project Cornish Pilsner from the Eden Project for possible inclusion in the talk we gave there. (We did not blog about this.)
• We received a review copy of The Homebrew Handbook from Cico publishing. (We did not blog about this but gave the publisher feedback.)
• We’ve never received any samples from St Austell but they did let us spend a day looking at their historic brewing records.
• We exchanged bottles of homebrewed beer with David Bishop.
• We received bottles of homebrewed beer from Andrew Drinkwater.
• We received a free copy of Evan Rail’s Kindle book Why Beer Matters which we Tweeted about.
• Boak’s little brother works at Tap East, Stratford, having applied for the job when we pointed out the advertisement to him. (We have blogged about Tap East here.)
• Ed Wray sent us bottles of two beers he’d brewed to historic recipes. (We blogged about them here.)
• Greene King sent us samples of their new IPA variations. (We wrote about them here.)

Notes

1. We accept samples on the understanding that (a) we might not write about the product at all and (b) that if we do, our comments might not be favourable. Some PR people choose not to send samples at this point, which is fine with us.

2. If we don’t blog about product, it is usually because (a) the sample was provided for the purposes of giving pre-production feedback; (b) we didn’t find it very interesting — there was nothing to say about it; or (c) we didn’t like it, but couldn’t find a way to say so which seemed interesting/constructive.

3. We have not listed here gifts from friends and relatives. We will usually disclose in any post mentioning those beers whether we paid for them (free beer tastes better…) but don’t consider those in the same class as samples from manufacturers.