Though he may, at times, lean curmudgeon (which isn’t for everyone), Alan McLeod is one of the few beer bloggers around that calls it like he sees it without fear of recourse. On Friday, he pointed to a blog post in which a brewer from UK’s HardKnott questions the practice of giving away free beer and then proposes to do just that.
The other reason why we don’t give away beer is because we have a firm conviction that if you want to write about our beer, then we don’t want you biased by the fact you got it for free. Free beer always tastes better.
But, if I tried to pretend that I didn’t think that some of you occasionally deserved a free beer off me I’d be lying. So, perhaps it’s time to give some away, but you’ll have to prove you deserve it.
If Bailey wanted to hold firm to his “conviction,” he could have just gave away free samples of these beers (an event, or tour or store tasting, etc.) without any requirement of the drinker to do anything other than show up. “Hey, thanks for coming. Let me pour you a beer.”
There is a lot more that McLeod touches on that deserves more devoted writing. He is right on the money in this post. More on it all soon…