Not a newsletter. But very like one.
Posts by Boak & Bailey (Jess & Ray)
The monthly update blog post we're doing instead of a newsletter is up/out, including news of a special edition of the session in collaboration with @agoodbeerblog.bsky.social and inspired by @beervana.bsky.social. 🍻🍺
boakandbailey.com/2026/04/apri...
GOOD MORNING! Here's our latest round up of news, nuggets and longreads, with notes on the Cumbrian beer scene, on a pub in a shopping centre beneath a flyover, and on how licensing laws were historically exploited to exclude women from brewing and pubs. 🍻🍺
boakandbailey.com/2026/04/news...
Our favourite beer news aggregator. And a bloody good person to have a pint with. Do consider supporting Darren on Patreon if you can, cos he might keep going if you do.
We'd head here for starters:
www.redlionmayfair.co.uk
But you're also pretty handy for The Harp, which everyone else loves.
When Hawkshead Brewery shed most of its team and closed its tap room, I thought beer in Cumbria would suffer. I needn't have worried.
My latest story for @pelliclemag.com is about the breweries and all the people and pubs that make up this county.
www.pelliclemag.com/home/2026/4/...
Here's the show notes and photographs from today's episode all about haunted pubs from Biggleswade to Japan via North America!
I quite like CAMRA geography! Gives something else for people to gripe about, like 1974 county boundary changes.
We also chose not to make that point in the post.
Yes, we've seen them, and this pub definitely fits.
BLOG POST: Notes on The Rising Sun, Frampton Cotterell, whose appeal is perhaps down to being frozen in time. 🍺🍻
boakandbailey.com/2026/04/a-co...
A sign at the Old Red Lion which reads ‘Bass 🔺 Available on gravity or through the pump’
The north-south divide runs through the Old Red Lion in Litchborough, Northants. While I was there yesterday two young men asked the landlady to take the sparkler off the Bass, which means - brace yourselves - this pub serves Bass three ways! Can anywhere else say the same? 🤔
We got hailed on too.
We needed a walk and there's a bus straight back.
Bus straight back! We wanted a walk.
An uplighter lamp next to a wooden panel with an old son saying “Goof Beer Guide 1991 – we are in it!”
A very pleasant 3+ hour cross country walk to “Bristol’s best pub” for 2025 which is very much not in Bristol.
We have to manually approve all comments because we get so much spam, and occasionally complete nutters having a go at us. Done!
And here are the footnotes for Patreon supporters, with additional commentary and bonus links.
www.patreon.com/posts/155333...
GOOD MORNING! Here's our regular round-up of news, nuggets and longreads, with everything from industry gossip to a very weighty piece about farmhouse yeast genetics. 🍻🍺
boakandbailey.com/2026/04/news...
Have you been? What's it like?
No, we haven't. We need to engage with the reinvented version.
Shiny brewing equipment with pipes and hoses.
Lost & Grounded, as per.
Mural in a local pub of what I can only suspecy is Ozzy Osbourne, Prince (????), George Michael, Amy Winehouse and Shane McGowan all toasting pints of Guinness. 3 of them being alcoholics, obviously.
Dear god the state of this
Baladin/Budvar Alla Ceca lager from a Lukr tap.
Getting sideways at Open Baladin. And first sighting of the TeKu Mug in the wild.
We don't cross the beams often but we thought you might like to know that Ray has another book coming out shortly.
BLOG POST: Notes on a crawl of some Bristol pubs that looked gorgeous in the spring sunlight but were perhaps quieter than those running them might have liked. 🍻🍺
boakandbailey.com/2026/04/an-e...
Patreon supporters (excellent people) can now read notes on the best and/or most interesting beers we drank over the long weekend.
www.patreon.com/posts/155019...
Fascinating.
youtu.be/XRoyxGb7c3E