Does anyone subscribe to any of those delivery services where you get so many beers a month for a set subscription?

I have never been sure if they are worth it, can you tailor them to your personal tastes? I'd be concerned they would keep sending styles I didn't really like.

With it being a nice day today I've decided to step away from dark ales for a bit and I'm going to get back into strong bitter for a BBQ tonight.

Picked up a bottle of Timothy Taylor Boltmaker and a bottle of Sharp's Sea Fury. Not had the latter so looking forward to it.

I do the Eebria Brewery Club, it's £33 a month and you get 12 bottles from a different brewery, you generally get around 9-10 different beers and a couple of duplicates depending on the breweries range. You also get a little booklet about the brewery and beers. I like it, you get a good variety and discover new breweries. I've been doing it for 18 months and only had one month that I've not been impressed with and that was Tyne Bank Brewery which I found a bit average. This month's should be arriving any day and it's from Northern Alchemy which I'm really looking forward to.

Another good thing about it is the beer comes straight from the brewery so is always very fresh.

I like pretty much all styles, there's only red ales and barley wines that I'm not really keen on, although I will try them (and there are some I've enjoyed) so I like the variety but I guess if there are lots you really don't like then it could be a problem. I believe one of the other websites (Flavourly or Beer 52, I'm not sure which) lets you tell them what styles you want.

I looked at Beer 52. It basically gives you the option of a mixed case of 8 for £24 if you pay monthly. It is marginally cheaper if you pay upfront in advance for 3, 6 or 12 months.

Style wise, it really just gives you an option to say if you don't like dark beers, so you will get light and hoppy. I guess I prefer light rather than dark in general. My main issue is really beer strength, I struggle with the really strong stuff.

I used the be like that with the strength, I think all the strong ones I'd had just weren't very good, now I love stronger ones. A lot of the good stuff doesn't taste its strength. Some of the double IPAs that have come out this year have been amazing and you'd never guess they were 9% plus. I love a big imperial stout too. I had Brewdog's Dog E the other week and that was 16.3% which was a bit crazy. A chocolate and chilli stout. I enjoyed it but that was a little too much, I think 11/12% is about right for an imperial stout.

It's odd how your palate develops, I used to hate dark beers and now I love them. Even in the three years I've been using UnTappd, I look back at some of the scores I gave at the start and some of the beers I loved at the start I now think are really average.

Talk about engineering a totally unlikely, hypothetical scenario to suit your argument

But for the record, I wouldn't touch the keg version of "my favourite beer" with a bargepole, just as I refused to accept a pint of cask Oakham Ales JHB when the idiot barman served it with the sparkler on. The keg versions of both Ruddles County and Abbot Ale should be a dire warning about what can happen when breweries alter production methods for their own convenience.

I was trying to inject a bit of humour into the proceedings as it was all getting a bit silly but I do think I was quite accurate. Tonight I went to a local pub of mine which has 10 cask beers and 2 keg. I had 4 different cask which were all quite nice, including a good pale with loads of Sorachi Ace hops, but the best beer I had all night was a Thornbridge beer on keg. It just tasted good, better than the others, and at the end of the day, it's the taste that matters. A good, well brewed beer is a well brewed beer.

Just a small update, the Sharp's Sea Fury was bloody lovely

I've bought 4 Sharps ales. Sea Fury, Atlantica, Wolf Rock and Doom Bar.
Wolf Rock is fantastic. Doom Bar lovely. Sea Fury nice strong taste. Didn't go much on Atlantica though.

I've had Doom Bar on cask before and didn't think much of it so no way will I try it from a bottle.

Going to try finding a pub that does Sea Fury on tap because it really was very nice, a lovely strong bitter but very moreish

What I have said is that keg is a dispense method I will not support, that is my choice.

A keg version of a cask ale isn't the "same" beer at all. The keg version won't have gone through the secondary fermentation process in the cask and, therefore, won't have developed the same depth of flavour.

The two dispense methods are not the same and should not be treated as such.

But a lot will have had secondary fermentation because a lot use KeyKeg which allows for this.

Yes, it is your choice but I just don't get it, for me all that matters is the taste of the beers. If I went into a bar and they'd got lots on cask but then had something on keg from one of my favourite breweries (Cloudwater, Beavertown, Magic Rock, Buxton, To Øl, Omnipollo for example) then the chances are that I'd go with the keg as I've never had a bad beer from any of those breweries and can pretty much guarantee it'd be good, keg isn't going to change that. There's not really any situation where I'd base my choice on cask, keg, bottle or can as ultimately all that matters to me is the beer. If I think of the beers that I wouldn't have had if I'd avoided keg then I'd have missed out on some crackers.

I don't normally drink on a work night but this heat pursuaded me to grab a couple of bottles from my stash. Had a Stone IPA and a Final Frontier from To Øl. Two nice refreshing, hoppy IPAs, one from one of America's finest and one from one of Denmark's finest. Lovely stuff. I've not had that many different beers from Stone (maybe 8) but they've all been good, I must've had a good 30 different beers from To Øl though and they've all been good, definitely worth checking out if you see any of their stuff anywhere.

I'm currently in Budapest and I found a great little craft beer bar around the corner, I had a lovely Citra beer from Hungary called Bunny Hop by Csupor Sor.

I logged it on Untapped and noticed that others have logged it in bars in the UK (the bottled version, I had the draught) so there might be a slim chance of me finding it when I am back in the UK.

That's one of the things I love about Untappd that you can see what people are checking in to different places. If I'm going to a gig for example and just have time for 1 or 2 before I'll use Untappd to get an idea of what places have on so I can choose which bar to go to.

Handy if you're in a new place too and you can just use the "nearby" feature to see what people are checking in where so you can find places that serve good stuff.

It's a cracking app, there's actually a new feature where bars can sign up to it and actually put their line-up/menu on but nobody seems to be doing it. I guess most change pretty frequently and it's a bit of work keeping it up to date.

I just wish there was a way to export your data to Excel or something as I'm slightly paranoid that if it all goes tits up one day I'll lose all my logs, I've over a thousand different beers and photos on there and I'd be gutted if they all vanished!

I'm not much a fan of Doom Bar either - it's become a little too ubiquitous and doesn't have that much taste but it's at least it's better than something like John Smith Smooth.

Further to my previous posts, I signed up for Beer52 and today I received my first package.

To my great disappointment, one of the cans went out of date on the 13th July. I doubt it will suddenly go bad, but it is pretty bad form and a poor first impression.

Shame as the range they sent seems good. I will report back when I drink them and if I get any response to the snotty Email I just sent about the out of dat can.

Bought some more Sharps Sea Fury. It's bloody lovely.

It won't go bad. Beer doesn't have a "use-by" date (despite what the makers of crap like Budweiser would have you believe) but in a can it might start to taste a bit tinny after more than a month.

Out of interest, what beers did you get?

Haha, I've just stocked up too! I'm not one for drinking my beer cold, but the bottle says best served chilled so I've been obeying it and found that it makes it even more quaffable!

Shame it's not available on tap anywhere, and is specially produced for bottles.

In cans, Fourpure Pale Ale, Brighton Bier and Vocation Them and Us.

In bottles, Tempest Pale Armadillo, To Öl Friends with Benefits, O'Hara's Pale Ale, Rebel Surfbum IPA and Odell Loose Leaf.

Pretty poor form sending a can past it's date. It won't be bad (and some beers actually benefit from ageing) but pales and IPAs are better drunk as fresh as possible. I'd let them know, you might get some freebies.

I've had the Vocation, Fourpure and To Øl ones. All are decent enough. I love To Øl, Friends With Benefits is a pretty bog standard pale for their standards but it's still a nice beer. Tempest do some nice stuff but not had Armadillo.

Funnily enough, I emailed them and then I later made a comment on Twitter about it. Strangely, nobody has replied to the email but I had two responses to the tweet saying they will sort something out.

I had the To Øl last night, very nice indeed.

I had the Tempest beer the night before, also good although a very basic pale ale.

I was looking at the Magic Rock website and I might get some beers direct from them. I have had their Red Ale before and enjoyed it. But I am intrigued to try something a bit different. They have a coffee porter, a grapefruit IPA and a gooseberry gose amongst others. It might be a risk but I want to expand my horizons beyond pale ales and regular IPA's.

You can't go far wrong with Magic Rock. Salty Kiss, the gose is lovely but I'm a huge fan of goses and sours. High Wire and Grapefruit High Wire are both great, as is Cannonball. I've got a Common Grounds and a Shredder saved for me at my local shop so will probably try them next weekend.

If you find that you like sours To Øl do some fantastic ones.

The online Brewdog shop is usually very good, they often have a lot of good guest breweries as well as the Brewdog stuff.

Last night I finally tried the much anticipated DIPA V4 and V5 from Cloudwater. Both were very good beers although not as good as V3. I did as the brewery suggested and had them side by side and also tried a 50/50 blend of them both. I actually preferred the blend to the individual beers.

I also had another from To Øl, bizarrely called "F*ck Art, Let's Dance!", a Belgian style Tripel that had been aged in red wine barrels. It was very good, the red wine coming through was very subtle and worked really well.