Beer, buskers and alarm bells

I was standing at the London underground tube station one day, when I saw probably the most honest billboard advertisment in the world. It was the new advertiment from Carlsberg. They admitted that their beer is probably not the best in the world, they focused on quantity rather than quality. I took a picture of this billboard then tweeted: To my surprise Carlsberg offered to send us 6 snap pack of their new brew Carlsberg Pilsner for us to try, which we gratefully recieved. We have never been so excited to try a Carlsberg before. We at Bar Hop Cousins thought we would share the experience by creating a few YouTube videos: Unboxing and taste test Blindfold Taste Test: Carlsberg vs Fosters Blindfold Taste Test: Carlsberg vs Carlsberg Pilsner

Beer52 is a beer by mail service where they will send you 8 craft beers (you also get the Ferment magazine and a packet of nuts) per month from around the world for £24 a month subscription . It's a great opportunity to try different beers that you wouldn't normally try. You will get beers like Pale Ales, IPAs, Stouts, Porters and Lagers. You may also get different flavoured beer....such as Strawberry and Cream. We thought it would be interesting to pick a can of beer out of the Beer52 box at random and review them unscripted: Beer review #1 Beer review #2 Beer review #3 Beer review #4 Beer review #5 Beer review #6 Beer review #7 This one wasn't picked out at random as it is a bottle and would be easy to identify amongst the cans. Beer review #8 There was an 8th beer but I drank it before doing these reviews.

Follow @barhopcousins Winter is coming......you want to be ready! What better way to shield yourself from the elements by finding a cosy pub with an open fire. Here's Our Top 5 Pubs with Open Fires in London. If you try any of these, we would love to hear your stories (if you can remember them!), so please do let us know. Either in the comments, twitter (@BarHopCousins) or  barhopcousins@gmail.com . Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese – Fleet Street, London This Sam Smith's pub is my favourite winter pub, as I may have mentioned once or twice before. There's a huge fire place in the small ground floor bar. There's limited amount of seating in this bar but it's great! It's hard not to have a chat with the people sitting around you…so the place is very friendly and there's an amazing buzz. It's said to be London's oldest pub having been rebuilt after the Great Fire of London in 1666. Charles Dickens is known to have sank a few gins in a tankard here….s

Follow @barhopcousins So here's our Top 5 pub crawls. We couldn't decide which order to put these in...so we didn't! If you try any of these, we would love to hear your stories (if you can remember them!), so please do let us know. Either in the comments, twitter or barhopcousins@gmail.com . Bristol Ferry Not sure if this should count as a pub crawl because we travelled between pubs by a small ferry. Perhaps a pub sail or float would be more fitting. However, I think this is one of the most unique pub "crawls" we've ever done and I strongly recommend it.  My cousin, a local, was armed with the Bristol Ferry Timetable  and a map . We disembarked from the City Centre with our all day travel passes and we managed to fit in 6 pubs and a pizza. My cousin calculated we could spend 30mins in each pub before getting the next ferry…this worked really well until the seal had broken.  After ferrying it around Bristol we went on to Motion for the Ru

Follow @barhopcousins Looking at the timeline, this pub crawl seems to have happened a couple of years after the famous ones in  Bristol  and  Ireland . Not sure why it took so long to have one in London, maybe we had other commitments or perhaps just recovering from Bristol and Ireland. However, I do remember what my cousin said to me when I invited him to London for a pub crawl …"Make sure there's plenty of trivia!". Damn, I didn't think of that! So I Googled "London Pub crawl" and discovered the Charles Dickens one. As I added a few extra ones to this list, I called mine "The Historical London Pub Crawl". Borough Market All good pub crawls should start with food to help line the stomach (Hey! I'm a responsible drinker!). Some might say, that "eating is cheating" but to me this only applies half way through a pub crawl, not before starting one and definitely not after one. So what better place to get some food then to

Bank holiday Beers There was a bank holiday coming up, we had decided to meet up to while away a long bank holiday in the company of ourselves and a couple of local pubs.  Harry has recently taken up running and had found a nice route around Kew Green and as all people when exercising thought – “I really should do a pub crawl around here!” I like his style.  I made my excuses from home and decided to make my way down the M4/5.  We had a list of four pubs, nicely located around the green so we could get a few pubs off the list and also get to see the sights south of the river. Being a bank holiday, the forecast the weekend before had been good.  “We’ll have a BBQ in your garden” we thought.  Being a bank holiday the forecast suddenly turned bad.  “Stuff it, we’ll do it anyway” we thought.  There was a forecast for thunder and lightning and wouldn’t you know it, it was a balmy night in London!  I don’t care what the weatherman says, when the weatherman say’s it’s raining.  You’ll n