Thanks!

Usually I would leave a work based blog on The Rake's page but I feel like I need to be a bit more personal than that today.

I need to say a few words of thanks to some very cool people so forgive me if this starts sounding like an awards ceremony speech, it kinda feels like one.

This week as you probably know, The Rake has been running it's Welsh Beer Festival, a concept that my boss, Richard Dinwoodie and I came up with about two and a half years ago initially to annoy my other boss, Mike Hill. Just a bit of fun. Now we're on the third year of this one now and London shows no signs of letting up in it's thirst for Welsh beer! I started the first year by ordering 22 firkins(9 gallon casks if you didn't know), 25 the second year and 35 this year. By the close of play today I expect that we will have sold 40 firkins in one week! Some of them not Welsh, as we will have run out of the Welsh stuff! Not bad for a bar the size of an office in-tray.
This is down to a few hard working people that I'd like to thank now...
Nick Otley and his team for their support in getting the beers to London, this monster keeps getting bigger and it would be much more difficult without their help.
The Welsh brewers, for their time and their 'craft'.
My bosses Mike and Rich, for their continued patience and understanding about the way I'm trying to run their bar!
MY STAFF! These guys are awesome, they are some of the coolest people I know and they have worked their arses off this week, I hope they are as proud of themselves as I am of them!
The Punters, without you lot, frankly, what's the point? you seem to enjoy the beers we get in, so much so that we'll be doing a 4th one next year! so keep up the hard work necking those beers!

I don't want to bore you lot but I really felt like I had to get this off my chest. Thanks.

Thanks

This is a shout out to everybody who came to The Rakes Welsh Beer Festival this year. Every single cask is now sold out! We are now running on cask ale fumes! Holy Empty Casks Batman!
So we went through 23 of the 24 casks I ordered, one was undrinkable, it shall not be named or shamed but I will say that we are more than likely to run out of casks by the end of Saturday night. Our average cask sales at The Rake is 15 firkins a week, this week, if we sell everything we would have sold 30. Bit busy then, completely unprecedented and I hope we have your patience and understanding, we have NEVER sold this many casks in one week before.
So I'm going to say thanks, I mean it from the very bottom of my heart, thanks to Buster and Melissa for the Lovebeer events on sunday, Ysbrid Y Ddraig..legendary, thanks to Nick Otley for arranging the beers I chose to get into London, thanks to the bloggers who helped publicise it, thanks to the tickers who spread the word just by talking about it and getting excited about the event, there will be more to tick next year. Thanks to my friends and family who turned up and showed their support, thanks to the people who turned up that I have never met before, I hope you had a great time and come back, thanks to my bosses who have let me do this two years in a row, most of all I would like to thank my staff, guys, you did a great job this week and without you this couldn't happen, I really appreciate it.
Thanks.