Kris Calef, Author at Craft Beer Blog from The Beer of the Month Club

Sours, sours and more sours!

June 1, 2017 by Kris Calef

Can we talk about sours for a minute here? You’ve no doubt noticed an uptick in sour beer production over the last few years. And quite a few of them are pretty approachable even for those who haven’t previously enjoyed them. Seems like every time we put a sour up to another beer in any given month, the sour is considerably more popular.

Of our 24 annual selections, we’ve run anywhere from 4-6 sours each year over the last 3 years. Thinking about doing more, but we want to make sure we’re keeping everyone happy as much as possible. One way to do it is to offer more sours via special offers. In fact, we’re thinking an ALL SOUR special offer. Okay, so we’re not just thinking it, we’re doing it.

Anybody heard of O’so Brewing Company in Plover, Wisconsin? I hadn’t until one of the guys on our SEO team sent me a bottle of Space Ace Oddity, a one-off run of a brett-fermented double dry-hopped Belgian white IPA made to commemorate the work of David Bowie. Really nice beer. We liked it so much that we’re having them brew us another batch just for our members which will be exclusively featured in May this year.

But we’re talkin’ about sours here, right? Right. Marc Buttera, founder, CEO and super cool cat, sent me a care package like I have not received in a few years that included twelve 750s, half of them pretty damned amazing sours. It was really hard to pick just 4, but we suffered through it and are running with the following in our July 2017 Rare Beer Club special offer:

On top of that, we’ve already got 7 sours slotted for 2017 and are looking to lock down on an 8th, including featured offerings from AleSong, Mystic, Panil, Sudwerk and an exclusive from Jolly Pumpkin Brewery.

I’d love to hear any and all thoughts you have on the direction we’re taking with sour beers!

Prost!
Kris

Rare Beer Club Naming Contest with Yazoo Brewing and Pints for Prostates

May 24, 2017 by Kris Calef

Wanna win a 6 month, 2-bottle membership to The Rare Beer Club® Of course you do. Who wouldn’t? Well, you’re going to have to do some work then, okay? You good with that part? It’s kind of important that you’re good with that part. Although, it’s not really work if you generally associate work with things that aren’t fun. Trust me, you can have fun with this one. One of the past winners of this particular project was an 8.5% smoked Dopplebock that was given one of my all time all-time favorite names…Prostator!

We need help naming a beer people.

This contest is our annual collaboration with Pints for Prostates, and this year Rick has secured Yazoo Brewing and the celebrated head of their sour program, Brandon Jones, to create a beer to help PFP educate dudes about getting properly screened for prostate cancer. Suffice to say…It’s a really worthy cause.

It’s always fun to jump on a call with a brewer and see what kind of creative ideas they’re kickin’ around on their pilot system or what glorious goodness awaits in a barrel program. Talking to Brandon didn’t disappoint. In his words, “I have a batch of an incredible merlot french oak barrel aged aged sour and Brettanomyces Belgian Golden Strong ale we are going to fruit with a combo of blackberries, tart cherries and raspberries. The base beer before fruit is showing nice character of pepper, dark fruit, and bright lemon lime.”

There was a long pause on the call and then Rick and I simultaneously and resoundingly said, “WE’RE IN”!

Suffice to say, it’s gonna be a pretty sweet offering and we’re really fired up about it.

Here’s what you need to know to play kids.

Entering the Beer Naming Contest

Although the new beer will only be available to members of The Rare Beer Club, both members and non-members are invited to enter the contest and submit up to three names for the new beer. The contest officially begins on Wednesday, May 24^th, 2017. Entrants will have until 2 pm PDT on Monday, June 12^th, to submit up to three names.

Finalists will be chosen by The Rare Beer Club, Pints for Prostates, and Yazoo Brewing Company on Wednesday, June 14^th, at which time contestants, club members, and the general public can vote for their favorite name. The winning entry will be announced on Thursday, June 22^nd and the contest winner will receive a 6-month, 2-bottle membership to The Rare Beer Club.

To receive this special beer, and many more, join The Rare Beer Club online or call 800-625-8238. Be sure to start your membership by September 2017, or earlier, to receive this exclusive beer from Yazoo Brewing Company.

Have fun!

Prost!
Kris

How do our Rare Beer Club customers feel about 22 oz. packaging?

May 11, 2017 by Kris Calef

We’ve been kicking around the idea of running 2-3 beers a year in The Rare Beer Club that are not packaged in 750ml bottles, but rather 22 oz. bottles for quite some time now. There are some pretty sweet beers out there that are only packaged in 22s and ultimately, it would open up that many more breweries and beers as prospective features. Think special offers or RBC exclusives from Shmaltz Brewing Company like Funky Jewbelation or Cigar City’s Marshal Zhukov’s Penultimate Push, an 11.5% Imperial Stout with Coffee and Vanilla.

Most recently, we’ve been presented with a special offering from Humboldt Brewing Company. Specifically, they sent us a couple bottles of 2015 Black Xantus, an 11% Imperial Stout infused with fair-trade, organic coffee from a local roaster, Jobella, and aged for 6 months in a combination of Bourbon, retired Firestone Union and wine barrels. It’s taken the gold at the Denver International Beer Competition and US Open Beer Championship and boasts a 99 overall rating on RateBeer.

The short of it is, we loved it. A lot. It poured opaque with a dense light brown head. The nose showed big roasted and chocolate malt contributions, coffee, and toffee, all on a notable malty molasses backdrop. The nose was a solid representation of the flavor profile: Dark caramel, molasses malty goodness, chocolate malt, coffee, and roasted malt. And with nearly a couple years in the bottle, some sherry notes started to emerge. This baby’s only going to get better with time. Mouthfeel was viscous as hell and body was full.

Anyway, we liked it enough to put it out there to our members to see how you’d feel if a couple times a year one of your Rare Beer Club bottles was in a bomber (22 oz.) rather than a 750ml (roughly 25 oz.). We’re talking about 3 ounces less beer, but in our humble opinion, well worth the trade-off.

Whaddya think?

Prost!
Kris

Limited Offering Smokey and the Bois

December 8, 2016 by Kris Calef

The day has come. We’ve made the call to part with the last 67 bottles of our highly coveted Smokey and the Bois, a very special blend of three different barrel aged beers that was crafted for us nearly 3 years ago to celebrate our 20 year anniversary. I’d be hard pressed to part with it if it weren’t for the fact that I’ve already got 5+ cases stashed in our in-house beer cave! We’ve been sitting on a small portion of our remaining inventory with the intent of releasing it to our members after it had been laid down for a few years. The holidays seem like the right time to do it. It’s available only to active members of The Rare Beer Club and you will be limited to just two bottles.

Smokey and the Bois was crafted from three different Bruery beers: Black Tuesday (The Bruery’s famous ~20% ABV imperial stout), Bois (an exceptional, bourbon-barrel-aged old ale), and Smoking Wood (an imperial rye porter brewed with beech- and cherrywood smoked malts). And, for even more dimension and complexity, the final blend was aged with vanilla beans and Ecuadorian Nacional cacao nibs.

This is the last of it. Once it’s gone, it’s gone, so if you haven’t already grabbed a bottle or two, now’s your chance.

Merry Christmas from me to you.

Prost!
Kris

Interview with Men’s Journal

November 30, 2016 by Kris Calef

Several weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being interviewed by Ethan Fixell, a writer for Men’s Journal. He asked some great questions that really made me sit back and take a good look at how this business has evolved over the years. I’m happy to say that 22 years in, I feel like we’re holding true to our original charter of continually curating outstanding, hard to find or exclusive beers to our members while providing A+ BBB rated customer service. The craft brewing industry and ecommerce have evolved significantly over the last two decades and so have we.

We now offer Five different beer clubs, each uniquely suited to specific palates, and the ability to combine any or all of them into a single membership with our Design Your Own Club Program. We’ve grown to the point where we can now work with breweries to create and deliver exclusive beers to our members such as the 14% ABV Barrel Aged Blended Barley Wine brewed by Broken Bow featured in The Rare Beer Club® this month. It was split into three parts that were aged in rye whiskey, bourbon and red wine barrels before being blended into the final product which is nothing short of kick ass.

Some of our members asked us to send them only hoppy beers and we recently delivered the goods having just launched our new Hop-Heads Beer Club which focuses on hop-centric beers such as IPAs, Double IPAs, Session IPAs, IPLs, Imperial IPLs, Session IPLs, hoppy Pale and Red Ales, and more from two or more breweries each month. Our Rare Beer Club® members can participate in our Personalized Shipment Program which allows them to customize their shipment each month, ensuring they’ll only get the beers they want to get.

This month, we’re relaunching our website so that it’s mobile friendly. No small task, but absolutely necessary for our many customers that prefer to interact with us on their smartphones.

Back to the Men’s Journal article comparing online beer services. Ethan’s questions were indeed thoughtful and in the end, I feel really good about how we stack up against our competition. We are delivering a superior product in so many ways. Check it out. It’s a good read.

Cheers,
Kris

Got Hops? We do. Introducing The Hop-Heads Beer Club™

October 25, 2016 by Kris Calef

You made it clear to us that quite a few of you wanted more hops. Actually, only hoppy beers to be specific. We stuck our toe in the water earlier in the year and officially offered our members a way to customize their shipments each month, essentially calling us at the beginning of the month, finding out what the featured beers were and having us put only the hop-centric ones in their box that month. It was better than nothing, but in the end, not optimal because you guys had to remember to call us and if only one or two of the four featured beers were aggressively hopped, you’d only get one or two beers that month.

So we’ve been quietly working with a lot of different breweries, better understanding how much it would cost to deliver a club that only features kick-ass, hoppy beers each month. Not just IPAs mind you. That would be so limiting, and you’d miss out on some really amazing hoppy beers. Brewers are creating styles faster than ever. More and more, you can’t easily categorize a beer neatly into any given style. Take for example Mikkeller’s Wit Fit, which the brewery describes as a hoppy imperial wit. Clearly not an IPA, but I’m here to tell you, Hop-heads will love this beer as it delivers plenty of citric, floral, and resinous notes, some acidity, and a clinging bitterness that hangs on in the finish. Don’t panic. We’re going to run a ton of IPAs in the club. In fact the majority of what we feature will be IPAs, but we’re also going to run India Pale Lagers (IPLs), hoppy Red and Pale Ales, and other hop-centric beers. Hops are obviously the key ingredient used to balance the malty sweetness in a beer’s flavor profile, but they also contribute some pretty amazing aromatics and flavors so we’re not just focusing on beers that have crushingly bitter hop profiles, but also beers that explore the many hop flavors and aromas available to today’s brewers.

The club will feature two or more breweries each month and we’ll even drop in an import in there from time to time when it makes sense. There are some really neat breweries out there now like Mexico’s Agua Mala and Germany’s BRLO that are crafting outstanding American style IPAs and other hoppy styles that are just now making their way to the American marketplace. That said, I expect something like 90% of our featured beers to come from US breweries. We’re gonna send ya twelve, 12-oz. beers in each shipment, 3 different beers (4 bottles or cans of each).

We’ve got some pretty sweet beers lined up for our inaugural shipment in November, including Route 1A, an 8.2% ABV big, boldly flavored Double IPA from Ipswich Brewery in Massachusetts. You’re gonna dig it.

No one else is doing anything quite like this in the market today, so naturally we’re really excited about this club and hope you are too!

Prost!
Kris

Wineification and the Passion of Good Beer

May 24, 2016 by Kris Calef

So I got invited to this special event last night hosted by a third generation CEO of a hundred year old company that was put on by the USC Marshalls Family Business Program to guide folks on the trials and tribulations of running a family business. My girls are just about to turn seven so I may be jumping the gun a bit here, but I figured there could be some good stuff for me to think about and indeed there was.

But that’s not what I want to write about today.

So I’m heading out to a pretty amazing home overlooking Cameo Cove in Laguna Beach thinking I should bring the hosts a bottle of wine or something. I’ve never met either of them. Have no idea if they like wine or if they drink at all, but then I get to thinking, everybody brings wine and I’ve got a lot of really good beers to share so why not bring something cool from a local brewery thinking they more than likely will never have heard of them, but if they like it, they can get more. Well I’m lucky enough that The Bruery is one of our local breweries so I grabbed a bottle of 7 Swans a Swimming, a big ass Belgian Quad that would do well with some age on it. When I met one of the hosts and shared the beer with him, he proceeded to tell me that he was good buddies with Patrick, the owner of The Bruery, that Patrick had just been over the other week hosting a beer tasting, and that he had nothing but beers from The Bruery over at the bar for the event! How cool is that? And best of all, he didn’t have 7 Swans in his cellar so I turned him on to that one.

Ten minutes later, as I was laboring over the selection and which beer to try first, I’m introduced to what had to be the biggest beer geek at the event who not only knew about The Rare Beer Club, the owner of the company he worked for was a member! It wasn’t long before he offered up a glass of The Bruery’s Wineification, a 15.7% glorious beer made by taking Black Tuesday, their landmark Imperial Stout, and fermenting it with late harvest Syrah grapes before aging it in French Oak. Man, it was nothing short of a religious experience. I sent a note off to my guy at The Bruery this morning seeing if there was any way to score a few cases of a future run for an RBC special offer.

Prost!
Kris