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Craft Beer Blog from The Beer of the Month Club

A craft beer blog written by the experts of The Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club

Fünke Hop Farm delivers the goods! Another Rare Beer Club® Exclusive

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I’m really excited about this beer. We worked with Sudwerk damn near 20 years ago in The Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club™ as they were, and continue to be, one of the best US craft beer producing lager houses. Honestly, I’m not sure why we didn’t connect again until 2015, but I’m really glad we did. I noticed that they were branching out into some barrel aged, small batch, creative stuff and reached out to them last year to discuss an exclusive project for The Rare Beer Club®. They were all for it and sent us down a number of experimental beers that they were playing around with to run by the panel: Velvet Jackhammer, an 8% Helles Bock; Game Changer, a 7% funky wild lambic; and a bourbon barrel aged dry stout. Suffice to say, we dug them all, but then they sent us down a bottle of Fünke Hop Farm, a Dry-Hopped Blended Sour Saison, and it moved rapidly to the top of the queue.

You’re going to LOVE this beer. It’s brewed with oats and wheat and fermented out with two strains of saison yeast. About 6-9 months in an assortment of barrels (Petite Sirah, Grenache, & Chardonnay) all while being fermented with Brett and Lactobacillus. These various treatments are then blended with an all-Brett beer that’s barrel-aged separately, bringing in more tropical and guava notes. Then it’s dry-hopped with Simcoe, Nelson, and Citra. Suffice to say, Sudwerk busted out all the moves on this beer and it shows.

We’re proud to feature it.

Prost!
Kris

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February 2015 Rare Beer Club Special Offer

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Today we’re excited to announce our first Rare Beer Club® Special Offer of 2015! You can read a summary below or visit the special offer page for full tasting notes and access to the order form.

If you’re new to the club: welcome! One of the best things about being a member is that, in addition to our normal monthly selections, you can take advantage of our periodic special offers on additional exciting and hard-to-find beers.

We sampled a lot of beer during the last few months in order to home in on four outstanding brews. These standouts really impressed us, and each in their own unique way. We know you’ll enjoy them as much as we did. Cheers!

  • Brasserie du Flo: Cuvée St. Antoine Blonde – Brewed on a tiny 2-bbl system by Didier Cornet, a friend of Fantôme’s Dany Prignon, this superb beer comes through as a mixture of bready blonde ale and peppery saison, with layers of intermingling yeast, firm and funky acidity, well-fermented dryness, and plush fruity esters. 7.5% ABV.
  • Brouwerij Kerkom: Reuss – A blend of 80% blonde and 20% lambic, Reuss delivers a heady, toasty, yeasty aroma with a citrusy tart backdrop, while the juicy, acidic tang and subtle funk of a precise gueuze comes forward in the flavor, with a touch of herbal hop bitterness throughout. Approx. 6.5% ABV.
  • Mikkeller: Frelser – Brewed by Mikkeller at De Proef, Frelser is a massive, hugely appointed überbock delivering deeply caramelized sugars, dried dark fruits, some dark roast, leather, and a ton of rich, intricate maltiness – all within a soft, finely carbonated texture. 11% ABV.
  • Epic Brewing (New Zealand): Epicurean Coffee & Fig – An impressively unique imperial oatmeal stout featuring Turkish figs and conditioned on toasted Philippine coconut & Kenyan coffee beans. Pouring jet black, there’s tons of roasted coffee and subtler chocolate, while figs play off the coffee, and the coconut offers a toasty, slightly tropical backdrop. 8% ABV.

Flexible ordering allows you to order 2, 4, 6, 8, or 12 total bottles, combining any of the 4 featured beers in any way to get there so that you can easily try all four. Orders ship after our February 18th cut off date.

Order online or at 800-625-8238 Mon-Fri 7 am – 5 pm Pacific. If your Rare Beer Club® membership was a gift, you will be contacted by one of our team members for payment information if you submit your order online.

Click the “Learn More” button for full tasting notes, and to access the order form.

If you wish to get any of these limited selections, please respond to this special offer by 12:00 PM Pacific on Wednesday, February 18th.

Cheers!
Kris Sig

Jolly Pumpkin Agrees to another Rare Beer Club® Exclusive!

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JPartisanAlesHalfCircleI’m fired up.  I just heard back from Jolly Pumpkin’s Head Brewer/Founder, Ron Jeffries, that he wants to do another RBC exclusive for us this year.  The brewery is well known and loved for their funky and sour beers so I suggested that we do some kind of a wild ale this year.  Looks like we’re targeting June, just in time for Father’s Day!  I’ll keep you posted as we firm up on the details of the beer.  We might even do a naming contest with this one be sure to check back with us from time to time.  We’re making a real push to increase the number of exclusives that we run in The Rare Beer Club®.  I’m hopeful that we can nail down more than half of our featured selections this year.

Prost!
Kris

Preparing for our first shipment of canned craft beer!

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Beer-Can-Day-2015These are exciting times in the craft brewing industry to be sure and to make sure we’re able to continue to offer our members the country’s best craft beers, we’re opening up the beers considered for all but the Rare Beer Club® to breweries that only offer their products in cans.   Although some may have reservations about canned beer, rest assured that we wouldn’t be doing it if it didn’t absolutely make sense.  At this time, by not offering canned selections, we’d be limiting the breweries we can work with significantly and that trend is only going to build, limiting us even more over time.  Offering canned selections opens up some of the country’s best breweries like Snake River, Oskar Blues, Cigar City, Surly Brewing Co., and The Alchemist, makers of Heady Topper.  Trust us on this one.  We’ve been doing this over 20 years now and it’s the right call.

Also, today is Beer Can Appreciation Day were we celebrate the day beer was first served in cans 80 years ago today on January 24, 1935!

Prost!
Kris

2015 Will Bring More Rare Beer Club® Exclusives Than Any Previous Year!

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If you’ve been on the fence as to whether or not you want to join or give a gift membership to The Rare Beer Club®, allow me to give you 12 compelling reasons that the time is now. We had set a goal of featuring at least 12 Rare Beer Club exclusive beers in 2015 and with a full 3 weeks to go in this year, it’s looking like we should be able to exceed that as we’ve already either locked down or have gotten fairly solid verbal commitments from the following stellar breweries. It’s going to be a year to remember… If you’re a member!

Here’s what we’re working on:

  1. ssb-logo5Saint Somewhere is brewing a 10% version of their highly coveted Belgian Strong Ale, Lectio Divina.
  2. Les Trois Mousquetaires Signature Series Maibock – We love everything these guys put out and our members will be the first in the US to try this exceptional Maibock.
  3. Sudwerk Brewing’s Funke Hop Farm is a dry-hopped sour saison that only about 100 folks have tried so far. You’re gonna love it.
  4. Prairie Artisan Ales tossed out the notion of doing a Tequila Barrel Aged Imperial Stout last month at The Festival. My gut reaction? “Hell yeah!”
  5. TROIS-MOUSE-new-logoBierbrouwerij De Koningshoeven – La Trappe makes an outstanding bock and our members will be the first to try it in the US marketplace.
  6. Monkish Brewing Company – Everything we’ve ever tried from Monkish is rock solid. Henry wants to make a blended brett focused dry-hopped saison just for our members next year. We’re in.
  7. Brouwerij Wilderen Tripel Kanunnik – An outstanding Belgian Tripel never before distributed in the US.
  8. Jolly Pumpkin – When Ron says he’s game for creating something unique just for our members, we only have to ask when he can do it. Stay tuned.
  9. Telegraph Brewing is on the map as well for a 2015 exclusive. sudwerk1We’re about to rate their Silent Partner Saison.
  10. Odell Brewing – We’ve run a few of Eric’s one-offs over the years and are eager to see what he has in mind for the club next fall.
  11. Pints For Prostates Brewery Collaboration – Every year we partner with PFP and a US brewery to create something really cool for the club and to promote awareness for the organization. The brewery has yet to be named.
  12. Upright Brewing – Alex is doing some really cool stuff up in OR and we can’t wait to dig in with him on what he wants to do for our members.

If you got this far, you know that more than one of the styles above have yet to be determined so let us know what you want and we’ll toss it into the hopper for consideration.

Prost!
Kris

Some Traditions are Better Than Others…

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Anchor Steam KCEvery year for the last 15 or so years, I’ve made a tradition out of hanging our lights and garland with the help Anchor Brewing’s Our Special Ale, their annual Christmas Ale offering.  This year I uncovered a misplaced sixer of last year’s release and decided to compare it to the 2014 release.

The only problem was, and I’m not sure if this really was a problem or not, that with two 5 year olds it now takes me 4 hours to get the job done when I used to be able to bang it out in 2 and after the first 4 beers, I’m not sure I could really tell the difference between the two releases!

Rest assured, I had a good time just the same.

Prost and Happy Holidays!
Kris

 

 

 

The Festival

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The FestivalI attended perhaps the best beer festival that I’ve ever gone to last weekend…And I’ve been to several hundred over the years. The Festival, put on by an importer that we work closely with, Shelton Brothers, had an amazing line up of beers. There wasn’t one bad one in the lot and I tried as many as I could. It was more productive than most as I got to catch up with many brewers we’ve worked with over the years as well as hang out with quite a few new ones to discuss special projects for 2015. We’re going to ramp up our game in The Rare Beer Club and feature even more exclusives that we ran this year (7 all tolled). Stay tuned for further updates on the following breweries: Mystic, Oxbow, Rappi bier factory, Rooie Dop, The Rare Barrel, Siren, Moor, and Side Project, among many, many others!

I only snapped one shot of the current 27 year old co-head brewer at De Molen, John Brus. After hearing a bit about his life and work, I asked him, “You know you’re living the dream, right?”. He knew.

Prost!
Kris

The Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club

The Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club | 1-800-625-8238 (Outside USA call: 949-206-1904) | P.O. Box 1627, Lake Forest, CA 92609