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

DIY Craft Beer Advent Calendar

November 13, 2018 by Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club

The holidays are packed with traditions. Things like Christmas trees, carols, cookie baking, drinking Christmas beers and winter warmers, and frantic, last-minute shopping keep us busy throughout the season, but it’s the little traditions that make it so enjoyable. Customary gifts, like advent calendars, are classic holiday mainstays that plenty of parents give to their kids. What’s not to love about getting a surprise piece of candy every day for 24 days? Count us in. But, what about those who want a little more in their advent calendar? Well, The Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club™ has got the perfect homemade solution: a Craft Beer Advent Calendar.

Yes, you read that right: an entire DIY advent calendar full of sweet, delicious craft beer. The Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club™ has noted the rising popularity of these great gifts, and we’ve decided that it’s time to ensure everyone knows how to make one for the beer enthusiasts in their life. When you give someone a Craft Beer Advent Calendar packed with tasty microbrews, you aren’t just giving them a craft beer Christmas gift – you’re giving them 24 days of great beers. Santa’s got nothing on you.

How to Build a Craft Beer Advent Calendar

Building a Craft Beer Advent Calendar isn’t as easy as grabbing a random box in your house, throwing in your extra/unwanted beer, and putting some wrapping paper over the top. You need the right materials, some spare time, and a little bit of craftiness (or at least those “cut stuff up and glue things together” skills you hopefully mastered in kindergarten).

Start by deciding which design you want to use. There are three common options: square, rectangular, or triangular. You can find plenty of DIY beer advent calendar instructions all over the web, but making your own homemade Craft Beer Advent Calendar doesn’t require a Master’s in structural engineering. The Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club™ has got you covered with the basics.

Materials for a square or rectangular Craft Beer Advent Calendar:

• A box or a case of beer
• Cardboard dividers
• Glue
• Scissors
• Wrapping paper
• A marker

For the square and rectangular options, you can easily use a moving box or a used case of beer, specifically the kind with built-in cardboard dividers – any case of bottled beer should have these. You can choose to lay the box on its side, or keep it flat on its bottom. Simply place your beers into the box, make sure they’re held in place with the dividers, and cover the top with festive wrapping paper. Mark the locations of each beer using the numbers 1-24, and you’re set. Feel free to pat yourself on the back and enjoy a celebration beer (NOT one of the beers from the calendar). If you want, you can add a 25th slot for a little extra something something. More on that below.

Materials for a triangular Craft Beer Advent Calendar:

• Poster/shipping tubes
• Glue
• Scissors
• Wrapping paper
• A marker
• Stickers (optional)

Now, for those with a craftier side, the triangular option offers a little extra fun. You’ll need to buy some long shipping tubes capable of fitting bottles or cans, and then cut these up into 24 even sections. Glue them together however you want, though we suggest making it triangular, as it’ll look a little like a Christmas tree. You could even put a star on top if you’re feeling festive – we won’t judge you.

After gluing the tubes together, fill the tubes with tasty beers, cover the front with a little wrapping paper, and mark the tube openings with the numbers 1-24. You now have a triangular Craft Beer Advent Calendar to give to your best beer buddy. He’s gonna love it.

An important side note that must be mentioned: don’t be lame and fill your Beer Advent Calendar with a case of the same macrobeer. Be creative with the beer you choose by selecting unique beers from all 7 continents. Well, 6 of the 7, at least. We don’t think anyone is brewing in Antarctica (even though that’s an awesome idea). You could be extra festive and fill it with nothing but unique holiday beers!

Keep in mind that a Craft Beer Advent Calendar isn’t confined to Christmas time. Arbor Day, Flag Day, Bring Your Daughter to Work day, it doesn’t matter – you can make the 24 days leading up to any holiday special (and tasty) with your Craft Beer Advent Calendar.

Improving Your Beer Advent Calendar

So, how do you improve on something as awesome as a Beer Advent Calendar? It’s simple, really: you spread that cheer throughout the year.

A traditional advent calendar features 24 slots representing the 24 days leading up to Christmas, but who says that you have to follow tradition? Add a 25th slot, and give your friend a gift that keeps on giving: a membership to The Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club. After all, who doesn’t want amazing craft beers from around the country (and the world) delivered to their door once a month throughout the year? No one, that’s who.

For the widest selection of beers, choose between our brand-new Hop-Heads Beer Club, our U.S. Microbrewed Beer Club, our International Beer Club, or get the best of both worlds with our U.S. and International Variety Beer Club. But, if you’ve got a beer lover who spends their time and energy hunting down the rarest, most obscure beers, we’ll suggest The Rare Beer Club™, our only club that features the world’s best hand-selected rare beers.

Now, go out there, build your own Craft Beer Advent Calendar, and make some lucky beer lover’s Christmas the best one they’ve had. And remember: if you really want to make sure they have the best Beer Year of their lives, give them a membership to The Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club. Santa always likes those who are nice.

52 Brews Names The Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club #1 Recommended Beer Club

November 8, 2018 by Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club

We are pleased to share that we have made it to the top of still yet another beer club comparison review site. 52brews reviewed and ranked 10 different beer clubs and we were named their Top Recommended Beer Club. With nearly 25 years under our belts and five different beer clubs to choose from including our most recently introduced Hopheads Beer Club, we’re not entirely surprised at the news, but honored just the same!

52 Brews highlighted our dedication to our selection process and commitment to featuring quality craft beers year after year as a key differentiation point. It’s been at the heart of our mission statement from our inception and remains to be the single most important thing we do over here. We drink a lot of bad beer so you don’t have to!

We invite you to check out 52 Brew’s Best Beer of the Month Club review yourself.

The Lost Abbey Rare Beer Club Special Offer

July 13, 2018 by Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club

We’re doing something a little different and unprecedented for this latest Rare Beer Club special offer. Tomme Arthur and the team at The Lost Abbey were recently tasting through the brewery’s archives to discover what was at its peak, and, given the long history between Tomme and the club—we’ve been loving his beer since the Pizza Port days—he reached out with some of the very best of The Lost Abbey’s rarest vintage beers. Five of the six offered score 100 points over on RateBeer (the other one’s a 98)—and this is ultimately one of the best collections we’ve ever been able to put together. A chance to taste Lost Abbey history.

NOTE: This the first time we’re offering 375mL bottles within the club! We want to be able to expand on the rare beers we’re able to offer our members going forward, and this seems like the best possible time to expand into smaller-format selections. Lost Abbey has less than 100 cases of each of these releases—for the 2017 Deliverance and 2018 Bat Out of Hell, for instance, there are less than 40 cases left—and once they’re gone, they’re gone. The final two beers offer up the great opportunity to try 2015 and 2018 Number of the Beast side-by-side.

To take part of this exciting offer, visit our Special Offer Page.

Rare Beer Club Naming Contest with Pints for Prostates and Rowley Farmhouse Ales

June 6, 2018 by Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club

We need help naming a beer, and if you help us you can win a 6 month, 2-bottle membership to The Rare Beer Club®! Sounds fun right!?

This contest is our annual collaboration with Pints for Prostates, and this year Rick has secured Rowley Farmhouse Ales, located in Santa Fe, NM, to create their version of a Gotlandsdricka, the indigenous beer of Gotland, Sweden’s largest island. According to Founder and Head Brewer, John Rowley, “It’s our homage to Scandinavian farmhouse ales, which are lesser known, but have been brewed longer than the classic Belgian and French versions. Our take on this historic style contains a portion of birch smoked malt and was mashed and lautered over a false bottom of locally foraged juniper.” The beer will also contain locally foraged juniper berries, gathered from a favorite trail of John’s east of Santa Fe.

The limited-edition label will feature the Pints for Prostates logo, which includes the blue ribbon to remind people of the ongoing search for a cure to prostate cancer, a leading cause of death among American men. “The annual release of a special beer through The Rare Beer Club helps us to connect with guys and urge them to take charge of their health by getting screened for prostate cancer,” said Rick Lyke, a prostate cancer survivor who founded Pints for Prostates after successful prostate cancer surgery in April 2008.

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, June 6^th, 2018. Entrants will have until 2 pm PDT on Wednesday, June 20^th, to submit up to three names.

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 2018, or earlier, to receive this exclusive beer from Rowley Farmhouse Ales.

For more of the nitty gritty including contest rules and how to enter, visit our contest entry page.

Good luck!

Rare Beer Special Offer: Põhjala Brewery

May 14, 2018 by Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club

We’ve had this Estonian brewery on our radar for a few years now, as they’ve been gradually gaining a significant presence across Europe and knocking out collaborations with folks like Stillwater Artisanal, To Øl and De Struise. We’ve collected four of our absolute favorites out of the brewery’s lineup for this offer, each packaged in a carefully designed, 12-ounce bottle: two riffs on imperial Baltic porter, as well as two exceptional imperial stouts. These four are each ideal for sharing, as even the smallest—this Cognac-barrel-aged Baltic porter—lands at 11%+ ABV. Despite the overall strengths of the picks, we singled these individual beers out for being especially smooth examples—and showcasing some truly unique special additions.

For each of these four beers, a total of just over 50 cases was recently brought into the U.S., and we’ve been allocated the majority of each for this Rare Beer Club special offer. (All four of these will otherwise only be available in small quantities at a handful of select accounts.)

To learn more about the beers and to order, visit our Special Offer page.

Cheers!