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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

Rare Beer Special Offer: Põhjala Brewery

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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!

 

National Beer Day!

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we-want-beerOn March 22, 1933 President Franklin Roosevelt signed an amendment to the Volstead Act known as the Cullen-Harrison Act, a law to allow people to brew and sell beer (as long as it was under 4% ABV). Once signed, President Roosevelt was famously quoted “I think this would be a good time for a beer.”

On April 7, 1933 the Cullen-Harrison Act went into effect and for the first time in thirteen years hundreds of people gathered outside taverns, pubs, and breweries to buy and drink their first legal beer.

As you join in on the celebrations on National Beer Day, what brew are you reaching for?

Cheers!

2017 Holiday Special Offer!!

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It’s our pleasure to bring you another Rare Beer Club® Special Offer! This 2017 Holiday Offer features four limited-production and limited-distribution beers, each of which impressed us greatly and truly represent excellent choices to accompany good times during the holiday period. 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.

  1. The Spencer Brewery: 2015 Trappist Holiday Ale – (Authentic Trappist Holiday Ale) A lightly spiced holiday ale from Spencer, after two+ years of cellaring behind it, it’s developed into something sublime. Aged notes of rich caramels and more contribute layers that expand this beer into something else, giving it entirely new dimensions. 9% ABV.
  2. Brouwerij Van Steenberge: Piraat Special Reserve – (Rum-Barrel-Aged Piraat Ale (Belgian Strong Golden Ale))That sweet and floral underlying character from the rum barrel is a great match to the peppery, honeyed core of Piraat, and together these things do magical stuff. 10.5% ABV.
  3. Humbolt Brewing Company: 2015 Black Xantus – (Barrel-Aged Imperial Java Stout)An imperial java stout, brewed with a fair-trade, organic coffee sourced from Joebella Coffee Roasters in the nearby town of Atascadero, and it then gets barrel-aged for six months in a combination of bourbon, wine and Firestone Union barrels. It’s unlike anything else we’ve had. 11% ABV.
  4. The Bruery: White Chocolate – (Bourbon-Barrel-Aged Wheatwine Ale w/ TCHO Cacao Nibs & Fresh Vanilla Beans)This beer is an experience. A mischievously pale, golden-orange offering that simultaneously provides a deftly balanced impact of bourbon, chocolate and cocoa. The TCHO cacao nibs and fresh vanilla beans that go into the core profile of this beer do exceptional work, providing a dense main structure for the rest of this to unfold. 13.8% 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 July 31 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 Monday, November 20, 2017.

Cheers!

 

American Beer Day

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With so many beer celebration days now, it’s hard to keep track which one is coming next. With International Stout Day just around the corner (The first Thursday in November), we have more than enough beer to talk about in the next few weeks! Today’s focus, though, is National American Beer Day.

To join in the celebration, I wanted to review a bottle from our friends at Shmaltz: Jewbelation (17): REBORN. With over 20 years of brewing, Shmaltz produced this beer in celebration of their end of contract brewing and the opening of their own brewery location in Clifton Park, NY back in 2013.

This beer pours a crazy dark mahogany with a persistent tan head. On the nose there is quite the complexity from the 17 malts with notes of heavily roasted coffee, brown sugar, and chocolate dancing over forward layers of fruitiness – figs, plums, and stewed apples. The 17 hops have faded in the last four years but you can still see some of their life in the very end of the nose with a light waft of hop spice. Underneath it all is a welcomed whisky-like booziness just to remind you that it is 17%.

On the palate, you basically experience the nose in reverse. The whisky note comes front and center, but is balanced out with some fresh roasted coffee notes and chocolate. The flavors linger out to the fruits shown in the nose but settle on a warming baking spice finish. The body on this one was so massive, it was basically a meal in of itself. Overall, an awesome beer experience and I hope I can find one more bottle to cellar to celebrate an American Beer Day in the future.

Thank you America the Beautiful and God bless our amber waves of grain!

~CJ

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