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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

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

Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales & The Rare Beer Club Beer Naming Contest

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So you didn’t win the grand prize in our recent beer naming contest with Yazoo and are weeping tears of sorrow into your freshly poured glass of Space Ace Oddity. Am I right? A bit of a tangent first. Did you dig that beer as much as I did? A fellow craft beer lover and vendor we work with sent me a bottle a year or so ago when it was first introduced to a very limited Michigan market and I was genuinely floored which doesn’t happen much these days. Really, really love that beer and hope you did too.

So on with the good news. You’ve got one more chance this year to win a 6 month, 2-bottle membership to The Rare Beer Club by naming our next exclusive beer, brewed by none other than craft beer legend Ron Jeffries at Jolly Pumpkin!

Ron wasn’t sure he could work us into his production schedule this year when I first pinged him in the new year, but then he reached out a couple months back and asked if I was still interested because he was kicking around a Blackberry Pumpkin Saison recipe that would work nicely in October. It took all of a nanosecond for me to concur that this was indeed a primo idea.

We’ve done 6 exclusives with Jolly Pumpkin over the last 23 years and in all honesty…No seriously, I really mean it…They all kicked ass. You will not be disappointed and it will indeed be an honor to have been the one to name it so put down your device, bust out a yellow pad and start noodling on some ideas.

Wait. Don’t power down just yet. Are you still there? There’s some stuff you gotta know first.

The beer is a 7.0% Spelt Saison that’s been aged for 7 months in oak foeders which will contribute spice, and sour fruit notes developed through barrel aging and naturally occurring Brettanomyces yeast and Lactobacillus bacteria. Perle, Vanguard and Southern Cross hops were used along with pilsner malts and spelt to make the beer. A pumpkin and blackberry puree was added to the oak foeders 3 months into their resting period.

Here’s another secret squirrel tip. The last 5 JP beers featured were named Ursae Majoris, Los Vivos y Los Muertos, Rosie Del Barrio, Lupulo de Hielo, and Biere de Goord so you could say there seems to be a bias toward foreign language based names. Don’t let me stifle your creativity baby. Run with what feels good. I’m just sayin’…

Here’s what you need to know to play, good people of Gotham.

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 Monday, June 26th, 2017. Entrants will have until 2 pm PDT on Monday, July 17th, to submit up to three names. That gives you a week to think about each name! You can do this!

Finalists will be chosen by The Rare Beer Club and Jolly Pumpkin on July 20th, at which time contestants, club members, and the general public can vote for their favorite name. The winning entry will be announced on Wednesday, July 26th 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 October 2017, or earlier, to receive this exclusive beer from Jolly Pumpkin.

Have fun!

Prost!
Kris

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

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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 24th, 2017. Entrants will have until 2 pm PDT on Monday, June 12th, 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 14th, 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 22nd 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

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!

Limited Offering Smokey and the Bois

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bruery-smokey-and-the-bois

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

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