In the News Archives - Page 6 of 14 - Craft Beer Blog from The Beer of the Month Club

National Beer Day!

April 7, 2017 by Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club

On 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

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

The Rare Cigar Club

September 29, 2016 by Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club

Now, in addition to our Original Premium Cigar Club™, we are offering a new high-end club, The Rare Cigar Club™! Each shipment will contain four hand-rolled, rare, small-batch cigars. Each cigar featured is extremely limited in production, made with the highest quality aged tobaccos, and typically boasts a retail value between 12 and 25 dollars.

One highlight from The Rare Cigar Club’s inaugural shipment is the Graycliff 10-Year Vintage Maduro Pirate, a Honduran-made Torpedo made by masterblender Enrico Garzaroli with a fully-matured Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper and extensively aged long-fillers from Honduras and Nicaragua. Other sticks include Partagas Aniversario 170 Salomone which features a 4-country blend, La Aroma de Cuba Mi Amor Reserva Maximo that has a 94-rating from Cigar Aficionado, and La Palina Black Toro featuring a stunning oily ultra-dark Brazilian wrapper.

To learn more about The Rare Cigar Club and other exclusive cigars available through The Premium Cigar of the Month Club, visit The Rare Cigar Club page.

Jolly Pumpkin’s Rosie del Barrio Lives!

May 9, 2016 by Kris Calef

How cool is this label? I couldn’t be more pleased with this project. From start to finish, Ron Jeffries, co-founder and head brewer for Jolly Pumpkin, has been super cool about creating a beer to pay tribute to an old friend of mine, Rosie, my 19 year old Maine Coon cat that passed last October. We wanted to make a big and unique red ale to match his personality and have the beer community and our customers name the beer. The people chose “Rosie del Barrio”, loosely translated to Rosie in the hood, which is pretty appropriate as he always pretty much made himself at home in my neighbor’s houses and was always largely considered a neighborhood cat.

Ron just sent over the label design today and I absolutely LOVE IT! It actually really looks a bit like the neighborhood I lived in when we were just starting the business and where Rosie spent his rowdy teenage years. In fact, the label is pretty much the view from my old bedroom window and front porch. Tom’s house is on the left, Jerry’s on the right. Rosie in fact did used to jump from Tom’s roof to Jerry’s roof all the time (Not until this day did I note the irony of my neighbors being named Tom & Jerry). He’d get up on Tom’s roof by climbing a big avocado tree we had in the courtyard. It was a solid little community and Rosie was a big part of it.

Adam Forman is the artist behind Jolly Pumpkin’s labels and is a longtime friend of Ron and Laurie Jeffries.

Nice work Adam! Thank you!

Prost!
Kris

Pints for Prostates Elevation Rare Beer Club Beer Naming Contest

April 28, 2016 by Kris Calef

That’s right, we’re doing still yet ANOTHER beer naming contest! It’s just that we feel really bad for all the folks that still haven’t taken home the grand prize of a 6 month, 2-bottle membership to The Rare Beer Club, so we’re giving you still another chance…Make it count because there’s a good chance that this may be the last one this year. Don’t hold me to it. We still have slots in October and December to fill and I’d like to get as many exclusives in the club as possible this year.

This contest is our annual collaboration with Pints for Prostates, and this year Rick has secured Colorado’s Elevation Beer Company to be the honored brewery to create a beer to help PFP help educate dudes about getting properly screened for prostate cancer. Suffice to say…It’s a really worthy cause, people. The last time Elevation participated in this effort, they brewed an 8.5% smoked Dopplebock and the name that won the contest that year was one of my all-time favorites…Prostator!

I got super fired up when talking to head brewer and co-founder Christian Koch about the beer he has in mind this year. He said something like, “I’m thinking about a blonde barleywine kinda beer made with a shit-ton of wheat and aged in Sauvignon Blanc barrels…What do you think of that?” Just kidding. He didn’t say “shit-ton”, but I wouldn’t have been offended if he did. Anyway, I was thinking to myself, “Self…That sounds mighty fine to me! I’ve never heard of such a thing. Tell me more!”

So we’re calling it an American Wheat Wine. It’s being aged in freshly emptied Sauvignon Blanc barrels for six months. Been in barrels for a little over a month now and the nose is currently showing fruity white wine, light oak, and a mild hop bitterness. It’s going to pick up more of the barrel remnants, of course, as it rests longer. He’s making it with 50% malted white wheat. It’s gonna be pretty full bodied with a starting gravity of 25 plato (1.106 SG). Here are the tasting notes so far, straight from the brewer, that were no doubt composed when he snapped the photo in this post (what a sweet back porch, ya?): “This beer pours a beautiful golden color and has aromas of fruity white wine, light oak, and a mild hop bitterness. The flavor of our Wheat Wine is extremely complex. With 50% malted white wheat, is a full bodied beer with fruity notes of peach, lime, and passion fruit. This beer will age extremely well and flavors will meld and mellow over time.”

It’s gonna be cool.

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 Thursday, April 28^th, 2016. Entrants will have until 2 pm PDT on Thursday, May 12^th, to submit up to three names.

Finalists will be chosen by The Rare Beer Club, Pints for Prostates, and Elevation Beer Co., at which time contestants, club members, and the general public can vote for their favorite name. The winning entry will be announced on Friday, May 20^th, 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 2016, or earlier, to receive this exclusive beer from Elevation Beer Co.

Have fun!

Prost!
Kris