back to store

800.625.8238

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

Beyond the Bottle: Traditional Gruit Ales

May 19, 2022 by Ken Weaver

jopen gritty young thing bottleGruits tend to be understood today as beers that use something other than hops to provide their bittering elements. But that sense of hops as an essential part of beer—alongside water, barley, and yeast, and sometimes a few other things—is a relatively recent one. In The Oxford Companion to Beer’s entry on gruits (written by the reliable Dick Cantwell, and referencing the key text “Sacred and Herbal Healing Beers” by Stephen Harrod Buhner), gruits are described as “a generic term referring to the herb mixtures used to flavor and preserve beer before the general use of hops took hold in the 15th and 16th centuries in Europe.” So, 500 years of hop dominance (ballpark) for a beverage that’s been around since (ballpark) at least 7,000 BCE.

Gruit mixtures varied depending upon what was locally available—but common inclusions were sweet gale/bog myrtle, yarrow, and wild rosemary, while all sorts of other ingredients could be included as well: ginger, caraway, juniper, cinnamon… even some hops. While the socio-economic influences that led to the shift away from these (sometimes psychotropic…) ingredients is way past what I could possibly fit into this column space, it’s pretty fascinating for anyone who’d like an herbaceous deep dive into weird beer history.

Gruits are still pretty uncommon on the whole, with some of my favorites over the past 10 years or so being Upright’s Special Herbs (which hasn’t been made in years) and Moonlight Brewing’s gruit-inspired seasonal Working for Tips (which uses fresh redwood branches instead of hops). A recent SF Chronicle cited the efforts of Moonlight, Woods Beer, and Mad Fritz here in the Bay Area as being a local resurgence of gruit—but a lot of the stuff mentioned is either super limited or been around for a while. Gruits are still pretty far out there in our hop-centic beer world today, but they can also offer a neat peak into our past.

Posted in: Beer Education, Interesting Beer Info, Notes from the Panel

Beyond the Bottle: Tea Beers

April 15, 2022 by Ken Weaver

brasserie dunham concubine labelOne of Rare Beer Club’s two featured beers this month is Brasserie Dunham’s Concubine, a saison brewed with rice, Lemondrop hops, and matcha tea. For folks who’ve been with the club for a bit now, you might remember its predecessor, Pale Duck: Dunham’s dry-hopped and tea-infused saison that appeared in the club a few years back. (Pale Duck was itself based on one of Dunham’s early core offerings: Leo’s Early Breakfast IPA, which used guava and Earl Grey tea.) Digging through the RBC archives, some long-time members may also recall Jolly Pumpkin’s Bière de Goord and Fantôme’s Magic Ghost (both featuring green tea).

As for readily available tea beers… Your best bet might just be stumbling upon one at your local brewery. A whole bunch of folks have been dabbling with tea additions in recent years. Dogfish Head’s Sah’tea, made with foraged juniper berries and black tea, was one of the big tea-beer releases early on, but it’s more a memory at this point. Bottle Logic’s more recent Teacursion Tropical Tea IPA was based on its delicious Recursion IPA, with black tea. And Guinness’ Open Gate Brewery and Barrel House in Maryland recently released cans of Breakfast Tea Amber (made with Irish breakfast tea) for St. Patrick’s Day. Still, wee releases.

Try any tea beers besides this month’s feature? Got a local brewery experiment with some sort of tea addition? Let us know what’s good on Twitter via @RareBeerClub.

Posted in: Featured Selections, Interesting Beer Info, Notes from the Panel

Rare Beer Club The Lost Abbey Special Offer

April 4, 2022 by Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club

Rbc Logo

We’re very excited to have the opportunity to work with our friend Tomme Arthur and the team at The Lost Abbey to bring our members a selection of six limited release beers that are not only difficult to find, but also downright delicious.

A list of the beers appears below, but we encourage you to visit the special offer page for full tasting notes and access to the order form.

Please Note: All beers are 500-ml (16.9-oz) bottles.

  1. Libri Divini – Oak-Aged Wild Ale with Lemon & Vanilla. 7% ABV.
  2. Framboise de Amorosa – Sour Abbey Dubbel Ale aged in French Oak Barrels with Raspberries. 8.5% ABV.
  3. Judgment Day – Abbey Quadrupel w/ Raisins. 10.2% ABV.
  4. Infinite Silence – Barleywine Ale aged in Fresh Oak Barrels. 12.5% ABV.
  5. Serpent’s Stout – Imperial Stout. 11% ABV.
  6. Church on the Hill – Barrel-Aged Imperial Stout with Mostra Coffee & Vanilla. 13.7% ABV

Flexible ordering allows you to order 4, 6, 8, 12, 18, or 24 total bottles, combining any of the six featured beers in any way to get there so that you can easily try them all.

ORDER ONLINE or at 800-625-8238 Mon – Fri, 7am – 4 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.

Learn More for full tasting notes, and to access the order form.

The order cut-off for this Special Offer is 12:00 PM Pacific on Tuesday, April 12th. Orders will begin shipping out about a week later.

Cheers!
Kris Sig

 

 

Kris Calef
President, The Rare Beer Club®

Posted in: Featured Selections, In the News

Beyond the Bottle: Outside Food Welcome

March 15, 2022 by Ken Weaver

While our travels around the Bay Area have obviously been dialed down the past few years, my wife and I and our good friends have been finding some really great brewery + outside-food options lately. A lot of breweries out here don’t serve food but do allow you to bring in orders from outside restaurants—and both the beer and food options can be phenomenal. Our low-key habit is to pick up Vietnamese food on the way to Moonlight Brewing, pairing hoppy lagers and English-style ales with spicy chicken wings and bahn mi. But when we’ve got time: we head to Temescal Brewing in Oakland, ultimately a beer (and food) paradise.

Temescal happens to be tucked into one of the tastiest spots of the Bay Area we’ve found (and they welcome outside food). Most recently, we’ve taken to ordering online at Burma Superstar, swinging by Temescal to grab a table and an initial round of beers, then two of us do the half-mile food-pickup loop while others chill. The walk there isn’t amazing but smells beautiful: Korean- and American-style BBQs, Thai soul food, ramen shops, fried chicken to-go, tofu houses out the wazoo… All of which pair quite easily with Temescal’s lineup, which (in addition to incredible IPAs and heftier options) features some really stellar sub-5% beers. Sipping crisp lagers and English-style pale ales with tea leaf salad and pork belly with pickled mustard greens… well, it’s our favorite brewery and outside-food combo we’ve found so far.

Have a favorite combo of your own? Do breweries near you even allow on-site food to be brought in? Have a brewery + favorite food truck? Want to just rave about Burmese food? Let us know how your local scene’s looking via @RareBeerClub on Twitter.

Posted in: In the News

Beyond the Bottle: 5 Classic Cherry Beers

February 15, 2022 by Ken Weaver

Oude Kriek Vieille bottleAside from the sample bottle of Oude Kriek Vieille crossing my desk this month, it’s been a while since I’ve had a cherry beer. It got me flipping through my copy of LambicLand, and scrolling through old cherry-beer notes, and I wanted to revisit (and suggest, if you haven’t tried these already) five classic cherry beers I’m really looking forward to trying again. Let us know on Twitter via @RareBeerClub what classic cherry beers come to mind for you.

Russian River Supplication (to start off with a local) is generally my go-to on the Belgian-style side of their menu. Transcendent dark nectar featuring sour cherries and aged in Pinot Noir barrels, including a mixed ferment of Brett, Lacto, and Pedio. New Glarus Wisconsin Belgian Red always felt like the perfect Thanksgiving beer, brimming with over a pound of Door County Montmorency cherries per bottle (working out to like 600 grams/L, if I didn’t screw up the math). Vibrant cherry-pie character and effervescence; perfect for turkey. Shout out to Matt for the Midwest pickups. Cantillon’s Lou Pepe Kriek, which was weirdly my first sour beer, features 300 grams per liter of Schaerbeek cherries with two-year-old lambic, and it packs an expressively acidic, cherry-laden punch (ditto for 3 Fonteinen’s Schaarbeekse Kriek). Lost Abbey Cuvee de Tomme adds in raisins, candi sugar, and fermentation inside of a Bourbon barrel, resulting in a huge and hugely unique classic cherry beer. And can’t help but mention Rodenbach Alexander: a blend of aged and fresh beers with macerated sour cherries added, first brewed in 1986 for what would have been Alexander Rodenbach’s 200th birthday. A brilliant special release from Rodenbach that aged very gracefully (my first taste was from a bottle hitting its prime around 10 years), this thankfully got un-retired in 2016.

Posted in: Featured Selections, In the News, Notes from the Panel

Beyond the Bottle: The Year in Beer Ahead

January 15, 2022 by Ken Weaver

I don’t often do resolutions, but I try to take my physical and mental wellbeing seriously, and the start of a new year’s a great time to reassess and figure out how to tighten things up a bit. Personally, in addition to adding a few more off-drinking days to my usual schedule, I’d also (pandemic willing) like to get back to reconnecting with people through local beer hangouts. I’ve been in my work bunker for the past four+ years, and these last two really haven’t made anything easier in terms of re-engaging. Been working long-ass days trying to get my art stuff off the ground, and it’ll just be nice to continue getting back out into the world a bit more.

So yeah, this year I’d like to get back to reconnecting through beer. I feel like I know myself a bit better now, feel like I’ve made some pretty big personal changes, and kicking back with a few beers and strangers and settling into a conversation sounds like one of the best things ever. Lord knows what the latest variant is going to do to public spaces in 2022, but at least I’d like to get back to hosting more small stuff in the beer garden with our vaccinated peeps. I’m honestly looking forward to whatever shitstorm this upcoming year has in store for us. Whatever you’re working on, I hope you find lots of strength and success with it this year.

How you holding up? Got any beer-related projects or resolutions you’re working on? Have anything in the beer world you’re looking forward to in 2022? Let us know what’s good on Twitter via @RareBeerClub.

Posted in: In the News, Notes from the Panel

Beyond the Bottle: Winter Beers

December 15, 2021 by Ken Weaver

harpoon winter warmer bottleWe recently fired up our house’s heater for the first time this season, which means we’re well into winter seasonals over here in Sonoma County. Sierra Nevada Celebration hit the shelves a couple weeks before I’m writing this, and that initial 12-pack of hoppy-amber goodness did not last long in our fridge whatsoever. My wife was pumped to see Anchor Christmas Ale hit shelves shortly therafter; that’s her go-to winter pickup, and a pretty consistently tasty spiced beer despite the annual recipe tweaks. For how regularly we’ve been pouring IPAs, pale ales, or hoppy lagers from our household’s kegerator—this time of year marks a welcome shift.

What have you been picking up as the weather gets cooler? Back when we lived on the east coast and had more immediate access to Belgian offerings, we’d often pick up St. Bernardus Christmas Ale, Corsendonk Christmas Ale, and—likely the one we’d both pick if we could only choose one—Brasserie Dupont’s incredible Avec les Bons Voeux. Do you have local winter seasonals that you look forward to every year? Old-school winter classics you can’t wait to see on shelves? Or are you just hanging tight somewhere tropical, sipping hazy IPA, blissfully unaware of the seasons? Let us know what’s good on Twitter @RareBeerClub.

Posted in: Interesting Beer Info, Notes from the Panel

  • « Newer Entries
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • …
  • 39
  • Older Entries »
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Twitter

Check out our Beer Clubs

  • U.S. Microbrewed Beer Club
  • U.S. and International Variety Club
  • Hop Heads Beer Club
  • International Beer Club
  • Rare Beer Club

Beer Lovers’ Pages

  • Beer Naming Contests
  • US Brewery Directory
  • Craft Beer Styles

Beer Topics

  • Beer Education
  • Beer Events
  • Beer Humor
  • Featured Selections
  • In the News
  • Interesting Beer Info
  • Member of the Month
  • Notes from the Panel
  • Recipes and Pairings
  • Uncategorized
Join our Beer Club or Give a Gift Membership

Recent Posts

  • DIY Craft Beer Advent Calendar
  • Rare Beer Club Special Offer – Les Trois Mousquetaires
  • Beyond the Bottle: Been a Pleasure Exploring Beer with You
  • Rare Beer Club Special Offer – The Bruery
  • Beyond the Bottle: Dabbling in “Cold IPA”
Sign up for our rss feed

Archives

Beer Bloggers Conference

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