Inexpensive but Decent Beer of the Month Club?
December 22, 2010 8:35 AM Subscribe
Suggestions for a relatively inexpensive but decent quality beer of the month club (or something similar)?
We need to get my cousin’s husband a Christmas present; the limit is $100 but we could probably go up to $120 if it were really worth it. We’d like to get him a subscription to a beer of the month club (he is a self-described “beer snob”) but everything we can find is really costly because they all seem to send twelve packs of four different types of beer each month, plus the shipping is astronomical. Do you have any suggestions for or experience with less expensive options? If not, is there something similar we could get him that is within our price range? He likes scotch as well but that appears to be more and not less expensive. All suggestions are welcome. Thanks!
We need to get my cousin’s husband a Christmas present; the limit is $100 but we could probably go up to $120 if it were really worth it. We’d like to get him a subscription to a beer of the month club (he is a self-described “beer snob”) but everything we can find is really costly because they all seem to send twelve packs of four different types of beer each month, plus the shipping is astronomical. Do you have any suggestions for or experience with less expensive options? If not, is there something similar we could get him that is within our price range? He likes scotch as well but that appears to be more and not less expensive. All suggestions are welcome. Thanks!
Response by poster: Oooh, good question, I hadn't thought of that -- they live in Connecticut.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 8:50 AM on December 22, 2010
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 8:50 AM on December 22, 2010
Maybe find the local shop where he can buy craft beers and get him a gift card from there?
posted by COD at 8:57 AM on December 22, 2010
posted by COD at 8:57 AM on December 22, 2010
i do not believe it is legal to ship alcohol to connecticut. i used wine.woot as a quick check.
posted by phil at 9:04 AM on December 22, 2010
posted by phil at 9:04 AM on December 22, 2010
This one has options less frequent than every month. I got an every-other-month subscription last year and it was pretty great; I'm still working my way through the beer.
posted by clavicle at 9:33 AM on December 22, 2010
posted by clavicle at 9:33 AM on December 22, 2010
As a fellow beer snob, I wonder if he might have any interest in homebrewing? It is far cheaper to brew many styles of good beer than it is to buy it (light lagers are an exception - they are challenging to brew well and cheap to buy). Teach a man to fish and all that.
Nothern Brewer has some starter kits of equipment. You could get him one of those and a recipe kit.
posted by exogenous at 9:47 AM on December 22, 2010
Nothern Brewer has some starter kits of equipment. You could get him one of those and a recipe kit.
posted by exogenous at 9:47 AM on December 22, 2010
Beer of the month clubs are for people who don't know what they like and want to be exposed to lots of different options. A "beer snob" is likely to know exactly what he enjoys, and chances are pretty low that the beer club people will take his tastes into consideration.
We had a beer-of-the-month gift last year, too, and the fact that there are still some bottles left on our shelves (and we drink a lot of beer – a lot) should probably tell you how we felt about it. That and the immense financial and environmental waste of shipping 12-packs.
Buy the man a bottle or two of good scotch (assuming you can deliver in person).
Also, those same people have been spamming us with junk mail about all sorts of __-of-the-month club ads like crazy for the past year.
posted by halogen at 9:53 AM on December 22, 2010 [2 favorites]
We had a beer-of-the-month gift last year, too, and the fact that there are still some bottles left on our shelves (and we drink a lot of beer – a lot) should probably tell you how we felt about it. That and the immense financial and environmental waste of shipping 12-packs.
Buy the man a bottle or two of good scotch (assuming you can deliver in person).
Also, those same people have been spamming us with junk mail about all sorts of __-of-the-month club ads like crazy for the past year.
posted by halogen at 9:53 AM on December 22, 2010 [2 favorites]
Another beer snob chiming in to echo halogen -- many (most US) beers are really not at all to my taste, and any good scotch is much preferable to a not-to-my-taste beer.
(Trader Joe is selling a very nice Islay single malt named Finlaggan, though that's not the actual distillery, for ~$18 a bottle!)
posted by anadem at 10:03 AM on December 22, 2010
(Trader Joe is selling a very nice Islay single malt named Finlaggan, though that's not the actual distillery, for ~$18 a bottle!)
posted by anadem at 10:03 AM on December 22, 2010
We were given the one linked by clavicle (which looks like it could be configured within your price range) a couple of years ago and on the whole we enjoyed it. I see where halogen is coming from - it's true that we have specific tastes in beer and some of the beer we got didn't hit the mark, but it did get us to branch out a little and in any case, beer arriving of its own volition on a regular basis is kind of awesome. They did send me emails for little while after, but I told them to stop and they did.
posted by yarrow at 10:16 AM on December 22, 2010
posted by yarrow at 10:16 AM on December 22, 2010
As a fellow beer snob, what I'd really want and would gift to another person would be a variety of things from a single brewery in an area that doesn't distribute to where I live. Can you tell us where he lives? Are you in a different part of the country?
posted by deludingmyself at 10:50 AM on December 22, 2010
posted by deludingmyself at 10:50 AM on December 22, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by phil at 8:44 AM on December 22, 2010