Review: Six Beer Clubs

This review, like most of the others on this blog, was initially written for my Herald column. Unlike most of them however, this one was kind of time sensitive. Life happens.

I wrote this for father's day 2015, and rather than wait until father's day 2016, I'm posting it for Mother's Day, because this week we've had International Women's Day a couple of days after Mother's Day. And, well, women like beer too, so you guys might like beer clubs, too, I guess.

So I'm rejigging it slightly for the ladies...

This mother's day, most mum's will be fair chuffed with a lie-in and a mug of tea.

But if you really want to spoil the old dear, order her a box of beer and have it delivered to the door.

Beer clubs have been popping up over the past few years, tapping into the explosion of craft beer as well as the growing confidence in buying drink online.

The idea is simple - you pay a monthly subscription and they send you a box of interesting beers each month or quarter. You then sensibly drink these beers, and, if you like, keep the subscription going. They're a brilliant way for anyone - not just mums - to discover new styles and breweries, especially if you're not lucky enough to live near a good beer shop.

One great beer club is Edinburgh-based Beer52.com. Launched in 2013, founder James Brown got the idea during a motorbike road trip to Spain with his dad. Stopping off at wee pubs and brewhouses, he wanted to share these rare and new-found beers with drinkers back home and so came up with his beer club business idea.

Beer52's subscription is £24 per month and that gets you eight beers to your door. They also throw in occasional free gifts and a copy of Ferment, their excellent beer-focused magazine. Beer-wise, there's a good spread of beers and styles in the box, and they're usually held together by some theme or idea. They work with well-known breweries such as Stewarts, Buxton and Evil Twin, as well as others that are less well known. Heard of Ceriux or Weird Beard?

Like a couple of other beer clubs, Beer52 have started doing collaboration beers with partner breweries. This month, for example, subscribers will receive a rhubarb saison by Borders brewery Tempest. By all accounts it's delicious.
www.beer52.com

Five other beer clubs to join

EeBria
Taking its name (loosely) from the Esperanto for "tipsy", EeBria has two beer clubs: the Discovery and the Brewery. The former contains a mix of styles curated from a range of UK breweries - some well known, other less so - and is designed to offer a balanced selection. The Brewery Club is a showcase of one particular brewery, and is shipped direct so it's fresh from the bottling line. Previous participants include some crackers: The Kernel, Siren, Fyne Ales, Brew By Numbers, Partizan. Costs from £30 for 12 beers plus postage.
www.eebria.com

Hippo Beers
This Glasgow beer specialist now offers a sliding scale of beer clubs, depending on your tastes and wallet size. The team pick you a bespoke selection of beers based on your preferences. With a revolving stock of some 350 beers you can be guaranteed something new, and, unlike some of the larger beer clubs, small-batch beers from wee breweries. Costs from £30.
www.hippobeers.co.uk

Flavourly
Spun out of a gourmet food company, and inspired by the success of other craft beer clubs, Edinburgh-based Flavourly offers bespoke boxes tailored to member's preferences and styles. They also have an online shop, so if there's a beer you want again you can order it with your next box. Cost £20 for eight bottles.
www.flavourly.com

Beer Hawk
What began as a conversation in a bar in Harrogate in 2012 has exploded into a slick online beer retailer that offers an impressive range of good beers from around the world. Since taking the decision to "quit the corporate job to set up a beer company", co-founder Mark Roberts has built up an online retailer that sells individual bottles and mixed cases as well as its premium beer club, which boasts some exclusive beers from partner breweries. Costs £40 plus postage for 15 bottles.
www.beerhawk.co.uk

BeerBods
A little bit different this one. They send you 12 bottles every 12 weeks, with the idea being subscribers drink the same beer each week and share their thoughts with the rest of the BeerBods community. Or you can drink them all in one go and reorder. They work with some great breweries, and boast some pretty cool collaborations: the last one was with a 7% saison from Bristol's Wiper + True. Costs £36 every 12 weeks.
www.beerbods.co.uk

And finally ...
It's also worth mentioning BrewDog who are planning to launch their beer club in the next few weeks. This one, however, is exclusive to their equity-punk shareholders only, so you might want to consider investing in their latest crowdfunding efforts. Details still to be confirmed, but they're looking at a subscription of about £40 for 12 beers a month, though that's still to be confirmed. As well as new and exclusive BrewDog beers, expect some great ales from the likes of Mikeller, Dark Horse and Stone.
www.brewdog.com

Beer review: Vagabond Pale Ale by BrewDog

Vagabond pale ale by BrewDog

A couple of pals of mine are or know someone who has gluten intolerance or coeliac disease, which means they really have to watch what they eat and drink. So I did a bit of digging and found this gluten-free beer by BrewDog, as well as a few others, reviews of which will follow over the next couple of weeks ...

Too much good beer can be a bad thing, but only being able to drink bad beer is not good at all. And not being able to drink any beer at all, good or bad, must be murder. About 1% of the population have coeliac disease, which means their bodies can't cope with a protein found in grains such as wheat, rye and barley - used to make malt for beer - and ingesting it can cause a range of symptoms such as headaches, diarrhoea, nausea, fatigue, and in the most extreme cases, anaphylactic shock. Consequences far worse than even the most punishing hangover then.
Since the explosion in good beers, gluten intolerants and sufferers of coeliac disease have increasingly found their tastes and needs catered to. And so, due to popular demand, over the next few weeks this column will seek out, review and recommend a few good gluten-free beers, ones worth drinking even if gluten doesn't leave you in a curled up ball of pain.

First off is BrewDog's new beer, Vagabond, a 4.5% Pale Ale that was released as a prototype last year but which has now just joined the brewer's Headliners range. It's in some pretty solid company, and stands alongside mighty beers such as Punk IPA, Dead Pony Pale Ale, Five AM Red Ale, This.Is.Lager. and Brixton Porter.

First off, the aroma is a big blast of grapefruit and pineapple. Maybe some peach in there too. The Centennial and Amarillo hops smell delicious and inviting - pretty much what you'd expect a pale ale from the brewing behemoths at BrewDog.

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It pours a lively deep, clear gold with a healthy froth. It looks and smells delicious, and your first sensation on taking a drink is a pleasing hop rush with heaps of bittering - tangerine, grapefruit, resin - that comes in fighting but quickly fades to leave a light-bodied finish with just enough of caramel malt character to satisfy a beer hunger. Towards the end, you're left with a savoury sensation, and a soft dose of grapefuit lingering in the sides of your mouth.

Beer is the news

The Vintage. Crafty new pub in Leith.

Camra have done it again with the jaw-dropping news that the average pint has now topped £3, and in Scotland is a whopping £3.24. Blimey. So, err, I’ve been paying over the average for quite some time now, and have been subsidising some layabout beer scrounger for a considerably long time. But I don’t mind, really. In swell pubs such as Munro’s or Inn Deep you are going to pay more for a decent pint, real, craft or whatever. And you know what, it’s worth it. Paying more than £4 for a pint of generic lager in a poxy, soulless Ashton Lane premises-cum-cinema, however, gets me choking on my dishwater.

But my story of the week is the news that drinking beer makes you want to drink MORE beer. This in-depth and scientifically vital study of 49 male drinkers found that just the very taste of beer makes you want to taste MORE beer. It also - and you better sit down for this - found that having a history of alcoholism in the family, makes YOU more likely to want to take a drink.

Huffington Post made an international public apology

for doubting the magnificence of Crabbie's Ginger Beer.

West Brewery launched a stout. Innis & Gunn launched a lager (and called for more unity among micro-brewers). And BrewDog launched their Fake Lager to take on the dishwater hegemony.

And finally, new craft beer pub The Vintage opened in Leith, Edinburgh. Great news. Good luck guys!

  

Beer is the news

Story of the week has to be BrewDog's brilliantly conceived beer vote in which the Ellon punks invited their followers to design their next beer. That's right, over a week, and using the phrase #Mashtag, Twitter users were each day asked to choose key elements of the new beer.

Here're the results, and they look pretty damned tasty: 
Monday: Beer Style - Brown Ale.
Tuesday: Malt Bill & ABV - American Brown Ale at 7.5% ABV
Wednesday: Hops & IBU - New Zealand Hops and 95 IBU
Thursday: Special Twist - adding Hazelnuts and oak chips
Friday: Name -  #Mashtag

You should check out the BrewDog blog. As well as seeing the other options for each day, you get an idea of how all these flavours and methods work together, with good explanations on the brewing processes. Anyway, as a final twist BrewDog are also letting folks design the label. Plan is they'll start brewing very, very soon, with the first batch ready in about a month.

Anyway, it was a beautiful stunt, got a good hit online and in papers, and was in keeping with BrewDog's off-the-wall modus operandi. I'm sure it'll be lovely, but my worry is that, given the British electorate's tendency for blinkered stupidity, that the beer will be as uninspiring and unpalatable as our current government. Thank goodness then that craft beer drinkers aren't as braindead as the majority of UK voters. 

Also newsworthy, Munro's in Glasgow had their official opening, and I got leathered. Highlights were the Arbor Oyster Stout and Redchurch's Bethnel Pale Ale. 

And, finally, Cheerless News of the Week is how George Osborne became posterboy for British beer drinkers by giving the industry a mediocre tax break and removing a much-hated duty escalator that was generally considered to be the chief cause of thousands of pub closures.

In the following article, Camra chief executive Mike Benner said: "The Chancellor has become the toast of Britain's cash-strapped beer drinkers and we should now be paying around 10p less per pub pint than we would have been had the escalator remained in place in last week's Budget. This is a massive victory for Britain's 15 million beer drinkers."

I have not and will not be toasting Mr Osborne, and, frankly, I'd quite happily keep paying that 10p. I think on a ten-pint bender I can afford to waste another pound. Drinkers in dire poverty will be pleased, no doubt. Shame about the axe in welfare, social fund and council tax benefits, the imposition of the bedroom tax, removal of legal aid, tax credit reduction, public sector cuts, etc. 

What is worth raising a glass to is Mr Osborne's economy-salving decision to reduce the tax bill faced by millionaires. It's this kind of forward-thinking, groundbreaking vision that'll have this economy restored in no time - and the guy's not even an economist!! My millionaire beer-drinking readers out there, I trust YOU will be raising two glasses to Mr Osborne. 

Now, it really is good that the duty escalator has been removed, following hearty campaigning by Camra et al, and thousands of pub closures and job losses. Call me cynical, but I think this only happened because the duty escalator was starting to affect some of the larger breweries' bottom line. Maybe one of their non-exec board members went to the same school as Mr Osborne, maybe he had a wee word over dinner. Anyway, I hope he's toasting Mr Osborne. He can certainly afford to. 

Beer is the news

Black Isle Cold Turkey

Blimey, story of the week has to be the international outrage at the truly irresponsible creation of a - mother of all evils - low alcohol breakfast beer by those Taliban-loving brewers Black Isle.

In a move which has done more for global insecurity than Kim Jong-un letting his toddler do his colouring-in on the country's non-aggression pacts, Black Isle have begun selling a weak, hoppy craft beer, targeting hardened alcoholics, nightshift workers, over-indulgers and early risers. 

Beer is the News

Petra Wetzel. Image: Kirsty Anderson/Newsquest

For reasons I can't yet fathom, Arran Brewery's plans to open a bottling plant in Falkirk are dashed due to the Scottish Government declining to fund them a paltry £1million. Tight arses. Arran said this was a major blow, and although the jobs that won't be created would have been in that hotbed of employment, Falkirk, it could in fact jeopardise the 20 or so jobs on Arran: without a drop in operational costs (from the bottling plant), the rise in duty as a result of Arran's merger with the Isle of Skye brewery could push their margins from tiny to negligible to even negative. Ouch.

I don't know. Is this a hint of a sea change in the support for wee breweries in Scotland, which in recent  years has seen a spate of new ones come online and more established ventures grow? Or has Arran gone too far or too quick? Maybe they pissed off some bureaucrat in the poetically named Food Processing, Marketing and Co-operation department. Maybe they didnae fill in the form right.

Who knows.

Anyhow, the Brew Gods are still shining on BrewDog, whose funding model is clearly very different to Arran's. The Ellon Mavericks have just announced more growth, more expansion and more jobs. Blimey.

Meanwhile, darling of the bier world, Petra Wetzel, of West Brewery in Glasgow, goes head to head in an insightful, and rather personal, interview with The Herald's Susan Swarbrick. She's currently reading the painfully over-rated Life of Pi and includes Neil Diamond among her favourite artistes. Check out the article for more insights into lager's leading lady.

Beer is the news

Full Malted Jacket. It's heavy, man. 

Proving that news flows faster downhill than up, The Guardian finally got round to reporting on BrewDog's continuing global domination ... about a month since Everybody and their Mum first reported James Watt and Matin Dickie's plans to bring their BrewDog chain to foreign shores, including Stockholm, Sao Paolo, Brussels and Tokyo.

To be fair to The Guardian, this story was only the hook on which to peg a larger piece about the Craft Beer Rising event in London (which attracted 1000 beer-buyers and 2000 hip London beer-drinkers and judging by the Twitter chatter was AWESOME!!! and A1!!!) and also threw in some pretty interesting beer business facts, such as:

• Sales of real ale have been boosted, rising for the first time in 20 years in 2011, with 1.6% more drunk than the year before. Last year sales are thought to have levelled out but real ale continues to outperform the wider beer market which has been hit by the economic downturn.
• Pubs may be closing at the rate of 18 a week but there are more than 1,000 microbreweries in Britain, according to Camra, with more than 160 opening last year.
• A new breed of pub catering for trendy young beer fans is springing up, such as the Craft Beer Company, which now has four bars, and the Euston Tap in London.
• Canada-based brewing giant Molson Coors UK has said that the craft beer market grew 13% year-on-year in the UK in 2012, and doubled in Ireland.
• Europe is following a trend in the US where craft beer sales nearly doubled between 2007 and 2012 to $12bn, according to market research firm Mintel. Over there the beers are most popular with 25 to 34-year olds, raising hopes that the trend will foster a younger generation of pint fans.

Nice.

Then there was the piece about Lothian brewer Knops Beer Company's expansion plans. Interesting to note that Robert Knops's beer is brewed at Traditional Scottish Ales in Stirling, along with a number of other microbrewers, including Fallen. Knops's expansion will allow him to brew his own beer on his own site under his own watchful eye, giving him full control over the whole process. It also means he doesn't have to hand over any of his precious recipes to strangers.

Lastly, American bevvy merchants Beachwood BBQ have launched their Full Malted Jacket ale.  Hundred-yard death stare aside, they badge this up as a Scottish-style "wee heavy". It's a mere 9.7%, which, by the way, is the amount of Scottish DNA in the US population. I kid you not. Available in Southern California, if you're ever passing...