While some people have fun going to craft breweries or local spots to get beer, that’s not everyone’s thing. You can try out new beers, expand your hops experience or even give a gift membership with a beer club subscription.
A monthly beer club lets you sample both new and nostalgic flavors from around the country — or even around the globe — and they come in every size, flavor and theme you could imagine. Stouts, IPAs, microbrews, regional and seasonal varieties all have some type of subscription these days, and we’ve tested a bushel of beer clubs to find the best of the brews on a budget.
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Some of the beer subscription boxes on this list don’t leave much of the beer selection up to you, but not so with Beer Drop. This beer delivery box startup offers different plans, but with all of them, you can select your favorite type of beer and specific beer styles that go into your monthly craft beer subscription box shipments. That includes IPAs, fruit-forward beers, Belgian beer and plenty of other beers with a variety of tasting notes.
Monthly drops of microbrewery offerings start at $50 per month, plus $8 for shipping and handling, for five beers and your subscription can be canceled anytime. Also notable: The Beer Drop brews are all canned, so you’ll never have to worry about a broken bottle.
Pros:
Allows you to help curate the deliveries based on your taste
Some of the more interesting beers I tried came from this club
Cons:
On the expensive side
Some beers in my shipment were fairly common
<div content="LIST ITEM" superlative="Best beer club for hyperlocal offerings" description="
If you’re looking for outside-the-box brewing, Brewvana is the beer club for you. Brewvana, the beer subscription that’s now known as City Brew Tours, offers interesting beers from a single beer-brewing region like Des Moines, Iowa. The company’s Brews Less Traveled Beer Club highlights one new "undiscovered" beer city each month. Each shipment includes eight different beers: two beers from four breweries in whatever city is on tap that month. In my shipment highlighting Lexington, Kentucky, I got a smattering of beers ranging from the more familiar to the highly unusual — think berry cobbler sours and Kentucky bourbon barrel ales.
Brewvana members can enjoy interactive live streams and a drink-along podcast to enhance each month’s tasting. The cost is $70 per month for eight beers if you sign up for six months prepaid. For three-month subscriptions, the cost jumps to $75. The standard monthly plan costs $80 per month. Shipping is an additional — but flat rate — $5 across all plans.
Pros:
Highlights a single beer-producing region
Lots of good information included
Cons:
Expensive
Some of the beers were too experimental for my taste
If hops make you happy, this is the monthly club for you (or another hoppy beer lover you’d like to treat). The HopHeads Beer Club sends three different hops-centric beers — four of each — every month so you can get your fill of this beer style.
While this is, unsurprisingly, heavy on IPAs of various styles, it also makes room for hoppy pale ale and red ales. These aren’t just super-bitter hop-you-over-the-head beers, though; the club also spotlights “the many hop flavors and aromas available to today’s brewers amidst the ever-expanding supply of new hop varieties,” and includes imports as well as American selections. If this is your favorite beer style, the Hop Heads Beer Club is the one. Pricing starts at $42, plus $16 shipping, per month.
Pros:
Great for hoppy beer drinkers
Starts at $42 per month
Cons:
Only three types of beer in each delivery
Extra $16 for shipping
<div content="LIST ITEM" superlative="Best beer club for rare beers" description="
The Rare Beer Club is the most selective of them all, featuring only two 750ml bottles of beer a month. It sends two separate styles of craft beer per month and no two months will see the same bottle picks at your door (unless you request or reorder). Don’t be discouraged by the limited choices; it’s quality you’re here for, and these beers are carefully chosen.
You have three buying options: two 750ml bottles per month ($44 plus $15 for shipping), four 750ml bottles per month ($66 plus $19 for shipping) or six 750ml bottles per month ($88 plus $24 for shipping). Often these beers use rare production techniques and ingredients, making them exceptional craft beer, like aging through blending or in bourbon and cedar barrels. Plus, you’ll get super-rare brews from all over the world, including from up-and-coming breweries in Brazil, Japan and Scandinavia.
Beer clubs and subscriptions are a great way to try rare and small-bath beers you might not have access to otherwise. If you long to try specialty ales and lagers that go beyond what’s available in your package store, a good beer subscription will help you do it.
All the beer clubs on our list make it easy to cancel or pause your subscription if you need to. If there is a lengthy commitment of monthly payments, it is clearly stated before signing up.
