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There’s always a good reason to crack open a nice cold, crisp beer on a cozy evening. After all, who doesn’t deserve a little treat now and then? With the winter months on the way, there are plenty of new flavors and styles at the store and at events like Oktoberfest. But enjoying all the seasonal flavors takes some planning and can get pricey if you’re unsure where to start. This is where a monthly beer club shines, letting you sample both new and nostalgic flavors without leaving the cozy comfort of your home.
But which is the best beer club to join? We tried a bunch and found the best subscription boxes out there, whether you’re into rich stouts, hoppy IPAs or cool microbrews. Whether you’re a seasoned beer connoisseur, just beginning your journey or looking for the next best thing to give a beer drinker this holiday season, these beer clubs provide a great way to explore new flavors and support independent breweries worldwide.
What is the best beer club overall?
After testing five of the most popular beer of the month clubs, we’ve decided on the budget-friendly and original Craft Beer Club as the best beer subscription box for most people.
There are several dozens of options to consider when looking for a beer subscription box and they all deliver curated collections of unique craft beers to your home to taste. The best beer clubs in 2024 offer access to an ever-expanding beer-brewing universe, with unique picks including rare or limited-release beers. Read on for our picks of the best beer subscriptions for any ale enthusiast or lager lover.
Best beer clubs of 2024
The Craft Beer Club is arguably the most popular beer subscription box out there for the craft beer enthusiast and for good reason. This club sends out monthly shipments of new and interesting craft beers from around the country. Many of the new beers and craft brews have limited distribution, meaning a subscription to CBC might be your only shot at tasting those specialty offerings. It also puts a premium on fresh beer, with many of its roster of breweries making a fresh batch just before boxes go out.
The Craft Beer Club is also a more affordable beer subscription box at $48 per month plus shipping within the continental US. Each box features 12 beers: three of each beer in four different styles from two different breweries.
Pros:
- One of the more budget-friendly services
- Beers that appeal to a wide range of palates
Cons:
- Not as many rare or niche offerings
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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 varieties.
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
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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 $75 per month for eight beers if you sign up for six months prepaid. For four-month subscriptions, the cost jumps to $79. And if you sign up for two months, it costs $85.
Pros:
- Highlights a single beer-producing region
- Lots of good information included
Cons:
- Expensive
- Some of the beers were too experimental for my taste
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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
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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.
Pros:
- Good for rare, high-end beers
- Lots of international selections
Cons:
- Expensive
- Extra $15 for shipping
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Types of beer
Before you sign up for a beer club, you’ll want to decide which types of beer you want delivered in your monthly shipment. Perhaps you only care to try hoppy ales or Belgian-style beers. Certain clubs specialize in niche offerings, while others send a wider mix of beers brewed in every style.
Number of beers
Some beer clubs have a fixed number of beers in each send while others allow you to choose more or fewer beers per month. Decide how many beers make sense for you and pick a plan accordingly. Most services will allow you to change the plan later on if you’re receiving too few or too many than you care to.
Cost
Beer clubs are typically a bit more expensive than going to the local store to buy beer, but some are far more affordable than others. Decide how much you have in your monthly budget for tasting new beers and select a club or subscription that fits.
Testing monthly beer subscriptions is a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it. In order to evaluate the best beer clubs, we ordered as many as three months of beer deliveries from each to gauge the types of beers offered, the variety from month to month and how the beer shipments were packaged including what information about the beers was included.
Are beer clubs expensive?
Are beer clubs hard to cancel?
