My hair stylist does not drink beer but today when I went in for a haircut she ghave me 6 leftovers from the Sam Adams Winter pack including Old Fezziwig, Holiday Porter, Chocolate Bock, and Boston Lager. Someone brought them to her house for Thanksgiving. I have had all of them many times. But I gladly accepted them and thanked her for thinking of me. What would you do? If it was a beer you have had often or do not like...would you politely decline or accept it and thank them?
There is only ONE option!! You accept ANY gift that someone is gracious enough to think of you and offer to you.. We were all raised right here.. We are not savages.
I was at a good friend's wedding. His craft-loving cousin had flown in from LA, and took a short trip to Hershey's Park with his family pre-wedding. We got to talking at the ceremony, and bonded over our shared love of beer. He says, "hold on a second," and bolts from the room. Comes back 6 minutes later with a clinking garbage bag. I peek inside and it's filled with beer he loaded up on through his trip and didn't have time to drink before his flight out that night. It was mostly stuff I get in NY (lots of Troegs) but also some stuff I don't (Terrapin). I gladly accepted the lot. Of course I accepted: A) he was thrilled to share the love, and was so happy that I accepted the gift. Feel good vibes all around. B) FREE BEER!
I only received one beer-related gift and that was from my kids. A big Oktoberfest style mug that holds four beers. I haven't used it yet, but one day I'll impress them while chugging down the entire mug while shouting German gibberish.
I will drink ANY beer, I'm only picky about the beer I buy. So I will never turn down any gift of beer.
Well this isn't beer per se, but my brother did get me a Dirtwolf nightlight (yes, a nightlight) for Christmas. It's pretty awesome. He got it at a big flea market style operation in PA (Rice's) knowing Dirtwolf was a favorite of mine. We enjoyed Dirtwolf together many a time during family trips up to Cape Cod.
Got this unexpected beer related gift. My wife is totally into fermentation but not beer but knows I am. @MisterB330 is exactly correct.
I recently was re-gifted a Higher Math from some friends who admitted it wasn't their thing. I gladly accepted.
My wife who is not, I repeat Not a beer drinker, gifted me with a small ( 1 gallon ) home brew kit Xmas of '14. She didn't even mind ( almost enthusiastically approved ) me expanding to to a 5 gallon set up in '15. Ready to start yet another batch soon. Only 1 reason I'm a lucky guy.
A semi-regular at my store would always talk about great beers when he came in...a few weeks passed before I see him again, he says, "I'm glad you're here, I've got something for you in my car", and comes back in with a very fresh Heady Topper
Of course I'd take several (or many) bottles/cans of free beer if somebody gave some to me as a gift. If it's a beer I've had often... well, there's bound to be a reason I keep going back to it. So that sounds like a pretty nice gift to me: beer that I liked enough to repeatedly buy for myself anyway, except it's free this time. XD If I try it and it's awful (or if it's one I've tried before and already know is awful... though in that case, I might at least try it a second time to make sure it wasn't just a bad batch the first time around or something), there's plenty of other options besides just throwing it out or turning down the free beer -- give it away to other people with different beer tastes than yourself, figure out a way to cook with it, experiment with mixing beers (or mixing beers with other things), use as bait to catch annoying flies or other bugs that got into your house, etc...
When I left my last job, some of my colleagues put together some money (and knowing my love of craft beer) got me 2 mixed six packs with some really cool stuff that included Rochefort 10, Merry Monks, Pumking, Delirium Red and more. Also my wife got me some Toppling Goliath Golden Nugget this Christmas.
A few years ago, I just happened to mention I liked the look of the Sam Adams Utopias bottle and just wanted an empty bottle to put on the shelf with my tap handle collection but I wasn't going to spend that kind of coin on just one bottle. On Christmas morning, I opened a gift from my sister and at first thought she had managed to find me an empty one but, nope, it was a full, unopened bottle. Now, everytime the new Utopias release hits the shelves and I'm out +/-$200, I think back to that gift.
Ugly AAL tee shirts, the free kind with usually a radio station logo on there too. And because I'm a medium, these are always XL. Instant paint rags. And the occasional awesome beer from other beer geeks in my life.
Smile say thank you and accept it for sure. If you won't drink it we all have a friend who will run right though them haha
