2021 Beer Memberships: Adding, Keeping or Dropping?

Keeping:
MT - Theory
SARA Cellar
Lost Abbey Sinners & Saints
Lost Cause Coveters

Failed at getting into Antidoot (lolz 90 spots for over 2k applicants)

Dropping:
None

 

Keeping:
Modern Times Theory
Highland Park Bottle Friends
Lost Abbey Saints & Sinners

Dropped:
Horus Convocation

Adding:
None

 

I'm debating whether or not to keep Bottle Friends...I probably will but a fair portion of the releases this year were stouts with ingredients I don't care for (coconut, cinnamon, chilis, etc.). I'll probably keep it for the discounts (and assuming bottle friend pours) and events

Adding/Re-joining
Modern Times maybe...I finally worked through all of my past bottles lol

maybe the hivemind can help out. What's a solid membership with barrel aged stouts that aren't too crazy on the adjuncts and good sours?

 

Unsure: HPB Bottle Friends (although the cost is worth it, having two kids now, covid, etc my expenses buying beer from them has been literally almost 0 and it's only been for allocation pickups)

Want: CASA. Does anybody have any good/bad reviews as membership goes? They seem similar to hpb in a way.

 

Keeping: Highland Park Brewery
Adding: Modern Times
Contemplating: CASA

 

Just because you mentioned MTs, most of their member released stouts have adjuncts. Without combing through my emails, i wanna estimate they do a barrel only stout/bw/malty beer about once a month, maybe once every 1.5 months and theyre usually very limited. The reason for the small bottle counts is because they usually only do non adjuncts in special one off barrels they receive whereas the adjunct stouts usually start with a base blend of multiple barrels

For sours, I do like the amphora aged saisons and their grisettes but most of their sours are too sour, imo. They arent the first brewery i look toward for sours. I usually stick with blendery. Great sours, reasonable price and easy to get/no rush whatsoever.

Been a member since 2016 and im a total homer but tried to give an honest opinion

 

Keeping: Modern Times League

Adding: Cellador

I might add Highland Park Bottle Friends if membership slots open up, but I'll have to wait and see.

 

Keeping: MT Theory
Adding: I guess I drunkenly bought in to a portion of Bruery Hoarders
Crumpling into a Ball and Firing Directly into the Sun: Wild Barrel, Alpine

 

Keeping Modern Times, that was an easy re-up! I hope I never get tempted to join another beer membership again!

Added: Culling. I know there was a lot of hate with them because of the unknown and the disclaimer if you don't max, you won't be invited next year. I'm not worried about re-upping next year, so that doesn't bother me. But for $50, it's worth a shot. I wasted more money for less value. Also the idea of buy as you go...sounds great. Rather than dropping $300 and hope those are good beers.

Dropping:
Bruery.
Honey Pot

 

Question to you guys dropping Horus... Why?? Past years I thought they were an absolute joke but it looks like Kyle got his shit together and dropped a lot of bangers this year.

 

Adding:
Culling Meadery
Viking Artisan Ales

Keeping:
Honeypot Meadery
Modern Times league
Private Press
Sante Adairius

Dropping:
Moksa

 

Keeping: Modern Times League

Dropping: Alpine (will they even do it next year?)

Adding: None

Hoping: That all the breweries running these clubs are able to survive the pandemic and stay open.

 

I actually got an email the other day for a 2021 membership into the 1843 lodge.

 

Keeping
Casa Agria Specialty Ales

Dropping
Cellador

What do you want to know? The details of the club are pretty much as described, and for 2021 it's $100 cheaper to boot!

 

Keeping:
SARA
MT League
HPB
Cellador V
Lost Abbey
Horus

Dropping:
None

Adding:
None


Running it back one more year with these, largely because all are friends and I want to support them as much as I can.

Focusing this year on making sure I pick up all of my shit.

 

Keeping:
MT Theory
Lost Abbey Sinners & Saints
Order of Anvil (Split)
Bruery Hoarder (Split)
Private Press

Dropping:
Alpine

Adding:
Russian River if selected

 

Keeping:
Bruery Hoarders
MT League

...that is all.

 

I noticed a lot of people are renewing their Lost Abbey membership. Can someone give a brief description of what they liked about it/beers received this year? Thanks.

 

I liked it because it is simple, just like how the SARA club is run. When beers are ready, we receive an email with the pickup weekend/options for shipping, ability to purchase more if bottles are available, and during pickup we get little tickets to get free (well now gotta buy a meal) pours usually of everything we are picking up. If it was a smaller batch then just a pour of one of the offerings.

We don't get a slew of emails throughout the year, although this does seem to be a negative for some members that like to know what is going on.

I don't have a good list of what we received last year without dissecting all of the pickup emails since they usually only tell us of a few planned releases
(Ex. "Completely forgot I wanted to share a few of the beers for club next year. We are working with Shaun from Hill Farmstead on a collab, of course the return of our Sinner's Blend that we'll be relying on our club members to help decide what that looks like, Cable Car 2020, and after much investigation from Tomme, the return of Yellow Bus.")

We also get a discount on the site as well as I think in the tasting room, early access to public sales (Ex. our cyber-monday sale with older DDG and CC occurred that sunday), and occasionally they will put up a vintage bottle on a first-come first-served basis for us.

 

Dropping: Hoarders (after 10 years)

Keeping: Cellador

On the fence: Keep or drop CASA
Try to get into Russian River (seems expensive for what it is, but I do love their sours)

 

Awesome, thanks for the explanation. I'm considering joining for next year so this is very helpful. (Looking for a no-nonsense, straight-forward club).

 

Keeping:
Casey
HPB
Sour Cellars
Private Press (will eventually renew but we're still only on q2 of year 1)

Dropping:
Bruery Hoarders
Muckraker (NJ)

Adding:
None (unless accepted by Russian River)

 

I appreciate the thought out reply. I was a member for a couple of years back in 2016? I split the membership and just got the sours (which I really enjoyed). Seeing all of the positive reviews for Lost Abbey, though, is making me consider joining them

 

Have...
SARA
HPB
Private Press

Keeping all of mine, adding none.

 

Keeping:
Mad Fritz

Possibly Dropping:
SN Alpha Hops

I'm a huge fan of SN and have been an Alpha Hop member from Day 1. However, I only enjoyed about half the offering last year (not because of quality, but often style) and I end up with a bunch in my fridge.

 

Adding:
MT League

Dropping:
Bruery Reserve Society after 3 years + 1 as a PS member

Lucky enough to snag one of the guest invite memberships for MT, otherwise I was probably looking at (somewhat begrudgingly) re-upping Bruery in the hopes that the Anniversary party and/or Black Tuesday would still be a go for 2021.

 

The membership year ended in June, so I can't speak to any of the beers that have been released since then. I've seen people getting excited about new Dose variants and Coconut Convergence, not sure if those are what you're referring to as far as the recent bangers.

My friend that I split it with and I were both just not particularly enjoying the beers. There are a few primary issues we had:
1) Lack of effective barrel aging - we only got a couple of BA stouts in Year Two, but neither displayed much barrel character. Snatcher's Grasp, in particular, had a great adjunct profile but the barrel was completely MIA. If I'd tried it blind, I would've never guessed it had seen the inside of a barrel. Enjoyable enough beer, but if I'm paying a premium for a barrel-aged product, I expect that to be reflected in the aroma and flavor.
2) Coffee - He uses a premium adjunct in geisha coffee, adding cost, but I've yet to find it worthwhile. The coffee is generally either overshadowed by the base or other adjuncts. If the coffee isn't being showcased effectively, it's pointless to use such an expensive ingredient.
3) General lack of refinement - This is a bit more amorphous than the other points, but I often didn't find his stouts to be well integrated or possess the refinement of other top-tier pastry stouts. Proper Dose is an obvious exception to this, but with a lot of the Year Two beers, there would be some interesting flavors going on, but they didn't really harmonize or work together. At worst, there were beers that would be cloyingly sweet up front and then finish with a sense of astringency - rather than balancing each other, you just had two elements that weren't terribly pleasant on their own.

He has his audience that enjoys what he does, and I don't begrudge him that whatsoever. I've just come to realize I'm not part of it, so it didn't make sense to renew.

@SDReaper mostly covered it, but the key to being happy with the Lost Abbey club is to manage expectations. It is not about constant engagement, frequent releases, or access to beers that will carry high secondary value. If you enjoy Lost Abbey's beers, it's an easy way to get access to everything. Very transactional compared to clubs like Bruery RS/HS and Modern Times League/Theory, but that's not a bad thing in my eyes. I've heard they're not always good about communicating shipping timelines effectively, and will sometimes ship unannounced - which is not ideal - so if you're not local, that's something to be aware of. Other than that, I give them money, they give me beer, and there's a minimum of effort involved.

 

Keeping:
MT League

Dropping:
Cellador

Feel bad 'cause I love Kevin and Sara but financially this year's been a bit rough and have to make some sacrifices somewhere.

 

I'm reading this post and I'm learning that Brewery Memberships is a thing? Very interesting!! I've been treated to a few Beer of the Month clubs before but I never knew of any breweries offering a direct to customer service (at least on an ongoing/subscription basis).

As I begin looking further into this - can anybody suggest any of these brewery subscriptions that ship to New York State? As I'm having trouble finding any that do so far.

Cheers!

 

You aren't going to find one from CA (at least from southern CA) that does ship to NY. However, you can always join a membership that allows proxies and then deal with shipping on your own with the proxy.

 

Welcome to the 21st century. I’m sure there are New York brewery memberships as well. Cheers.

 

Thanks for the information. Yes granted I've had supposedly pappy BA beers where I was questioning how they managed to ruin such a good barrel on a poor base beer. With Horus I'm thinking "how the heck is this guy producing a WLW BA beer." I see a lot of ratings and it's not a lot so there's some really crazy hype around some of this real low production beers that I'm having trouble discerning how good these really are. Yeah the price thing kills me and seeing the new Alesmith barrel aged collab beer with Alesmith going for $45 is making me roll my eyes pretty damn hard bc I know where that price markup is coming from on an Alesmith beer.

I haven't been crazy about Horus collabs in the past but then again it's collabs. Anyways I appreciate your input Xul.

 

This post makes me realized how much I miss the in-depth Xul MT reviews, ❤️

 

Keeping
Horus
MT (split)

I think ive already dropped everyting else.

 

Keeping:
MT League (never letting this one go)
DG Keepers
HPB Bottle Friends
Perennial (last year for me... bottles are getting too expensive).

Added:
Mostra (beer/coffee membership... really curious about this one).

 

Keeping:
MT League

Dropping:
Bruery RS (again)

 

Shipping alcohol is weird. There are a lot of rules and crossing state lines makes it even more difficult. This being the pacific regional forums, we probably wont have much insight for you but The Bruery ships within california and oddly enough... Washington DC. Theyll hold your bottles for a while (i think a year but youll want to 2x check that) so ypu can wait and pick up in batches.

Someone else already mentioned proxies. You can sign up for a membership for any beer club that allows proxies, have the proxy pick up the beer and theyll ship it to you. Its customary to give them a few thank you beers for the trouble. Its not 100% legal but its a work around that is very common. If you make a post in the proper area, im sure youll find people willing to help out. Not me though. Im lazy and hate packing, shipping/trading beer.

 

Keeping:
MT League - seemingly non-stop beer offerings in your face
HPB Friends - so low maintenance and easy (and cheap)

Added mid-year:
Horus (split with 1 other friend) - bad one to split, esp. during a pandemic; lots of Qty 1 or Qty 3 bottles; probably won't go a 2nd year with this one

 

What is this beer/coffee membership you speak of? I love me some Mostra coffee and beers containing it.