Check out All Gifts Considered’s Classy Gifts for Men post that recently went up, highlighting our premium hand-rolled cigar clubs as the #1 rated gift!

30 years ago today, on July 7th, 1994, Greg Hall and I signed a partnership agreement to create Malt of the Earth™, the original name of The Microbrewed Beer of the Month Club. The agreement was signed in Greg’s garage which served as our corporate headquarters for the first 4 months of the company’s existence. Our attached “formal” announcement was indeed, not so formal!

The Garage and First Year

I still recall vividly plugging one ear while on the phone with breweries, attempting to muffle out the sound of Greg’s dogs that were penned up on the roof of the garage and often running around barking at everything from the mailman to a leaf falling off a nearby tree. We brewed our first (and last) batch of beer while formulating our strategic business plan. The beer was just okay and after taking our first shipment into the warehouse, we quickly reasoned that we’d be much better off drinking the beers we were lining up for the club!

We moved into our first warehouse and made full use of the space, hosting poker parties on tables constructed of cases of beer and pallets, smoking fine cigars and drinking the best craft beers in the country. We’d crack open a beer at our desk every now and then and Greg even smoked a cigar from time to time…Just because we could. In that first year, we solicited friends and family shamelessly, answered any and all customer related calls, packed the beer, wrote the newsletters and began to attend festivals, signing up our customers face to face, one at a time.

Festivals, Festivals and More Festivals

The festivals were a lot of work, but they were also heaps of fun. Very cool to talk to existing customers at festivals that we returned to year after year and get direct input. Many often shared how much they loved Murl, a newsletter column “written” by my sister Annie’s Australian sheep dog, Murl. She did the graphic design work on our newsletters for free back then, so when she suggested her dog get his own column, it seemed like a reasonable request. I didn’t have the heart to tell customers that I was actually Murl.

We hadn’t found much that seemed to work from our guerilla marketing playbook except for the festivals and the internet was still largely the Wild West with very few understanding much about ecommerce, so we did what we knew how to do…Festivals…and a lot of them, sometimes 3 or 4 in a weekend. Big beer festivals like the Lodo Beer Fest in Denver and Oregon Brewers Festival in Portland became our primary source of acquiring new customers. We’d pitch anyone with a pulse for 10-12 hours straight and then get up and do it again for another 3 or more days for some of the bigger events. We did Sturgis, Mardi Gras, Street Scene, City Stages, The Barrett-Jackson Classic Car Auto Auction, and countless Blues, Jazz, Beer, Wine and Food festivals for the next five years.

Hard Times and Rebirth

We hit hard times three years in when we mismanaged our cash flow and couldn’t pay our bills on product that had already been shipped. Greg’s first born was only 2 or 3 years old and our unstable income proved to be too much of a burden on his young family so we downsized from 5 to myself and one CSR who went on disability a few months later. The next few months and Christmas ‘97 were pretty much the all-time low as I was doing everything myself and wondering what the hell I was doing giving up a promising career with IBM to sell beer. Lucky for me all I had to take care of was my Maine Coon cat, Rosie.

I was so emotionally invested in what Greg and I had done for the last 3 years that I just couldn’t bear to shut it down just yet so I sold all those personal memberships that we had worked so hard to acquire at festivals to a competitor to give us a little cash infusion and kept doing as many festivals as I could to keep the doors open until I figured out our next move. The good news is that we bought that competitor a few years later so we got a good chunk of our friends back! The next move turned out to be dumping our original website and launching two new sites, one for our beer club, the other for our cigar club which seemed a logical extension early on. The sites went up in 1998, right about the time Google was born and lucky for us, our new web developer knew what they were doing and we fared well in the search engines. That was about the time things started to look up. We launched The International Wine of the Month Club in December of 1998.

A Family Affair

My mother, Kathleen Calef, joined the company shortly thereafter and we put her strong marketing background to work improving our marketing materials, website copy and pretty much anything that touched our customers. She launched our cheese, chocolate and flower clubs in 2002 and created our Whatever Whenever Program which later became Design Your Own Club, allowing our customers to combine our six clubs in any way to create personalized memberships. I’ve been fortunate to have been able to work closely with my mother, father, and sister over the years. How cool is that?

A Natural Evolution to an Ecommerce Business

Over the years, we stopped doing festivals as they were just too much work and not the best use of our time. As the internet and search engine popularity grew, so did we and the focus became on diversifying our marketing mix so we weren’t so heavily reliant on the engines. We’ve invested heavily back into the company over the years, re-launching our websites and rebranding the company to MonthlyClubs.com™ in the process. It’s a ton of work for a small business to stay competitive with the everchanging challenges related to staying current with ecommerce best practices, but I strongly believe we’ve risen to the occasion over the years. Shortly after our first re-launch went live, the sites were recognized as one of Internet Retailer magazine’s Hot 100 E-Retailers, a pretty prestigious annual award where editors at Internet Retailer magazine choose what they feel to be the best, most innovative websites in the world. Sweet.

The Last Decade

Since our 20 year anniversary, we’ve been busy building out new products like our Hop-Heads Beer Club, The Rare Cigar Club, and The Rare Cheese Club, adding the ability to buy Gift Cards, and selling accessories with memberships to the clubs. We blew up our internal order management system, automating much of how we get the goods out the door. The timing of that one kind of sucked as we launched in July of 2020, just 4 months after the Pandemic lockdown. The increased order volume taxed our new baby and we couldn’t hire and train additional folks as we were all working remotely. 2020 was a good year on the books, but man, it took a toll on us all. Post pandemic challenges still linger and we celebrate our 30^th anniversary at one of the more difficult times in recent years.

There’s so much more to tell, but I figure if you’ve made it this far, you’re either an employee, family member or friend and you’ll hear more when we celebrate the anniversary properly at the party. If you’re one of our longtime customers or just someone interested in our story…Thank you for your time and thank you for your business. We’re nothing without you.

I’m so proud of what we’ve accomplished in the last 30 years. I’ve got a rock-solid team, top to bottom, solid fulfillment and marketing partners, and a loyal customer base, many who have been members well over 15 years, and a few that were signed up by me at festivals nearly 25 years ago. What more could a guy ask for?

Prost!

 

 

 

#30yearsofbeer

A friend recently brought over some bottles of Lagunitas’ IPNA for me to try, back when he was doing Dry January—and I’ve found myself picking up occasional six-packs of it since. If you’re not familiar: this is Lagunitas’ non-alcoholic IPA, which they released toward the end of 2020. For me it’s pretty comparable to an actual IPA and, as I’ve been trying to take more days off from alcohol throughout the week, it’s been a helpful option for taking the edge off. I’ve had minimal experience with non-alcoholic beers, but it’s made me curious to try more.

One of my local shops has a whole non-alcoholic beer section, and I’ve been slowly working through things, finding some good n/a options for the off days. Athletic Brewing’s IPA was a bit less satisfying, but they’ve got a whole range of n/a releases: from hazy IPA to gose to a maple brown. Paulaner Weizen-Radler did the trick, combining a subtle hefeweizen core and spritzy lemon juice, and these have been solid beside spicy chicken sausages as a lunch-beer alternative. Weihenstephaner has an n/a wheat beer I need to check out, and I’ll get around to the various spendy Mikkeller options out there (really enjoyed their Drink’in in the Sun a friend brought on a beach trip). Note that n/a options tend to be priced like normal beers; I see these as being an occasional pickup, when I’m looking for hops etc., just sans alcohol.

Have you headed down the non-alcoholic-beer path yet? Spelunked the non-alcoholic IPA caves? Finding anything particularly good? Hit us up on Twitter via @RareBeerClub.

It’s hard to believe that it’s been two years since we asked Tomme Arthur at The Lost Abbey to part with some of his coveted limited run vintage offerings from the brewery’s cellar. You all responded so well to that offer that we figured it was time to see what else we could try and secure from Tomme. We couldn’t be more happy with the collection of beers they were willing to share with us. Some really special stuff. All limited run, all big gravity bombs. Four vintage beers from 2016-2019 and two 2020 offerings, two of which are barrel aged beers previously only offered to the brewery’s Sinners and Saints club. You’ll want to try all six, trust us.

A list of the beers appears below, but we encourage you to visit the special offer page for full tasting notes and access to the order form.

additional exciting and hard-to-find beers. Cheers!

1. Lost Abbey Gnoel de Abbey (2019) – Holiday Brown Ale. 8.5% ABV.
2. Lost Abbey Serpent’s Stout – Imperial Stout. 11% ABV.
3. Lost Abbey Judgment Day – Abbey Quadrupel w/ raisins. 10.2% ABV.
4. Lost Abbey Ten Commandments (2016) – Belgian Strong Dark Farmhouse Ale w/ blackened raisins and rosemary. 11% ABV.
5. Lost Abbey Sinner’s Blend (2019) – Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout w/ Ecuadorian Coffee, Cacao & Mexican spices. 13.7% ABV.
6. Lost Abbey Cuvee de Tomme (2017) – Blended Bourbon- and Wine-Barrel-Aged Dark Wild Ale w/ Sour Cherries. 11% ABV.

Flexible ordering allows you to order 4, 6, 8, 12, 18, 24, or 48 total bottles, combining any of the six featured beers in any way to get there so that you can easily try them all.

ORDER ONLINE or at 800-625-8238 Mon – Fri, 7am – 4 pm Pacific. If your Rare Beer Club membership was a gift, you will be contacted by one of our team members for payment information if you submit your order online.

Learn More for full tasting notes, and to access the order form.

The order cut-off for this Special Offer is 12:00 PM Pacific on Thursday, September 24th. Orders will begin shipping out about a week later.

Cheers!

 

 

Kris Calef
President, The Rare Beer Club^®

We asked our owner Kris Calef which 10 beers he’d pick from our inventory to get him through the quarantine. Here’s what we got back:

1. Westvleteren XII (Only 10 bottles left! Call to order)
2. Lost Abbey – Righteous Son Barrel Aged Old Ale
3. West Sixth – Snake Eyes Imperial Stout
4. West Sixth – Hop Static IPA
5. Jopen & De Molen – Sin & Remorse Russian Imperial Stout
6. Brouwerij De Molen – Bommen & Granaten Barley Wine
7. The Bruery – Poterie Bourbon Barrel blended English-Style Old Ale
8. Harpoon – Camp Wannamango Pale Ale with Mango
9. Amager & Mikkeller – Frederiksen Vaesel Brunch Whiskey Barrel Imperial Oatmeal Stout w/ Vietnamese coffee
10. Bruery Terreux – 2017 Mélange No. 9 Bourbon Barrel Sour Blended Ale w/ Ginger & Coconut

Order Online or put together your own dream-team-quarantine mixed case by emailing or calling us at 800-625-8238. Note: You may only purchase one bottle of Westvleteren XII and there’s not too much left, so you might want to act quickly if that one’s on your bucket list.

Thanks so much for supporting our small, family-owned business during these unprecedented times. It means so much to us.

When things in your life seem almost too much to handle, when 24 hours in a day are not enough, remember the mayonnaise jar and the two pints of beer.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him. When the class began, wordlessly, he picked up a very large and empty mayonnaise jar and proceeded to fill it with golf balls.

He then asked the students if the jar was full. They agreed that it was.

The professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them into the jar. He shook the jar lightly, and the pebbles rolled into the open areas between the golf balls. He then asked the students again if the jar was full. They agreed again that it was.

The professor next picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up the rest of the space. He asked once more if the jar was full, and his students responded with a unanimous “yes.”

The professor then produced two pint glasses of beer from under the table and poured the contents of both into the jar, effectively filling the empty space between the grains of sand. The students laughed.

“Now,” said the professor, as the laughter subsided, “I want you to recognize that this jar represents your life. The golf balls are the important things – your family, children, health, friends and your favorite passions; things that, if everything else was lost and only they remained, would still make your life full.”

The pebbles are the other things that matter like your job, your house and your car. The sand is everything else – the small stuff.

“If you put the sand into the jar first,” he continued, “There is no room for the pebbles or the golf balls. The same goes for life. If you spend all your time and energy on the small stuff, you will never have room for the things that are important to you.”

“Pay attention to the things that are critical to your happiness. Play with your children, take time to get medical checkups, take your partner out to dinner and play another 18 holes. There will always be time to clean the house and fix the leaky tap. Take care of the golf balls first – the things that really matter. Set your priorities, because the rest is just sand.”

One of the students raised her hand and inquired what the beer represented.

The professor smiled. “I’m glad you asked. It goes to show you that no matter how full your life may seem to be, that there’s always room for a couple of beers with a friend.”

– Author Unknown