Anyone pick up one of these? 24 16.9 oz. beers from obscure (at least I have never heard of any of them) German breweries.
This has been a holiday treat. I’ve given the thumbs up for 5 out of 7 so far (the 2 thumbs down were probably past their prime).
Today’s beer Jubilaumsbier 333. a marzen, is exceptionally delicious and reminds me of my homebrewed Oktoberfests.
Almost got one last year and when I went back it was gone. Saw it again this year but passed for some reason (probably because I already had $200+ in my cart already). Maybe next year. Glad to hear that it’s worth it!
We got a world whisky calendar again this year. It’s a lot of fun.
Some in my club have gotten it, and it seems Aldi has a similar calendar. They’ve enjoyed it so far. There was a website affiliated with the Costco one, but it seemed odd. It seems like they had grabbed a website and forgetten to update it.
Same thread posted 3 times. I guess I’ll copy my other response to this one since it seems to be the 1/3 that people are actually responding to.
I got one of these calendars as a gift last year. About half of the beers were very good. About half of the beers tasted like iron/blood. If someone got it for me as a gift I would enjoy the half that are good. But I won’t buy it myself.
Weird glitch I fixed it. Thanks
My buddy got it as a gift and gave me a couple. Pils and “imperial pils” up tonight. Had no idea it was from Costco.
I looked for them at both Costco and Aldi and just wasn’t lucky enough to find them.
Might not be the ones I have seen are all German Beers.
They were German.
Typical Costco. I bought mine in late September and stashed the box away in the basement. By mid October they were all gone.
I’ve always wondered where they come up with these beers nobody has ever heard of. I don’t pretend like my knowledge of German breweries is extensive but I know it isn’t cheap to import and license beers either. That seems like an enormous amount of work for one mix box sold per year and never seeing those brands for sale during the rest of the year. You would think if they are going through the effort of licensing the beers for sale in the calendar box they would sell more of those beers in other formats to make efficient use of that cost.
Has anybody with one of these advent calendar boxes tracked down these breweries and beers and figured out where they come from? Are they different labels/names for beers from the larger German breweries so they can fill a calendar with “different” beers?
My old brain read “IPA” and “Imperial IPA” … don’t ask me how, I have no answers.
Yeah, according to data available on Untappd.com, many of the beers in the calendar are contract brewed by Privatbrauerei H. Egerer. There are others and these appear to be legit breweries, but I’m thinking it’s some kind of deal Costco made with Egerer just to get a neat gift idea for this time of year. And people buy it, in droves. Like I said earlier, about half the beers are good and half suck. And from what I can tell it doesn’t even matter if they were Egerer or not, half their beers are good and half suck. The ones that are bad typically taste metallic, presumably from their inferior canning or internal coating process. But the good ones are good.
I noticed one or two of the beers this year are not German but from Austria. If it makes a difference to anybody. Most are from Bayern.
(I don’t have the calendar – I’m just spying on Untappd entries from a few of my friends.)
One of my friends got a raki calendar from Turkey. It’s such an interesting one!
Woo hoo! It’s December 1 again!
I pulled the first beer out of the box this morning to chill. Grantler Hell from a Bavarian brewery that was founded in 1183.
I’m looking forward to a month of German beer.
I saw it and skipped it. It seemed a little pricey for a box of German beer. Hopefully you’ll report if that was a bad decision.
Thus far they have been pretty darn good. Four Helles, a festbier, a Kellerbier, and my favorite this far, Der Schwarze Bock from Kraftbierwerkstatt which is a pretty tasty dark lager.
Some club members have this one or the ALDI one. Kind of seems odd that the costco is mostly German beers and Aldi has a lot of IPA.
I had to look up what an ALDI is. Never heard of it.
I’m glad the Costco German beer calendar is not full of IPA. Yesterday’s beer was an IPA, and it was terrible. Worst beer so far.
I don’t think the Germans like hops.