As brewers fill increasingly smaller niches in the craft-beer world, one way to engage consumers and guarantee consistent revenue is to form a membership club or society. For craft-beer enthusiasts, it’s a great way to get your hands on limited or exclusive beers, and for the breweries, it’s upfront revenue to fund the expensive art of barrel-aging. We’ve assembled a list of our favorite of these societies so you can start planning your 2016 beer purchases now.
The Bruery Preservation Society, Reserve Society, Hoarders Society
With the largest brewery membership club in the United States, The Bruery has created a blueprint that many other breweries now follow. The program is structured in three tiers and starts with the Preservation Society, which is an auto-renewing subscription service where members are automatically shipped three beers (determined by The Bruery) each quarter. These quarterly allocations typically include one highly regarded sour or stout—think Black Tuesday or Chocolate Rain—and two more common bottles with it. The next tier is the Reserve Society, with a $300 price tag that gets you nine bottles of beers such as Mocha Wednesday, Barrel-Aged 7 Swans A Swimming, and Black Tuesday plus exclusive merchandise, discounts on purchases, and the ability to purchase approximately twenty exclusive bottle releases throughout the year. Membership also gets you access to tickets for The Bruery’s anniversary beer festival, and it’s a testament to the scale of their membership program that they could fill an entire beer festival solely from the ranks of their members. The highest tier on their program is the Hoarders Society, but you won’t find much public information about it, as it’s an invite-only tier for the biggest-spending Reserve Society members.
Price: $58.50/quarter (plus shipping) for the Preservation Society, $300/year for the Reserve Society, $700/year for the Hoarders Society
Duration: Calendar year
Benefits: Exclusive bottles included, access to purchase exclusive bottles, discounts on all purchases, exclusive pours in the tasting room, merchandise, access to anniversary festival tickets, shipping within California for additional cost