About Us

We started The Brew Club in April 2008 as something fun to do at work.  It seems that mostly everyone likes beer, and so six of us got together and scheduled a beer exchange every month.

It seemed like a great idea because for the price of one six-pack of beer, you get to check out and review 6 different beers!  If you like it, you can always buy more – and if you hate it you didn’t get stuck passing off 5 more bottles of beer to unsuspecting friends or family members!  This site originally started as a way to keep track of the beers that were exchanged, but it quickly mutated into a beer review site!

Our Beer Rating System.

Every beer review site has a way to review beers.  Some use a classic point system and some have a sheet that is used to rate the many facets of beer.  The Brew Club tries to give each beer a fair shake, but we also try to keep out rating system simple and easy to understand.  In a nutshell, this is how it works (compliments of Bob the Brit)

0 Stars – That was a waste of thirty minutes of my life – and a few bucks. Never again!
1 Star – Something that just doesn’t do it for me.
2 Stars – Drinkable, and not unpleasant, but not something I’d take to a friend’s house either.
3 Stars – Something that does what it sets out to, I’d be happy to drink it again.
4 Stars – Something that does what it sets out to, and does it well. I’d search it out. Possibly a benchmark, but I set my benchmarks high!
5 Stars – A true classic beer!

We understand that beer is a very personal thing.  Everyone has their own preferences and so a beer I love you might hate, but that’s the way it is here!

The Brew Club idea is pretty simple.

1. Get six people that you can generally tolerate at work or wherever you associate with others. Six people is easiest because most six-packs of beer have six beers in them. If you have 7 people, someone will be shortchanged! Plus, most people have a hard time finding 7 people they can get along with anyway. (I know I do.)
2. Pick a day that The Brew Club members all bring in a six-pack of some kind of beer. We figured that every other Friday each month would be a good start, although Liz was pushing for a weekly beer exchange!  Recently though, we’ve scaled back to about once per month.  It still works!
3. The Brew Club has no beer standards so long as it is an actual beer, and there are enough for everyone. Buy whatever beer you want – cheap or expensive, foreign or domestic, craft-beer or big-brewer, it is your choice.  Once a beer has been brought in, it is ineligible for future exchanges under the penalty of a paddling. (Some may not regard this as punishment)
4. Find a secluded location at the office away from the teetotalers, nerds, haters, and non-club members. The Brew Club members should deposit their beer offerings to the designated “MixMaster” at the secret location. A different MixMaster can be chosen each time if you want to.
5. Ideally, the MixMaster of The Brew Club then creates a beer “sample pack” for each member from the assortment of deposited six-packs. The end-result would be six happy members each going home with a nice beer sampler of six different beers! Nice!
6. Take some time to legally consume each beer in a responsible manner (Liz), and based on some general guidelines write up a little review for The Brew Club (or don’t).

If you have any suggestions, we’d love to hear from you!   Is there a beer you want us to review?  Is there something nice you want to tell us about our reviewing abilities (not-nice comments are welcome as well!) then drop us a line from our contact us page!

Let’s just try having fun with it!  So far, its been great!