How a Beer of the Month Club is Changing the Way People Discover Craft Beer

Noble Brewer might just be the world’s most unique beer of the month club. Technically speaking, Noble Brewer is just a beer-of-the-month club – except that it’s not. Why? Because Noble Brewer has paired with homebrewers to produce and then distribute unique homebrew recipes to club members. No commercial brands, no big names. Instead, you’ll get access to small-batch beers you can’t taste anywhere else.

We talked to Claude Burns, founder of Noble Brewer, to learn more about the club and how it will change the way you experience beer.

QUESTION: In just a few words, can you tell our readers how the club works?

CB: Members sign up online and then receive a shipment of beers every three months. Each shipment has four 22oz bombers of craft beer from a homebrewer’s recipe. We focus on sharing the story of the homebrewer so our members know more about their beer and who made it. Our members support enables us to go out and find more homebrewers to feature and bring them more unique and creative beers. We send tasting cards that members can fill out to provide feedback on what they thought of the homebrewer’s beer. We’re working to create more of a community of beer fans and homebrewers than creating another beer in the mail type clubs.

QUESTION: Why create a beer club based on homebrew beers instead of using commercial brews? What were you looking for when you created the club?

CB: Homebrewers are the innovation in the craft beer industry, they experiment a ton and make some excellent beers. We wanted to focus on highlighting those great brewers who don’t have an outlet to share their beer or story with craft beer fans. Commercial beer can be found anywhere, but even today it’s hard to learn about all the different beers on the shelf and what went into creating them. By working with homebrewers, we can make sure that story gets told, and people can try great beers.

QUESTION: How do you choose the beers you offer in the club?

CB: We look for quality (BJCP competitions, fan favorites, references ect.), the brewer’s willingness to work with us and share their story and that the recipe will scale to a commercial brewery, as not all homebrew recipes will do so. Long term, we’ll offer our members the chance to choose which homebrewers are featured.

QUESTION: You don’t sell the beers brewed by other brewers, but you reproduce the recipes in a professional brewery. Why is this?

CB: Selling homebrew is illegal. Even if it weren’t illegal, we’d need our homebrewers to brew a lot of beer to sell to our membership base, and as most homebrewers also have full-time jobs this would be impossible. We want everyone to do what their good at, homebrewers creating great recipes, breweries make large quantities of beer, clean, safe and legally and sharing their knowledge with our homebrewers and us bringing together craft beer fans with talented, passionate homebrewers.

QUESTION: Are the batches you send out a one-time thing? Or can you reorder a particular beer if you fell in love with it?

CB: Our batches are a one-time thing but if you liked something you’re able to re-order more while supplies last. If something is popular and our members want to see it again, we’ll remake it. Each new batch will feature different homebrewers, so our members are always getting something new and different.