Advent-ure Calendar Reflections

Advent-ure Calendar Reflections
11
Beard, Broad & Brew Pup Christmas Card Photo

Merry Christmas! Thanks for joining us for the 1st Annual Holiday Drinking Advent-ure Calendar journey.  This has been quite the experience. As we finished this journey, we thought it would be great idea to leave you with our final thoughts on this experience and offer any tips for you if you want to do this next year.

Final Reflections: 

Beard & Broad
Beard: I enjoy anything that involves drinking and friends.  I mean who doesn’t?  One of the things I enjoyed most was the surprise aspect of the beer-of-the day.  My suggestion for next year (and I know this will be a giant pain in the ass) is to wrap each bottle then number them.  That way everyone will be drinking the same beers, but it’ll be a surprise each night.  I did love the fact that we were able to find beers from another area of the country…we just have to be mindful of the source.  Checking dates on bottles is key, and if there is no date just err on the side of caution.  The comunal beers aspect was also a favorite part of the whole thing for me.  Make a party out of the initial splitting up of the bottles and purchase a couple bombers/750mls to share on weekends with everyone.  All in all, loved this whole experience and I’m glad we did it.  We learned alot about the organizational aspect of the whole thing and will be better prepared next year for our Advent-ure.  It will for sure be a yearly tradition for us and I suggest others give it a try!

Broad: This was fun! I can’t wait to do it next year. I enjoyed researching the beers and the anticipation of knowing I had a new beer to try every day.  The one thing I will definitely change for next year is not focus on finding weird, hard to find beers.  Beard and I were on the hunt for beers we couldn’t find in Ohio while we were in Ithaca which was a mistake. We brought home old, dusty beers (yes literally covered in dust). The store probably put out last year’s leftovers. I think instead it would be fun next year to maybe find 24 winter/Christmas beers we like and compare them. Pro tip #2: find people who want to join you and can commit. Drinking and having to send a review every day can be a lot to handle. Some days you may be too busy or sick or just don’t feel like drinking a beer. Beard and I psyched ourselves up for this and were able to do this every day with no problem. I’m very much looking forward to doing this next year and improving the Advent-ure.

Adam & Alex
Adam: This was a really cool experience especially being that we all are some varying level of a beer nerd. Overall I will say that it seems like most breweries take the easy way out with their winter/Christmas beer by creating an ale with holiday spices like ginger, cinnamon and nutmeg. However, the ones who take time to create something unique usually end up with a memorable beer. I’m admittedly pretty holiday beer fatigued right now but this was a great experience overall.

Alex: I really enjoyed the Christmas Advent-ure calendar. I believe I am a bit biased when it comes to the ones I liked most, but I think we (Ohio) had the best ones by far. I also wish I didn’t have a cold for a week in which I couldn’t fairly assess the taste on some of them. All in all it was super fun to try new beers and get a better idea of what I like.

DSC_0218

 



Leave a Reply