Five Great Gifts for Ale Lovers

If your ale loving friends and fam are anything like mine, the best way to their heart is through their beer. In our family, the holidays aren’t complete without sharing a few hard bevvies around the fire, and I love that about us. I can’t wait to pick up a few gifts that highlight our common love of beer, and it’s a great time to do it, since the popularity of craft beer has spawned a culture of drinking paraphernalia to help us to get more enjoyment out of our favorite leisure activity.

Let’s go shopping, beer nuts!

Beer Delivery Service

My Christmas list this year just says “beer subscription.” While a scarf is nice, beer also does a good job of keeping me warm, plus what will I ever even use a scarf for if I never have to do a beer run again? It’s called being proactive.

There are plenty of beer sub services out there that follow a mystery subscriber box model, or perhaps your favorite brewery has a monthly members club where they ship out a case every month. If that sounds too boring or unpredictable, you may want to try out Tavour, a service that simply sends you super wicked email deals on highly limited (or experimental) cans or bottles from up and coming artisan breweries, then packs up and ships out your choices for $15 flat.

An AleHorn

Whoa, how’d this get on the list? IT MUST BE AN AWESOME GIFT IDEA. AleHorns are 100% horn drinking vessels that come in Game of Thrones tankards, horn tumblers, or classic Viking drinking horns. The Viking drinking horns come with a stand to set the horn in, also made of horn. Basically you can have a horn for your horn.

They range in size from just a sip (it’s literally a tiny drinking horn shot glass) to the very very big 20″ Viking horn which can in fact hold two beers. Nothing says “I like to drink with you” better than a massive horn.

Chillsner the Corksicle

Ahhh, that first crisp, chilly sip! Would it be magical if every sip could be that cold? If only there were a thing that you could stick in  your beer that’s NOT ICE (watered down beer? No thanks!)

If you’re a super slow beer drinker like me, you’ll also appreciate that the beer chiller acts as a cap so your beer will stay chilly AND won’t spill while you tell stories with animated hand gestures.

This is basically the most perfect stocking stuffer ever.

Stone IPA BBQ Sauces

Stone IPA is well known for super hoppy beers with big, big flavors that (come to think of it) would make FRIGGIN AMAZING bbq sauces. You can’t have a bbq without beer, why not go all the way? The middle one is curry mustard – which I will be needing to sample. Let me know if you get any, I’ll be right over.

The other flavors are pasilla pepper bbq sauce and roasted chipotle apple, both made with Smoked Porter. I think I can smell them through my screen – yum. They also have a mustard pack and a hot sauce pack, which would also make you very popular with your giftees.

Iron & Ale Tabletop Drinking Game

If your crew enjoys gaming and drinking (and if they don’t, they should), then Iron & Ale will take your game night to the next level. It’s basically Munchkin with more drinking. You might already drink while playing Munchkin, but in Iron & Ale, it’s part of the rules.

The Kickstarter-funded card game has a dwarven beards and axes kind of vibe,  which I’m sure does a pretty good job of convincing everyone they’re actually a dwarf when all is said and done. Throughout the game, you choose people to challenge with tasks like letting you slap them. If they decline, they drink. I’m sure there’s more to it, but that’s about all I need to know – brb gonna clean off the gaming table.