12 Days of IPAs advent calendar | Photo courtesy of Stone Brewing
12 Days of IPAs advent calendar | Photo courtesy of Stone Brewing
For several years, advent calendars have been shifting from something you may have hoped to get as a kid to something you definitely want as an adult. There’s a lot of options, too, including versions with socks, teas, and all manner of beer, wine, and spirits.
As boozy advent calendars become increasingly popular, so do the number of options at your clicky little fingertips. This year, there’s a wide range of beer advent calendars, including ones that feature a variety of styles from a single brewery, collections of hard-to-find beers, packages that focus solely on IPAs, and much more.
If that sounds like the cure for the early-winter blues, it’s worth figuring out what you want and ordering sooner rather than later. Many of these are released in limited quantities and sell out early.
Price: $80
What’s inside: This popular box contains a dozen craft beers (or beers from former craft breweries that have been purchased by bigger beer companies) in a range of styles. Past installments have included cans from the likes of Stone, Cycle, Bell’s, Oskar Blues, Cigar City, and others.
Packaging: A thick, durable cardboard box, this packaging is sturdier than some other cardboard boxes you might toss into your recycling bin, but not by too much. It’s still just a decorated cardboard box with perforated holes along the top to remove a can each day. It is a style of box that you’ll see a lot on this list.
Price: $80
What’s inside: If you’re buying for a diehard IPA fan, consider this version from the same company as above. It contains 12 IPAs from brewers like Cigar City, Brewdog, and more. The company doesn’t disclose exactly what you get, though. It’s nice to have a little mystery in life.
Packaging: This box is exactly the same as Give Them Beer’s other beer calendar.
Price: $65 pre-order with pickup
What’s Inside: MobCraft’s box features 24 different MobCraft beers, including five flagship beers, four seasonal releases, five limited-release beers, four barrel-aged beers, and six beers that MobCraft made in collaboration with other breweries. The collaborative releases are exclusive to the advent calendar and feature team-ups with breweries like Pipeworks, Jagged Mountain, Radix Fermentation, and Miskatonic.
The boxes are available for pickup at MobCraft’s Milwaukee and Denver taprooms, and will be available in other retailers starting mid-October. Find them at stores in Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, and Colorado.
Packaging: There are 24 cans in each cardboard box, and it’s pretty standard packaging for other beer advent calendars.
Stone Brewing’s 12 Days of IPAs
Price: $30
What’s inside: While Stone’s 12 Days of IPAs isn’t exactly an advent calendar, it does have an advent calendar vibe. In reality, it’s more of a mixed pack—no doors are involved, and there’s no specific need to parcel out the beers over certain dates in December. Instead, there’s a collection of 12 different beers, including crowd-pleasers like Stone IPA and the Tangerine Express Hazy IPA, as well as what might be less familiar releases like the 26th Anniversary Imperial IPA and the Delicious Double IPA.
Packaging: This is a no-frills package. It’s a thin cardboard box that’s just like any ol’ mixed pack you’ll find at your favorite liquor store. No perforated doors to open, just the option to drink one a day if you so choose.
Price: $60
What’s inside: This package from Total Wine features beers from Anheuser Busch’s Brewers Collective. You’ll get 24 cans spanning 13 styles from big-beer-owned breweries like Elysian, Goose Island, Kona, Golden Road, 10 Barrel, Redhook, and Widmer Brothers.
Packaging: A cardboard box with a holiday design, this packaging is similar to most beer advent calendars you see here.
Price: $110
What’s inside: Open Bottle likes to keep what’s inside this package a secret, which is the special sauce of any good advent calendar. It contains 24 beers with a mix of 12- and 16-ounce bottles and cans. Plus, on day 24, you’ll get a coupon for 10% off a purchase made from December 26 through New Year’s Eve.
In previous years, these boxes have included beers from 3 Floyds, Great Lakes, Drekker, Hop Butcher, Bell’s, Pipeworks, Destihl, and other craft breweries.
Packaging: You’re getting a durable cardboard box that can be seen in this Instagram video.
Aldi’s Hard Seltzer Advent Calendar
Price: Not yet available
What’s inside: This one is a bit of an anomaly. In addition to this being the only hard seltzer advent calendar on our list, Aldi releases all its advent offerings in-store at the same time. This year, they’ll be hitting shelves on November 2. Until then, it’s hard to know exactly what they’ll contain, but you can assume you’re getting 24 slim cans of hard seltzer.
Packaging: Again, there’s a bit of mystery here. In the past, they’ve been in a durable cardboard box with little doors on the top.