Summer Santa

Twice a year Ratebeer holds a secret Santa. Where you are assigned some one to send $55 worth of beer, and someone else is assigned to send $55 worth of beer to you.

I love this way of trading, for several reasons,
1)Theres no pressure to get or trade away a rare beer.
2)You often end up sending beer or getting beer from someone new that you may not have traded with before
3)Its a good chance to send some stuff that you think is best of local,

but best of all
4)You just never know what your going to get, So its all the more exciting.

This year in my box going out, I only had 1 beer from Recipients wants list, Which was Brewdog AB04. This is by far Brewdogs best beer in my Opinion so it was good to be able to supply this one.  Along side this i sent a few other brewdog, The TOTALLY amazing Highland Orkney porter, this is a beer that i think needs much more exposure, the new IPA from Knopps, as its good to send local and Rob Knopps is doing some good stuff. Plus having just got some of the NEW beers from Magic Rock it seemed like a good idea to get them across to the US and see what a US palate makes of this Exciting new brewery.

As for the Box that arrived today, it was a perfect Secret Santa,(all be it he clearly sent more than the $66 limit that was stated) It contained a few beers from my Wants list. The highlight being Cigar City, Cigar City is my Fav US brewery, and this being a porter (in my fav style lists) im really looking forward to this. But almost better still it contains lots of beers  and breweries ive never heard of. These are beers i would probably never have asked for in a standard trade, so it going to be exciting to try these new delights, and as a bonus the box contained at least one beer from a new US state(ie a state ive not had beer from before)
Mostly these beers are from the Dark side(he clearly paid attention to my preference), but included a few from other styles just to stop me getting bored. On top of this i got a few brewery stickers and beer mats, and a Glass from the Thunder Canyon Brew Pub.


All told this was a well thought out Secret Santa box and i cant wait to get stuck in.