Buy Rare And Unusual Homebrewers' Beer Online With Noble Brewer

We're pretty obsessed with This Thing Now. Here's how to get it into your life.

Noble Brewer, an online craft beer club based in the Bay Area, started out as most good ideas do—with a little friendly competition.

"I was chatting with a friend who wanted to do a homebrewing competition where everyone would get a case of the winning brew, and I thought it would be cool to try the beer that beat you," Noble Brewer founder Claude Burns explains.

"But as I looked into how to set this up legally, I learned about all the challenges that come with it," he continues. "I thought there should be an easy way to share what really talented brewers are doing."

And that's what Noble Brewer is all about: giving award-winning amateur homebrewers a chance to share their frothy creations with serious beer drinkers across the country through this quarterly mail-order subscription.

The way it works: Noble Brewer tracks down a homebrewer it's interested in working with and asks for a recipe it can license to scale commercially. Once Noble Brewer has the winning brew, it works with local breweries to produce massive amounts of beer, then bottles and ships it to members.

RELATED   Our Favorite New Breweries Won't Sit Still "

The first shipment went out this past March, and the club is currently working on the September shipment, the first to feature homebrewers outside of the Bay Area, as well as building a crowd-sourced marketplace for more unusual beers.

"I'm a serial taster. I love trying what's new, and the fact that it's new makes me excited, but not everyone is that way," Burns explains.

So the marketplace will function as a place where people can cherry-pick beers they want to try, whereas the subscription is more like a blind tasting. Clearly, Burns has some big ideas.

"I don't want to just be a beer-in-the-mail club," Burns shares. "I want this to be all about community and connecting people who love beer with talented amateurs."