Flavourly: Craft Beer Discovery Club

Last month we were introduced to Flavourly, an online shop specialising predominantly in beer and gin (although they do whisky, wine, and other spirits too!). As well as providing an online bottleshop, Flavourly have also established their Craft Beer Discovery Club, a subscription service which delivers a personalised range of ten curated beers each month. 

Our box contained exclusively beers from Fourpure Brewing Co, a brewery we're familiar with and have enjoyed visiting on the Bermondsey Beer Mile in the past. The box included some classic favourites but also some totally new beers including the Easy Peeler Citrus Session IPA, a recent addition to their core range based on a lower ABV version of their popular IPA, Juicebox. The box also contained 3 lagers, which is a style we wouldn't usually go for in a shop or bar, but it was a nice change to have the opportunity to try something different.

We're not going to go into our tasting notes for all of these, but highlights for us were the vibrantly tropical Shape Shifter IPA (5.9%), the crisp and quaffable Indy Lager (4.4% and great alongside a pizza), and the well-balanced and robust Beartooth American Brown (5.3%).

Also included within our box was the Flavourly Magazine, which we felt was a great touch. Inside were approachable tasting notes for each featured beer - we really liked the inclusion of recommended serving temperatures. There was also an in-depth article on the featured brewery which helped bring the beers in our box to life, alongside a piece on the four main beer ingredients, which was eminently readable - good for newcomers to craft beer as well as retaining relevance and interest for more experienced "beer geeks", a balance that can often be difficult to achieve.

Other breweries were in the magazine so we assume that depending on your personal preferences (which it looks like you can easily change at any time) you may receive a different selection - for example, there were no dark beers in our box, so stout fans may have been a little disappointed, but the customisable elements of the club ensures that nobody goes thirsty!

The second half of the magazine was dedicated to the gin box which looks great too - we particularly liked that each gin from the box had a suggested cocktail to try, as well as insights into the people behind the gin in more extensive interviews. Laura is a huge gin enthusiast as well as beer lover, and all three of the featured gins were totally new to her, so that's three more to pop on the "to try" list!

Overall, we were really impressed with our first experience of Flavourly - you could say it's taking a bit of a gamble sending out a beer "discovery" box to two people who drink a lot of beer and are well integrated into the beer industry, but we were really pleasantly surprised by the selection included (both in the box we received, and in the wider selection sent out that the magazine showed was available). The customer service was helpful too and the magazine was a genuinely good read.

Cheers!

Jim & Laura

Disclaimer: We were sent the Craft Beer Discovery Club box free of charge from Flavourly. However this has not influenced our opinions, which are all our own.