Beer Hawk Festive Cheers Selection Box | Review

[Ad- gifted product] When it comes to picking out a really good gift for somebody, sometimes it’s really not that easy to find something that’s truly perfect – do you focus in on something they need, do you get something that’s in line with their hobbies, or do you get something that’s a simple treat. This is where selection boxes, and the sort, really come in handy. Jupiter got me, earlier on in the year, the Beer Hawk Selection Box, which is a really great gift for beer lovers, and is also a really nice introduction into the Beer Box idea. When we saw the Beer Hawk Festive Cheers Selection Box on Moonpig, we ordered one!

I’ve not used Beer Hawk before, but it’s a website which – alongside making gift packages – sells everything from beer glasses through to full kegs of beer. This gift box, with its festive design, was clearly designed as a quick Christmas treat, and alongside the five beers that it contained also included a beer glass and a set of chocolate tokens. While I’ll get to the beers in a moment, I wanted to take a quick moment to point out how well organised the whole thing was. Inside the Beer Hawk Festive Cheers Selection Box, there were marked partitions for each of the seven things included, with rigid walling to separate them. It’s clear that a lot of care has gone into the packaging design, which is nice to see when talking about a company who ships glass and bottles as well as cans and more.

The Selection Box includes beer from five different breweries, covering four different types of beer. The Thornbridge X Salt Tupelo is a Pale Ale, the Roosters First World Problems a Stout, Vocation Yakima Pilsner is a Lager or Hybrid Beer, Wild Beer Co’s BeerBods is an IPA, and then there’s a second Pale Ale in the form of Adnam’s Mosaic Pale Ale.

I’m normally a big fan of Stouts, which haven’t really seen too much love in the recent indie/craft beer revolution, and the First World Problem beer is no exception to that. Much like most of the beers included in this pack (except Mosaic) I’d not actually had it before, but I was really happy with the strong, coffee-esque bitter taste to the beer. The BeerBods was almost the opposite, it had a lovely Fruit Salad smell to it, although it mostly tasted a little spiced, before giving way to that IPA-pang of an aftertaste. The Yakima Pilsner was a simple, crisp and clear pilsner taste, with a sharp citrus tang at the end, something that the Tupelo echoed as well, albeit with some slight tropical notes including coconut. My absolute favourite was the Mosaic. I noted down at the time that it had a strong, fruity flavour with a smooth pine aftertaste.

Separating the whole thing from a standard beer crate was the little extras which came with it. The Beer Hawk glass has served me loyally since, and while it’s a stem necked glass, the bulb shape is quite narrow, so it hasn’t caused too many issues with our densely-packed cupboards. The little Beer Hawk tokens – a reference to a loyalty system they run – were little chocolate coins, the kind that you’d get at Christmas. A little silly, but still a nice little extra. All in all, I’d say that it’s a great gift for somebody who occasionally dips into beer, especially if they’re willing to try new breweries (even if breweries like Adnams are quite well known now).

This post is a part of our Blogmas series, with each and every post being about Christmas or Winter.