I've always wondered where they come up with these beers nobody has ever heard of. I don't pretend like my knowledge of German breweries is extensive but I know it isn't cheap to import and license beers either. That seems like an enormous amount of work for one mix box sold per year and never seeing those brands for sale during the rest of the year. You would think if they are going through the effort of licensing the beers for sale in the calendar box they would sell more of those beers in other formats to make efficient use of that cost.
Has anybody with one of these advent calendar boxes tracked down these breweries and beers and figured out where they come from? Are they different labels/names for beers from the larger German breweries so they can fill a calendar with "different" beers?
Yeah, according to data available on Untappd.com, many of the beers in the calendar are contract brewed by Privatbrauerei H. Egerer. There are others and these appear to be legit breweries, but I'm thinking it's some kind of deal Costco made with Egerer just to get a neat gift idea for this time of year. And people buy it, in droves. Like I said earlier, about half the beers are good and half suck. And from what I can tell it doesn't even matter if they were Egerer or not, half their beers are good and half suck. The ones that are bad typically taste metallic, presumably from their inferior canning or internal coating process. But the good ones are good.
I noticed one or two of the beers this year are not German but from Austria. If it makes a difference to anybody. Most are from Bayern.
(I don't have the calendar -- I'm just spying on Untappd entries from a few of my friends.)