Best beer Advent calendars 2024 UK – from ‘proper’ ales to modern craft beers, we tasted some of this year’s line-up
THIRSTY? Your festive season is about to be hoppier than ever, with our roundup of the best beer advent calendars available to shop now.
Whether you’re a craft beer enthusiast, lager lover or ale aficionado, these calendars are guaranteed to get you in the Christmas spirit in the most refreshing of ways.
Packed with top-tier pints and hidden gems, these beer calendars promise a month of festive sips that’ll make every day feel like a celebration.
We've put some to the test ourselves – you know, for research purposes purely – and have handpicked some additional options that you'll definitely want to sample yourself.
So you can say goodbye to boring chocolate calendars and hello to a daily surprise of frothy goodness!
Dive in below and get ready to sip your way to Christmas – it’s the most wonderful time for a beer...
MORE BOOZY CALENDARS
Tried and tested
(AD) Beavertown Advent Calendar
Pros: Nicely designed, comes with a free beer glass, includes popular beers like Neck Oil, Gamma Ray and Bones Lager
Cons: Lots of duplicates, was difficult to get some beers out of the box
Rating: 3.5/5
With its tall design that folds out like a book, the Beavertown calendar was easily the best-looking beer Advent calendar we tested. While it’s too big to store in a cupboard, we didn’t mind having it out in the corner of the room.
It’s priced at £69, making it £14 more expensive than Brewdog’s Advent Calendar. However, Beavertown’s beers are slightly more premium than Brewdog's, so this fits with both breweries’ places in the market, and it certainly looks more swanky.
Our only big issue with the Beavertown Advent Calendar is that it contains several duplicates. We won’t ruin the surprise as Beavertown hasn’t listed the exact list of beers on its website, but it means if there’s one you don’t like — in our case, a smoked porter — you could end up with a few cans to get through.
However, the flip side of that is that you get multiple opportunities to indulge in your favourite Beavertown beers, including crowd-pleasers like Neck Oil and Gamma Ray.
Another minor issue is that some of the beers are really tightly packed into the calendar, to the point where it’s difficult to remove them, but with a bit of coaxing and elbow grease, it’s not too much of an issue.
Beer52 Advent Calendar
Pros: Contains beers from 24 different breweries, many beers are exclusive to Beer52, something for everyone, glass included, can get a free case of beer worth £27 if you’re a new customer
Cons: Not very festively designed
Rating: 5/5
We loved the Beer52 Advent Calendar; it’s priced fairly well (on the scale of Beer Advent Calendars, at least), it contains a huge variety of beer from 24 breweries across seven countries, and almost everything we tasted was delicious.
There’s 10 different styles of beer included, many of which weren’t present in the other Advents we tried: it was nice opening the second window to reveal a fruit gose with sour cherries, for example, and there’s even a nod to traditional British ale (from Moor, one of the country’s best breweries).
Of course, such variety means that you might taste one or two beers you don’t like, but to our surprise, we didn’t find that; the advantage of not being limited to a single brewery means that Beer52 has been able to curate a tasty and exciting selection.
As a bonus, Beer52 throws in a card featuring an offer for new customers; the opportunity to order a free case of eight beers with free delivery.
If we were to find one gripe, it would be that the calendar’s design isn’t especially festive, but it’s funky nonetheless.