Gifts for Beer Geeks

EDIT: Check out our 2014 Beer Gift Guide too!

We all know a beer geek, whether it's a serious real ale lass to the fella you love who tries as many new beers as possible. Or just your mate who drinks too much of the stuff at the weekend.

So here's a selection of the best gifts for beer fans, especially for those that you're too scared to buy actual beer for their gift recipient of choice, but still wants to buy something suitably beery (that isn't, you know, a bottle-opener keyring, or one of those glasses engraved with a shit joke.)

Okay, well, I'll admit it, I'm starting with beer. But it's beer in its most awesome form ever: a beer advent calendar. This is the genius creation of Best of British Beers, and oh boy have they done it well: a beer a day from 1st December until Christmas, and it includes a case of three Christmassy beers for the big day itself. It's £73.90 - that's markedly cheaper than the ginvent calendar, and pretty good value for 27 bottles of exquisite craft beers.

We had gin soap, and now we have beer soap! It comes from Village Green Soaps, and it's creamy and smells lovely. It's only £4 too.

A pint of beer sweets! And they're on offer at Prezzybox for £10.95.

I love this beer paddle tasting set. You don't get any beers (surely the ale lover in your life has a stash ready to try?) but you get various types of tasting glasses on a gorgeous wooden plinth. It's £28.99 from iWoot.

The Beeroness blog is one of my favourite things ever. I think I visit it every day. Cooking with beer is something everyone should do, probably daily. It should be law. The Beeroness book is £7.31 from Amazon and is filled with goodness.

These public servant bottle openers made me laugh and laugh. Crack open a bottle of the cold stuff with the nether regions of Boris Johnson, David Cameron, or George Osborne. Yes. They're £8.50 each from The Original Metal Box Company.

We've chatted about brewing your own before, but this Brooklyn Brew Shop Beer Making Kits are something else. The beers you brew are just delicious, such as the Chestnut Brown Ale and Chocolate Maple Porter. The sets are £38.99 from Firebox.

A beer vinyl decal! It's clever enough without becoming too tacky (right?!) and I can think of a lot of fridges that would be markedly improved by this. It's £10.83, with the same amount for shipping from the States from Off The Wall Expression on Etsy.

I couldn't include this list without finding a few fabulous beer glasses. And look! Pac Man Beer Glass! (£15.99, Amazon) Pretty Lolita Pub Crawl glass (£20, John Lewis). And how about the Pi Pint Glass for the geek in your life? (£11.50, Cafe Press). And that pop-up beer glass (£6.99, iWoot) is the perfect stocking filler.

Actually iWoot are also good for this Ctrl+O beer bottle opener. It's £7.49, and what a cracking beer geek combination.

If you're looking for an actually decent selection of beers for a massive beer fan, then some brilliant examples include the beer and curry case from John Lewis (£15), Firebox's Discworld Ales gift set £19.99, and The Wine Society's Winter Beers case (£29).

Lastly, this beer print from Luckies may seem pricy at £24.95 but it covers six square feet! It lists 89 types of beer, with 200 examples in total. We could all learn something from this.

EDIT: Check out our 2014 Beer Gift Guide too!

Do you have anything to add to this list of wondrous beery bonanzas? Let us know in the comments!