Christmas Beer Swap at work?

[kpr121]

Anyone ever organize a beer trade at their place of work? A friend of mine told me about a swap she does at her office every Christmas time and I thought it was an awesome idea. The basic idea is this:

Have a group of people (24 would be ideal) buy a case of craft beer each. Keep a list or assign someone to keep track of who’s purchased what to ensure no repeats. On the day of the swap everyone brings their 24 beers in, pull them out onto a table and then fill up their empty case with equal number of beers from each participant.

Here in PA, this seems to be a great way to be able to try new beers without breaking the bank at the (overpriced) bottle shop. I was wondering what type of rules would be good to put in place, and how it should be ran?

Im thinking there should be a minimum case price, maybe $35 (minimizes the Sam Adams crowd).

We happen to have a really nice beer distributor down the road from our work, maybe include a list of potential beers and their prices in an email to all participants? Maybe limit the number of beers per style,

Also I was wondering how this could be done in a work environment that doesn’t exactly condone the possession or consumption of alcohol on premises. It might be tough to do without a large area to setup and collect all the beer, I don’t want to be doing this in the Mcdonalds parking lot across the street. Does anyone think that the beer distributor may be open to allowing us to purchase and store the beers at their site? Then a few of us could go there and split out all the cases before they were picked up. That would be ideal, maybe I need to go buy a couple cases and talk to the manager about it.

Any thoughts/idea?

 

[cimirie]

If you've got 24 people at work willing to do a non-BMC non-SA quality beer swap, I'm infinitely jealous. If I could get 2 people at my work to do that, it would be a miracle.

I'd say use your breakroom, nobody open a bottle, and you should be GTG.

 

[kpr121]

Im not sure if I would be able to get 24 people, but I guess it really wouldnt matter as long as there was some following. If there are 12 people than you get two of each beer, if there are 18 you get one of each and theres an extra 6 for each person that can be swapped individually or kept.

(If theres 48 then you can buy two cases!)

I was thinking break room but so many people in my company are so P.C. that I feel they would either (a) be afraid to get involved or (b) make a big stink about it with managers. My office has over 350 people in so it would hard to keep quiet. I guess I just have to get a few big time managers corporate guys on board then noone can say anything.

 

[Ceetar]

maybe do it after hours or 15 minutes before work starts or something.


Or..maybe the distributor will do it for you. I mean, you tell them you're thinking about 24 cases of beer, that's a pretty fair chunk of cash for them right?

I'd love to do this but I doubt I'd even find 6 people at work to do a 6-pack swap.

 

[Bmorebrew]

My advice would be to discuss it with a manager - get him or her involved if possible. Probably the issue would be the company's policy on having alcoholic beverages on site.

 

[kpr121]

My advice would be to discuss it with a manager - get him or her involved if possible. Probably the issue would be the company's policy on having alcoholic beverages on site.

Yeah I am going to bring it up to my group manager (a beer lover) at our Christmas Party tomorrow. Maybe buy him a beer first .

 

[fredtheseal]

Does this friend of yours work at a software company east of the city?

Because that sounds exactly like the exchange we have organized over the last couple years. We did it for Fall and Christmas. We tried a Summer exchange but it didn't go over well.

The key to the whole thing is getting 12 or 24 cases (not necessarily people). Even people who don't like micros will still get in the exchange so they can give the cases as presents, sometimes they want multiple cases. It might be easier to get a group together than you think.

I ran most of the exchanges and the last time we split the responsibilities up.

The easiest and fairest way to do this is to get your group established and talk to your local distributor. Have them give you a list of beers and prices. Then have everybody pick a beer from the list. Once everybody picks a beer, give your order to the distributor. (Our distributor even delivered the cases for us) Average out the total price over the whole group. With a group of 12 or 24, everybody is going to walk away with the exact same case, so it's only fair everybody pays the same price.

Then we set a day/time and get together and exchange the beers. We don't consume them on premise, just take them back to our office and take them home at the end of the day.

Over the course of the last few years, we've had 95 different beers but it started to become too big of a hassle so we stopped (this past Fall was the last one)

 

[djfriesen]

Throw a party and rent the back room at some restaurant. Some cooler places might even let you drink it there for a corking fee of some kind.

Better yet, organize it with your favorite LHBS. Have them keep it open after hours, get everyone over there, and see if the LHBS can have a few clone recipes of some of the more popular beers available, maybe at a discount. Could be a decent enough moneymaker to be able to convince the LHBS to get onboard.