Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

The Manual may earn a commission when you buy through links on our site.

Brews Less Traveled Beer Club By Brewvana

Pat Evans
By

A beer club is one of the best ways to dive into the latest craft beer trends and be able to try new brews from across the United States and the rest of the globe. The bad news is, even with all the frequent flyer miles in the world, it’s likely impossible to visit all the best breweries in the U.S. alone. Awesome brewpubs have popped up in the most remote areas and smallest towns in each and every state. While some of them are definitely worth seeking out on trips to favorite regions and landscapes, there is a better way to get some of those tastings in without leaving the front door. Enter Brewvana.

Related Videos

How Does Brewvana Work?

A bunch of canned Brewvana beers in display.

The company Brewvana is taking the travel out of visiting breweries by curating boxes that show up on the front doorstep. Brewvana’s Brews Less Traveled Beer Club is a quick and easy way to sample a new beer scene every month. The best part about the club is it doesn’t hit the big beer cities of the U.S., Brewvana picks cities with smaller, lesser-known beer scenes. Some of the first selections have been Lexington, Kentucky; Charlotte, North Carolina; Cincinnati, Ohio; and Knoxville, Tennessee.

What Comes With the Club?

A basic Brewed Less Traveled membership includes eight different beers from the city selected. There is also the option to double the beer so each box could include two of each style of beer. Members also receive access to weekly virtual tastings with brewery representatives from the establishments the beers came from in the box. And for a limited time, new members can receive their first month free with a six-month membership. But there is also the option to avoid an ongoing commitment by paying month-to-month.

Related

Restrictions

Of course, members do have to be 21 years old or older. An adult signature is also required when the box is delivered. The shipments are also geographically limited. The company cannot ship to Alabama, Arkansas, Delaware, Indiana, Maryland, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Utah, West Virginia, Vermont. The boxes also cannot head to Alaska, Hawaii, or outside the U.S.

Our Brewvana Review

XUL Beer Co.’s Paper Crowns.

The box sent to The Manual included eight beers from Knoxville, Tennessee. Home to the University of Tennessee and the capital of the Volunteer State, it should not be a surprise the city appears to have a robust beer scene.

The beers included in the box were all excellent, including XUL Beer Co.’s Paper Crowns, a New England-style IPA that also rocked a streamlined black label with a simple folded paper crown. Also in the package was Next Level Brewing’s Viejo Norte Knox, a Mexican-style lager. Next Level’s co-founder and co-head brewer Rick Cox was part of one of the episodes featured during the month helping further shine a light on the company’s beer and the city’s growing brewing community.

The box of eight beers might be too limited a sample size to really get the full feel of a city. But when the Knoxville box opened, it revealed a few Mexican-style lagers, which could be a trend, or maybe the summer leftovers, or that’s just what they like in Knoxville.

One differential was Elst Brewing’s Brown. The Belgian Dubbel was a welcomed detour into a different side of Knoxville beer in the quick journey.

Should You Get Brewvana?

Canned beer from Brewvana.

One of the best parts about traveling across the country trying beers is getting a feel for what local brewers in each region like to make. You find little grooves in each area, like Michigan’s apparent fondness for brown ales or the strange abundance of Scotch ales in Arizona.

While it truly is great to hit the ground running in a new city, sampling all the beers one can sample in a quick trip, the Brewed Less Traveled box is a great way to get down a quick venture into a new town, one that might otherwise stay off the radar.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
The best kegerators for keeping your favorite beers cold and fresh
Fresh beer is better beer. Now, you can have cold draft beer at home or on the go with your own personal beer keg setup.
best kegerator on amazon

There's a wide selection of iconic craft beers and tasty cheap beers available to drink in cans and bottles. But nothing beats a good, heady draft pint served right from a tap or kegerator. As the name implies, a kegerator is a refrigerator that keeps a keg of beer cold and fresh while allowing you to dispense the contents from a built-in pressurized tap system on top.

However, it is a costly appliance, so it’s recommended to do your homework and invest your hard-earned money in a top-notch quality unit that will surely keep your beer fresh. To help you save time on researching the best ones, we’ve rounded up our picks for the best kegerators of 2023, with our selections ranging from on-the-go options to the most innovative dual-tap kegerators.

Read more
The Borg drink is a viral Gen-Z favorite that’s really not all that new
Sorry, kiddos. "Borg" has been around for a while. We just call it something else.
borg drink recipe

Every new generation thinks they've invented the wheel when it comes to anything trendy. We're sorry to say, Gen-Z, but "flared leggings" are called yoga pants, most of us were using flip phones before you were born, and don't even think about talking to us about pop punk unless you know who Billie Joe Armstrong is.
When it comes to drinks, most generations have a hallmark party beverage that defines their college years, holding the power to flood them with a rush of nausea and fuzzy memories even decades later. For Gen-Z, that drink is called "Borg." What they haven't realized yet, though, is that this falsely fruity concoction has been around for years under the name "Jungle Juice."
While Jungle Juice was originally invented by U.S. soldiers during the Second World War, it was Millenials who made it the truly trashy, hangover-inducing party swill it is. Most stereotypically mixed in a large bucket or something else that can be found in a dorm garage, Jungle Juice is a mixture of vodka and a cheap, fruity mixer such as Kool-Aid. Naturally, there aren't any hard and fast recipe rules, but that's the usual gist of Jungle Juice.
The Gen-Z twist, Borg, does have some clever upgrades, and for that, we give them due credit. Firstly, the rather gross-sounding name is actually a witty acronym for "Black Out Rage Gallon." We love that there's no beating around the bush with this generation. They know how to call a spade a spade. Second, unlike the communal trough that's used to dole out Jungle Juice, Borg is made and served in individual plastic jugs, cutting down on germ spread. We can appreciate that growing up in the days of COVID has made for some much healthier thinking. We also love that Borg can be capped, making it much more difficult for potential predators to tamper with a drink.
Of course, the optional addition of new ingredients like Liquid IV also help to curb the hangover that will undoubtedly come with drinking vodka from a plastic jug. That sure would have been nice back in the day.

Borg drink recipe

Read more
Is erythritol harmful? What a dietitian says new data means for your Keto diet
Erythritol is common in many keto foods - what does that mean for your health?
erythritol in keto diet advice

While sugar substitutes have been around for more than a century, they didn't really become mainstream here in the United States until around the mid-70s. According to Carolyn De La Pena, professor of American Studies at UC Davis and author of Empty Pleasures: The Story of Artificial Sweeteners from Saccharin to Splenda, between 1975 and 1984, Americans increased their consumption of artificial sweeteners by 150 percent. This timeline makes sense when you take into account that the late seventies coincided with the start of our crazed diet culture and the revolving door of fad diets.
One such diet that doesn't seem to be going anywhere, however, is the Keto diet. Still hugely popular among Americans trying to shed a few pounds, Keto focuses heavily on limited or no carbohydrates. Because sugar contains carbohydrates, followers of Keto have turned to artificial sweeteners to satisfy those late-night cravings - sweeteners that, more often than not, contain erythritol. Erythritol in particular has become hugely popular because it's much better for baking than other sugar substitutes, has less of an artificial flavor, and will keep the eater in Ketosis, which is key for losing weight on the Keto diet.
A new study has made waves recently because its findings indicate there's a link between erythritol and higher rates of heart attack and stroke (though the study did note that only an association was found — not causation. So should you be worried?
We asked Dan LeMoine, RD, the award-winning author of Fear No Food and the Clinical Director at Phoenix-based Re:vitalize Nutrition, what he had to say about erythritol, including its benefits and potential health risks. "Artificial sweeteners are still sweeteners. While many are non-nutritive or zero-calorie, we tend to view them similarly as we do regular sweeteners or sugars — moderation is key. While many have amazing implications on weight loss – being low to no-calorie options and having little impact on blood sugar, some have their downside," he says.

While some of that sugar substitution has been good for waistlines and health issues that come from obesity, it seems to be causing more and more concern when it comes to other potential health issues. "For example," says LeMoine, "some research indicates the popular sweeteners stevia may have negative effects on the gut microbiome. And the recent study showing correlation between the sugar alcohol, erythritol, and heart attack and stroke."

Read more