Every autumn we get the same message, in one form or another: "my [partner/dad/best mate] likes beer, but I have no idea what to actually buy them." A branded pint glass or a six-pack from the supermarket does the job, but it doesn't feel like much of a gift. A beer tasting experience is a different proposition entirely - something the recipient actually does, usually with other people, that they'll be telling you about afterwards rather than quietly recycling the packaging. We've sold gift vouchers for beer tasting tours since we started running them in 2014, so this is our honest, no-nonsense guide to what these gifts actually involve, how ours works, and how it compares to the other beer-gift routes worth knowing about.
What a beer tasting gift experience actually is
Strip away the marketing and it's simple: instead of buying beer for someone to drink alone at home, you're buying them an occasion to drink it - usually guided, usually with other people, and usually somewhere they wouldn't have thought to go by themselves. That can mean a ticketed tasting event, a brewery tour with samples included, or (the format we'd argue works best as a gift) a voucher that lets the recipient choose their own date and tour rather than you guessing their diary for them. The common thread across all of them is that the "product" is an afternoon, not an object - which is exactly why it tends to be remembered longer than most things you could wrap.
How our gift vouchers work
Our own vouchers are bought directly on our gift vouchers page, and we kept the mechanics deliberately simple. You choose an amount, add a short personal message if you want to, and pay securely - the voucher is then delivered by email instantly, either straight to the recipient's inbox or to yours if you'd rather hand it over yourself. There's no physical card to lose in a drawer and, importantly, no expiry date, so a voucher bought in September for a Christmas present is just as usable the following summer. The recipient picks whichever of our three tours suits them and books whichever Saturday works, which takes the guesswork entirely off your plate.
Which of our three tours makes the best gift
Because the voucher is open-value and works across all three tours, you don't strictly need to pick one - but it helps to know what each suits, in case you'd rather gift a specific experience outright:
- Bermondsey Beer Tasting Tour - £49pp. Our flagship: a guided 2 to 3.5-hour tasting through four independent taprooms along the Bermondsey railway arches, starting at Southwark Brewing Co on Druid Street, with the beer included in the price. It's the safest bet for anyone who already likes craft beer, or is curious enough to give it a proper go.
- Cheese, Meat & Beer Tour - £65pp, Saturdays 12-2:30pm. The pick for a food-first recipient - someone who'd rather pair tastings with proper cheese and cured meat than drink on an empty stomach. It reads as a slightly more premium gift, which suits a milestone occasion.
- Hackney Wick Craft Beer Experience - £41.25pp, selected Saturdays. A tighter, more affordable east London session, and a good shout for someone newer to craft beer who might find a longer tasting a bit much on their first outing.
All three run as private bookings too, for groups of 6 up to 60 or more - see our private and group tours page if the gift is really for a group rather than one person.
Other beer gift experiences worth knowing about
A guided tour isn't the only route, and we'd rather point that out honestly than pretend it's the only good option. Our own roundup of gifts for beer lovers covers the wider field in more detail, but broadly:
- Beer subscription boxes suit someone who wants a steady trickle of new beer arriving through the post over weeks or months, rather than a single occasion - a slower-burn gift with less of a "moment" to it.
- Home tasting kits suit someone who enjoys hosting and would rather run their own evening for friends, with a curated set of beers and tasting notes rather than a guide walking them through it.
- Live, guided experiences - tours, ticketed tasting events, brewery visits - suit someone who values the story, the company and getting out of the house as much as the beer itself. This is the category we sit in, and it's the one that turns into an anecdote rather than an empty box in the recycling.
None of these is objectively better than the others; they just suit different people. If you're weighing up a beer gift against a wider list of London experience gifts generally, our experience days in London worth booking roundup covers the gifting angle across food, drink, art and more, with the same instant-delivery, never-expires logic running through most good voucher schemes, ours included.
Gifting for occasions, not just individuals
A lot of the vouchers we sell aren't for one person at all - they're bought by someone organising a milestone birthday, a leaving do, a work social or a hen or stag weekend, who wants the gift to double as the plan for the day. Because our tours take private groups from 6 up to 60 or more, a voucher can effectively fund (or contribute towards) the whole outing rather than a single ticket. If that's closer to what you're after, it's worth getting in touch via our private and group tours page directly to talk through numbers and dates before or after the voucher's bought, so the group booking lines up properly.
What makes a good beer gift experience, and what doesn't
Having sold these for over a decade, the pattern we see is fairly consistent. The gifts that go down well tend to share a few things: a fixed date isn't forced on the recipient, the group size is flexible enough that they can bring a plus-one or a whole crowd if they want, and the tasting itself is led by someone who can actually answer questions rather than reading from a script. The gifts that go down less well are the opposite - a rigid single date that clashes with something, a voucher tucked away with a hard expiry that gets forgotten, or an experience so generic it could be any city's tour rather than something specific to London's own brewing scene. It's worth keeping that in mind whichever route you pick, ours or otherwise.
Timing it around the calendar
Beer gift experiences tend to cluster around a handful of occasions - Christmas and Secret Santa obviously, but also Father's Day, milestone birthdays, and the run of leaving dos and work socials that pick up through fewer of the quieter months. Because our vouchers have no expiry date, there's no real downside to buying early: a voucher bought in September for a December gift sits exactly as ready to use as one bought the week before. If you're buying for a specific date - a birthday tasting booked in advance rather than an open voucher - it's worth checking availability a few weeks out, since Saturday slots on the Cheese, Meat & Beer Tour and the Hackney Wick Craft Beer Experience can fill up faster around the autumn party season.
Buying one, practically speaking
If you've decided a beer tasting gift experience is the right call, the process is short: head to our gift vouchers page, choose an amount (either an odd figure or one that matches a specific tour above), add a message, and pay. The email lands in minutes, which makes it a genuinely good last-minute option - useful if you're the sort of person who remembers a birthday the night before rather than a fortnight out. There's no faff with printing, posting or worrying it'll arrive late, and because it never expires, the pressure's entirely off the recipient to use it by some arbitrary date.
The honest summary: a beer tasting gift experience works because it hands someone an afternoon out rather than another bottle to open alone, and a voucher is the version of that gift that lets them choose exactly how they spend it. We've been running ours since 2014, and the vouchers that get used fastest are almost always the ones bought for someone who was already halfway to booking a tour themselves - so if in doubt, it's rarely a bad guess.