White Elephant Holiday Beer Exchange 2019

Every few months, my husband and I like to host a bottle share at our house. We invite between 10-20 of our closest beer-drinking buddies and host a share full of beer, food, and fun. If you are interested in reading more about how we organize our shares, check out my blog post here.

For our last share, I decided to change things up a bit. We still asked everyone to bring some beers and food to share with the group, but I also organized a White Elephant Beer Exchange.

For the White Elephant, I asked everyone to bring EITHER a “joke beer” (noncraft) or a “good” beer (craft). I also asked everyone to wrap their beer, so when we did our exchange, no one would know what they are selecting.

My husband and I decided that one of us would give the good beer, and one of us would give a joke beer. I went searching in our beer closest and found a bottle of Wild Ones from Red Cypress (RIP) to gift. My husband went searching at our local gas station and found a 25oz Natty Daddy for $2! Let me tell you if you are looking for cheap (albeit gross) beer to get buzzed on this beer is for you. 8% beer for only $2!

Once all our friends arrived, I had everyone draw a random number. The number is the order that select their gift. I think everyone has their own rules, but my rules are simple: when it is your turn to choose a beer, you can either pick a wrapped beer under the tree OR steal someone else’s beer. If your beer gets stolen, then you get to pick another wrapped beer. In this case, it pays to be the last one to pick because you get to see almost all the beers and can steal whatever you want.

Of course, everyone wants to end up with a good beer, but in all honesty, it is more fun watching people open the joke beers. Most of my friends brought some good beers (looking at you Seth with all those Bombs!) but watching the faces of the people opening the Natty Daddy, Smirnoff, and The Zima (thanks, Andy!) is definitely entertaining.

After the White Elephant Exchange was over, we continued with our bottle share, and I got to try so many different beers. That is what I love about shares. It seems like we are drinking a lot, but in all actuality, we have such small pours, you don’t feel like death the next day.