Have you ever given another craft beer loving friend a mixed six pack of stuff they have never tried? I have this week, and oh boy am I feeling the pressure?

It seems like a pretty easy task from the outset…

“Hey mate, why don’t we send each other a mixed six pack of beers from your local breweries”

But once I started to think about it a little more, I got a bit anxious about it all. I mean this is next level anxiety, the type of anxiety I used to get when I crafted awesome mix tapes for my girlfriends.

Side note: For those of you under 30, mixtapes were an expression of your love of music, an art form, if you will. You needed serious skills to sit down with a double tape deck and create a master piece. I can only explain it as requiring a great understanding of “the vibe”. Knowing when to throw in a slow jam, or when to fire the listener up with what Top 40 Radio now refers to as a “banger”…the vibe.

Mix tapes were an analogue art form. The days constructing an ultimate mix, like clay on a pottery wheel, are gone. (Having said that, Netflix’s 13 Reasons Why has sparked my sons interest in cassettes and he recently pulled out my entire collection to have a play with!) Today’s youth will never know the pleasure of searching a stack of cassettes for the perfect song to add to the mix. No way that kids of today would sit there in real time and listen to the song as it played from one tape to the other! Well that was until the awesomeness of high speed dubbing came along, but that story is for another day.

But I digress with my walk down memory lane, back to the mixed six pack…

So here I am questioning how to pull this ultimate six pack together. Do I include:

the best beers;

the most unique beers;

the most popular beers;

hardest to find;

popular brands; or

the quirkiest y styles?

Aaaarrrggghh!

All this deep thinking gave me an idea! I am sure many of you had faced similar situations, so why don’t I write an article about it. Open up the conversation with everyone and share experiences. So here goes!

What’s the budget? How many do I send?

Let’s be honest, craft beer is expensive. If you are talking limited releases, high ABV’s or barrel aged brews, you may not have change from $100 for a six pack!

Beer Healer says…