A comparison of Beers of Europe, Ales by Mail and AleselA

It’s nearly Christmas or at least close enough to allow me to treat myself to a present of a range of ales so I've bought about 70 bottles from 3 online sources, Ales by Mail, Alesela, and Beers of Europe. When I was gearing up to buy from these sources rather than the supermarkets I found there was a dearth of comparison information out there so I thought I would blog on 4 aspects of these suppliers their Website, Range, Price, Communication/Delivery. There are other sources online such as Beerritz, and Beer Box but I chose these three as I don’t have an unlimited budget and those two are definitely more expensive and I couldn't really see why. First a little background on each.

•           Ales By Mail (AbM), founded by the brewers of the Terry Pratchett’s Discworld themed range of ales in 2009 and are based in Billericay in Essex
•          Alesela, is a small mail order company offering up a mainly Scottish range of Ales from its base in Scotland including a few from America.
•           Beers of Europe (BofE), probably the most established of the three, based in Norfolk with a gigantic warehouse and store.

Website

Of the three I'm going to definitely say I preferred the ease of use and clarity of Alesela website over the other two, the complexity and scale of their website is not in the same league as the other two websites and that’s maybe why they are able to make the experience much more preferable and it’s a breeze to use. AbM have another good website and loses out to Alesela only due to AbM’s website flips up to the top of the page when you add an Ale to your basket which I found irritating. Beers of Europe’s website is only recently relaunched and revamped and they need a better server or something as it can be slow to load between different pages and you have to click on the individual ale and load up its page to add it to the basket whereas on AbM’s website there is a button for this on the browsing page.

Range

BofE have a gigantic range which I don’t think is surpassed on the internet and really is phenomenal, I counted that they had around 800 individual different bottled ales available as well as other alcohol, and a lot of different branded pint glasses if you like those. AbM have a very good range as well as around 300 different ales they also have a nice looking range of gourmet sausages to go along with your ales which cannot be a bad thing. Alesela are a much smaller entity than the other two but they are an excellent source of Scottish ales and hopefully they can build on what is a good selection.

Price

Now this is tricky as it obviously depends on which breweries you pick, what ABV the ales are and where they are produced but I tried to maintain as even a selection policy as I could which was focused around 500ml bottles, 4-6%, and UK breweries. Delivery cost needs to be factored in; Alesela is a one off £6 plus £2 for every 20 bottles (ie 1-20 bottles £8, 21-40 £10, its cheaper if you live near the warehouse), AbM £6.99 per 24 bottles, and BofE is a one off £7.49. Another thing to consider is reductions, this is due to Best Before dates which don’t really impact Ale much, both Alesela and AbM have significantly reduced beers which I took advantage of, whereas BofE do not have any that I could find. I ordered 20 bottles from Alesela, 24 from AbM and 26 from BofE and the average bottle price was BofE - £2.50, Alesela - £2.60, and AbM - £2.75 which despite the lack of reductions on BofE shows the power of economies of scale.

Communication & Delivery

Upon ordering each send a confirmation invoice which were all clear and provided all the info you need. BofE sent me a confirmation of despatch via email, for AbM I received a text from the couriers telling me it would be delivered the next day and offering me the choice to text a response to change that if required which was a nice touch. Alesela also sent me a couple of emails updating me on the progress of the order. I ordered all three on Monday night and all three had arrived before midday on the Wednesday  which is excellent service. AbM and BofE both had very similar packaging of cardboard, but Alesela had an interesting plastic casing for the bottles which I liked.

A great sight

 Beers of Europe and Ales by Mail use cardboard packaging with polystyrene/newspaper filler

AleselA's plastic packaging for the bottles

Overall

All three companies provide an excellent service with Beers of Europe having the largest range, Ales by Mail offering a great alternative and a very impressive smaller firm Alesela providing a good range from Scotland. I'm not going to rank them as I only had a couple of small tweaks I would change about the websites which I've mentioned earlier, and I'm really pleased with my orders from all three firms and will be using them again in the future. I hope this information was useful for those of you who want to escape the monotony of the range the supermarkets provide. Over time I will be reviewing these ales on this blog so look out for that too.

http://www.alesela.co.uk/home.php

http://www.alesbymail.co.uk/

http://www.beersofeurope.co.uk/

All the bottles laid out together, top left: Ales by Mail, top right: Beers of Europe, bottom right: AleselA