TWO brothers are hop-ing to take the craft beer world by storm after launching their own mail order subscription service.

Evan and Alex Herbert set up Beer Me Now after quitting their day jobs to follow their passion for precious pints.

The pair have already picked up orders from across the UK and are hard at work cultivating relationships with small breweries around the country.

The former Gilberd School students offer a monthly pack of eight little-known beers alongside a pack of snacks.

For the more economical drinkers, there are also bi-monthly or quarterly options.

Evan, who left his role as deputy manager at M&S in High Street, Colchester, said: “We have always had an interest in beer and we had always talked about setting up our own business.

“So it got to the point where we both said: ‘Are we actually going to do this?’ and we decided to go for it while we’re still at home, not married, with no kids and with no mortgage.

“If there’s ever a time to do it, it’s now.”

The pair were already members of two well-known subscription services and felt they could take the well-trodden business model even further, by seeking out small breweries such Suffolk’s Station 119, which customers are less likely to have tried.

The 27-year-old added: “That’s probably one of the advantages we see, that we couldn’t work with larger breweries because they require larger orders, but with the smaller ones, there isn’t that problem really and we can bring people beers they are so unlikely to have had.”

Brother Alex, 25, who left his role at Palmer and Partners estate agency, in Colchester, has also thrown himself in the business.

Big brother Evan added: “We’re advertising ourselves as a national company but we’ve had a really good take-up locally and we’re really pleased with that.

“In fact, we’ve taken it upon ourselves - just the two of us - to flyer every single home in Colchester so we’ve got 70,000 flyers waiting to go out.”

At the moment, the pair, who live in St John’s, in Colchester, are filling boxes from a selection of 30 beers from between 15 and 20 breweries, so no two boxes are likely to be the same.

Evan added: “It was a really big step leaving our jobs. We were both getting a decent wage but we just thought: ‘Now’s the time’.”

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