The Gourmet BBQ Hampers: With or Without the Craft Beer

By Andrew Richards· 25 September 2026

One box is two Australian ales, savoury snacks and something sweet to hand round. The other is four flavour makers for the grill and nothing sweet at all. Which to send, and when.

Both boxes are built around a barbecue, and the beer is not the real difference between them. The Gourmet BBQ & Craft Beer Hamper is a drinks and snacks box with two Australian ales at the centre of it. The Gourmet BBQ Hamper is a cook's kit: four things to rub, brush and shake onto the meat, and nothing sweet at all.

Gourmet BBQ Hamper in the French blue gift box with gold ribbon, packed with barbecue rubs, sauce and savoury snacks

Not one box with the beer added

Same French blue gift box, same gold ribbon, same bench in Corio, so it is fair to assume one is the other with two bottles dropped in. Lay the pack lists side by side and that is not what happened. Four items are identical in both, a fifth turns up in two different flavours, and everything past that was chosen for a different kind of afternoon.

What it does	BBQ & Craft Beer Hamper	BBQ Hamper
To drink	Stone & Wood Pacific Ale, cloudy and golden with tropical hop aromas, and Little Creatures Rogers' Amber Ale, toasty caramel malt	No alcohol, by design
To cook with	Gordon Rhodes pulled pork sauce mix	Red Gum BBQ Grandpa Joe's beef rub, Red Gum BBQ Granddaddy Heyward's classic BBQ sauce, a smoky BBQ shaker seasoning, and the same pulled pork mix
To spread	Not in this box	Ploughman's relish 270g and TRCC G for George roasted red capsicum tapenade 110g
To graze on	Mini artisan crackers with sea salt 110g, Hunter's smokehouse barbecue chips, Kangaroo Island Mediterranean olives 185g, Mr Filbert's sea salt mixed nuts 100g	The same crackers, chips and olives, plus Crackerthins plain 100g, roasted peanuts 100g and Mr Filbert's French rosemary almonds 100g
Something sweet	Caramelised cashew brittle 140g, milk chocolate liquorice bullets 180g, milk chocolate roasted almonds 180g	Nothing sweet at all
How it arrives	French blue box with gold ribbon and a free personalised gift card

The shared four are the Gordon Rhodes pulled pork sauce mix, Kangaroo Island Mediterranean olives, Hunter's smokehouse barbecue chips and the mini artisan crackers with sea salt. The fifth is a tin of Mr Filbert's nuts, sea salt mixed nuts in one box and French rosemary almonds in the other. Everything else is a choice, and it is the choice this whole thing turns on.

The beer box is for the afternoon itself

Two bottles set the tone. Stone & Wood Pacific Ale pours cloudy and golden with tropical fruit on the nose, and Little Creatures Rogers' Amber Ale is the maltier of the pair, toasty caramel with a gentle finish. Neither is a bottle anyone puts away for later. They are for the day the ribbon comes off.

The food follows the same logic. Salted crackers, smoky chips, olives and nuts get handed round rather than cooked, and the sweet end of the box, cashew brittle and two lines of milk chocolate, keeps the gift going after the plates are cleared. One practical note: bottles that arrive at room temperature want an hour or two in the fridge before anybody wants them, so if the hamper lands on the day, put the beer in first and open the crackers while it chills.

Send this one to the person who turns up at the barbecue rather than runs it. It is a guest's box, and it suits a housewarming, a thank you or a birthday that has turned into a long lunch. The rest of the range built the same way sits in our craft beer hampers, and there is more on how a beer earns its place in a gift box if you want the longer version. Enjoy responsibly.

The BBQ box is for the person running it

Count the cooking items and the difference stops being subtle. This one has four. Grandpa Joe's beef rub is a Texas style blend of cracked black pepper, salt and spices for building a crust on brisket or steak. Granddaddy Heyward's classic BBQ sauce is for brushing and glazing. A smoky BBQ shaker seasoning handles chips, wings and anything off the grill that needs lifting. Then the pulled pork sauce mix both hampers share, which turns a shoulder into a tray of sliders. That is four separate cooks, spread across months, rather than one afternoon.

The savoury half does its work while the meat rests. Ploughman's relish and the G for George roasted red capsicum tapenade go onto crackers first and into sandwiches afterwards, which is the part people underestimate: those jars outlast the barbecue by weeks. Valley Produce Company's Ploughmans Relish drives a cheese toastie built on Ploughman's relish once the grill has cooled.

It is also the alcohol free one, packed with no bottle in it and shelved with our non-alcoholic hampers. That makes it the surer send when you do not know a household's drinking, when the gift is going into a workplace, or when the recipient is the one driving everybody home all summer.

One gift, Father's Day to Christmas

Father's Day falls on the first Sunday in September, which is roughly when Australian barbecues come back out, and they stay out until autumn. That is the practical reason this pair keeps selling from early September into December: a barbecue gift reads the same in spring as it does at Christmas, and very few festive gifts manage that.

December changes the timing rather than the gift. Both hampers sit above the $100 mark where our Australia-wide shipping is free. If the box is going interstate for Christmas, buy in the first half of the month rather than the last, and look at the wider Christmas hampers range while you are there. For a smaller version of the same idea, our BBQ and grilling sets say it for less.

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Questions about the two BBQ hampers

What is the difference between the Gourmet BBQ Hamper and the BBQ & Craft Beer Hamper?

Four items are the same in both: the pulled pork sauce mix, Hunter's smokehouse barbecue chips, Kangaroo Island Mediterranean olives and the mini artisan crackers with sea salt. Past those, they part company. The craft beer version adds two Australian ales and three sweet lines, so it works as a share box on the day. The alcohol free version adds a beef rub, a barbecue sauce, a smoky shaker seasoning, a relish, a tapenade and two more savoury snacks, and carries nothing sweet.

Which one do I send to someone who does not drink?

The Gourmet BBQ Hamper. It is packed without alcohol and sits in our alcohol free range, so nobody has to explain anything when it is opened. Treat it as the stronger gift rather than the substitute: the person who gets it ends up with more to cook with than the person who gets the bottles.

Does either hamper need to go in the fridge when it arrives?

Nothing in either box needs refrigerating. Both are shelf stable. Give the two ales an hour or two of fridge time before serving and everything else can sit in a cupboard until the next cook. If a single item is ever out of stock when we pack, we substitute something of equal or higher value, and in most cases keep it in the same category, so a rub stays a rub.

Which one to send

If the person you are buying for cooks the barbecue, send the Gourmet BBQ Hamper and expect it to be used across months rather than an afternoon. If they arrive at the barbecue with something under one arm, send the Gourmet BBQ & Craft Beer Hamper and let them open it there. Both are hand packed by our team in Corio, on the northern edge of Geelong, and orders placed before 12pm on a weekday are dispatched the same day, tracked with Australia Post. A free personalised gift card goes in the box, and one line telling them which sauce to start with is worth more on it than a paragraph of ceremony.