Grand Opening of The Hops Shack

A couple of fellow MALTZ members took the plunge and opened a homebrew store. Both are members here - salad_419 and hotrod.

Its only a 20 minute drive from my office so I stopped up yesterday and took some pics. For those of you in the north central Ohio area, this may be just what you've been waiting for.

These guys certainly did a fantastic job setting up the store and getting their initial inventory in. They're still working on their website and are currently open for retail only. From what I understand they plan on having an online ordering system available sometime in the future.

The Hops Shack:

1687 Marion Road
Bucyrus, OH 44820
419.617.7770

The owners (and the child labor):

Looks very nice. I used to come to Bucyrus occasionally for work to Timken. Man, a whopping 4.7 miles away. If I ever end up there again I'll be sure and check it out.

very nice, I hope they do well

looks great. way cleaner and more organized than my LHBS!

My wife and I live in Toledo but are coming back to the hometown for Christmas.

Im sure Ill have plenty of money to spend there this time around. The last time we were home I snagged a 6 gallon better bottle and a bunch of other stuff I couldnt get very cheap up here at the Toledo LHBS.

Just ordered from them online last night and order shipped today. Great deals on bulk hops. Bought some yeasties while I was there and some oak chips as I hate packing chips. Even with shipping fed ex 12.95 very reasonable pricing on willamette $5.99 lb., Columbus $8.99 lb., Cascade $14.99 lb. and Nugget $6.99 lb. even when you add the shipping into the costs. Good turnaround and good pricing. I thought I would give them a shout out as I found them here as a banner ad.

Everything arrived today. Looks good. My only concern and it is a small one as I am going to repackage today is I can smell the hops inside the bags. I don't know if that's normal or not and it is not a real big deal because as soon as I post here, I am off to repack into smaller batches.

Besides when you add in the shipping costs, just to the hops costs (not including yeasts and oak chips) it works out to 78cents an ounce. $49.71 cost for hops and shipping by 64 oz of hops. I could even pull some shipping costs over to the yeast and oak chips (another pound roughly) which would bring it down to 74 cents an ounce. Not bad...