Sourcing ingredients - Calgary

I'm pretty new to making beer and would like to get out of the 'kit' stage. So i found a recipe for an IPA in the 'Homebrewing for Dummies' book, and took it to a home brewing store in calgary. They were very helpful in trying to track down what I needed, but in the end they said that the supply for hops is very poor and you basically have to grow your own.

Could some other brewers from Calgary let me know where they get their grains, hops and yeast. Or other Canadians let me know of online/mailorder companies they order from.

Thanks.

I'm not Canadian but check out Northern Brewer - I bet they ship to Canada

NORTHERN BREWER

So are most people getting their ingredients shipped to them?

Did you go to the Vineyard in south Calgary? I had heard that they were about to bring in an order of hops a couple of weeks ago.

Other than them, there is no place to buy fresh hops in Calgary. So if they are out, you will have to mail order.

I have ordered through most of the major online homebrew stores. Everybody has their favourite, but I like MoreBeer.com. They are happy to ship to Canada and will even 'go the extra mile' and send your stuff by US Postal Service. Don't purchase online from US retailers if they want to courier your purchase (otherwise you will be hit with a hidding $30 - $60 'customs brokerage' fee by the courier company when they show up at your door).

If you want to avoid the hassle of cross-border shopping, there are some new online stores that are Canadian based that sell a small but decent selection of hops. You can try homebrew-supplies.ca, www.mashingheads.ca, or www.expertbrewers.com

A lot of folks swear by Austin Homebrew, which also sells to Canadians and will ship US Postal Service if you ask them nicely!

If you just need hops, NikoBrew has good prices and ships to Canada via USPS.

Anyways, there are lots of choices if you want to do mail order (including about 4 or 5 other good online stores I haven't mentioned that might have hops in stock). We aren't as well off as our neighbours to the south, but we definitely can get decent hops up here in Cowtown.

Oh, you should also consider joining Calgary's homebrew club, the Cowtown Yeast Wranglers. We have lots of members that are happy to do bulk orders for hops, and we will probably do another group buy for the club in the early fall.

As an update, I just spotted this in The Vineyard's newsletter today:

Hops: New arrivals to The Vineyard

We are finally able to source more varieties of hops. We expect a new shipment in next week.

Thanks for your patience with our hop shortage the last couple of years.

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mtags said:

I'm pretty new to making beer and would like to get out of the 'kit' stage. So i found a recipe for an IPA in the 'Homebrewing for Dummies' book, and took it to a home brewing store in calgary. They were very helpful in trying to track down what I needed, but in the end they said that the supply for hops is very poor and you basically have to grow your own.

Could some other brewers from Calgary let me know where they get their grains, hops and yeast. Or other Canadians let me know of online/mailorder companies they order from.

Thanks.

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If you need any hops that I can help with just let me know (you may have already I just don't know people's hbt usernames when they order sometimes ). For Canadian orders I just charge actual USPS which for 1-2 pounds is about $12, 3-4 for $24.65 (USD). I also deduct the seven percent coupon on the price of the hops before shipping if you mention hbt. If you're interested just drop me an email (niko at nikobrew dot com) with what you'd like to order and I'd be happy to send you a paypal payment request. Thanks for the mention too FlyGuy I appreciate it!

-Niko-

Just so you know Nikobrew, UPS does Canada. They are faster and cheaper.

shipfaced said:

Just so you know Nikobrew, UPS does Canada. They are faster and cheaper.

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Not for the customer, they aren't. Just check out all the 'Canadians hate UPS' rants. I absolutely refuse to use UPS if I buy anything from the USA, and will deliberately order only from vendors that will ship US Postal Service.

Shipping by UPS to Canada means a special UPS extortion fee: $1 duty, then UPS adds on a $55 brokerage fee, plus taxes.

well i guess i got told. Things have changed since a few Christmases ago when UPS would beat USPS by a week and for half the price.

$55 for a brokerage regardless of the price of the goods? Who the hell do they think they are .... a bailed out US bank?

The only thing I dont like about USPS to Canada is the inability to track. We've never had a lost package up there, but we did have one that took about 4 weeks.

hopsdirect.com

I just received 4lbs last week (4 different kinds).

Try them.