Beer packaging for air travel

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medic_35057

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Alright fellow brewers I am in need of some information about form fitting packaging for beer bottles. I am planning on taking a few of my homebrews on an airplane ride to Denver in about 3 weeks and need to find packaging so they don't get broken. So please any info will be appreciated.
 
My mom took some of mine back last time she visited. Just wrapped them in bubble wrap and put them in big zip lock bags. They arrived safely.
 
Did you check the beer. It was my understanding that they don’t pressurize the luggage area. Wouldn’t your beer explode? I was wanting to take a 12 pack of home brew with me on a plane for thanks giving.
 
I am going to Ohio for Xmas, I have a Sam Adams 12 pack box thatI'm gonna load up with pumpkin ale (and maybe some stout), and just pack newspaper in between everything, and then pack it in the middle of my luggage. Barring some serious abuse, I think that will be fine. I will also wrap a plastic bag or 2 around the box to prevent any possible liquid or broken glass from escaping into my luggage. And I think I have read in past posts that the pressure, or lack thereof, has no effect.
 
I am pretty sure they do pressurize the luggage hold. If they didn't anything sealed (shampoo, pens, your favorite pet) would explode.

I have taken a lot of beer with me, checked in my suitcase. I wrapped everything with some type of clothing and padded the top/bottom/sides of the bag with more clothes. Everything came through great.

This was my haul last time:
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I brought 15 beers back from Europe with no problems. Just stuffed them in socks and rolled them up in my cloths.
 
Put socks over the bottles like a golf club cover, then wrap them in bubblewrap. Good to go. You may go over the 50lb limit though. Mine was 48.5 lbs with 6 days of clothes and 2 six packs.
 
If your wanting to take more than a few bottles in your suitcase, I have the indestructible answer. Spray foam insulation. start by putting each bottle in a plastic bag. Put some Styrofoam peanuts or something similar in the bottom of a cardboard box. put in your home brew. then start spraying the foam in around the bags in SMALL squirts cause that stuff expands like crazy. Once the box is full, close it up and tape it all over to help waterproof it. The baggage handlers could play football with that box and not harm a single bottle!.... but you might as well mark it fragile

BTW the luggage compartment is definitely pressurized. The strength of a pressurized aircraft fuselage is derived from the same idea as an egg. A round (or nearly so) structure is extremely stiff so long as the pressures are applied uniformally. A non-pressurized baggage compartment would cause extreme pressure problems at corners and seems between the floor of the passenger area and the roof of the luggage area. However, there is no temperature control in the baggage compartment, so freezing bottles could be a problem on really long flights in winter. Still that would be a VERY rare event (if ever).
 
Turkoglu said:
Did you check the beer. It was my understanding that they don’t pressurize the luggage area. Wouldn’t your beer explode? I was wanting to take a 12 pack of home brew with me on a plane for thanks giving.
Most commercial airliners have a pressurized baggage compartment. I don't have a specific example of any that don't, but I suppose its possible.

Think about it - an airliner is like a big corny keg (pressure vessel) on its side. There is a big flat plate running through the middle (the floor)separating the seats and the baggage. However, that plate doen't seal one compartment from the other - in fact, if it did, it would present a rather difficult engineering problem since cylinders distribute (and contain) pressure very evenly. Also, the dip tube for an airliner is connected directly to your wallet rather than frothy malted goodness. This is a weird tangent, and it's beginning not to make sense.

Another tangent - I mistakenly put a 4-pack of Young's Double Chocolate cans in an unpressurized part of a non-commercial jet (see O'Flannagain's recent post about our brew day) and went up to 33,000 feet. Upon landing, I found that the once concave bottoms had become quite convex, and I bet they almost exploded. Glad they weren't bottles!

The moral of my ramblings - just pack your bottles well, and they should travel fine on a commercial airliner.
 
Spray Foam? You guys are crazy... We don't throw the baggage around that hard! (I'm an Airlines baggage handler)

I don't really do much for packing... Just stuff some newspaper or clothes in there so the bottles aren't loose and have some cushion around the sides of a 12-pack box. Sometimes I'm lazy and just toss some extra tape on the box, no extra packaging... I've checked a couple dozen boxes of beers and never once has one broke.

This week my checked bags will be 8 corny kegs :D
 
coyotlgw said:
keep in mind that anything over 3oz that you try to take as carry-on will be confiscated.

Yay Fortress America

I miss the days of being able to carry on a case and getting asked by EVERYONE on the flight if they can have a beer....
 
BierMuncher said:
I say you avoid the airport and just ship them ahead of time...UPS.

For what it's worth - don't tell them you are shipping alcohol - most commercial carriers (UPS, FEDEX, etc.) will not ship alcohol if they know that's what it is unless you are a licensed commercial producer - I don't know what the specific laws are or if they vary from one state to the next but my Brother and I both brew - he's in N.C. and I'm in Fla. and we have both had to....um....be untruthful about package contents to ship...um...barley pop back and forth.
 
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