Yes, their site is down now, Sunday and has been since last night. About 24 hours now.
Some changes on Austin Home Brew I have noticed as a regular custumer for years;
1) Yes, as ya'll have mentioned their website went offline in FEB, they opened using a cloud company with a new site that changed the dates of all of the previous product reviews to all 4 star ratings given on FEB 11th, 2014. So obviously all of the ratings were lost. All of my previous orders were missing from online records and I had to ask them to E-Mail PDF copies for my hobby records which they did provide. But nothing is available online anymore before FEB 11th, 2014. The true ratings being lost and all averaged to 4 of 5 stars destroys the rating system as it's obviously incorrect.
2) After the new site went up they started including a dry yeast, whirlfloc tablet and 14 oz. of Malto-Dextrin to every order free. The Malto-Dextrin was labeled as such yet also called "Body Builder". They have sense changed "Body Builder" to a new label with no ingredients listed in an 8 oz. bag instead. Whirlfloc should never be used in a Hefeweizen and including it can cause someone to mess up a brew.
3) I ordered (2) kits last Wed. (Brewed one tonight in fact, a Kolsch). Then suddenly the next morning their announcement was that they were no longer including dry yeast. As I always double pitch a dry and liquid I was wondering if I would get the dry. I did. The order had an extra free 1 oz. hops as a sample I guess but the Styrian Goldings hops were accidentally Kent Golding off by 1 oz. thus delaying one of my weekend brews of an Amber. E-Mailed and got an E-Mail back on Sunday this morning, early. They are mailing the correct St Golding tomorrow.
4) I asked by E-Mail if all of the kit prices have dropped by $4 (the cost of a pack of dry yeast) since they no longer come with one? While they answered another question in the same E-Mail (What are the ingredients of Body Builder?), they declined to say that. So as far as I know their kits are now the same price but don't have yeast anymore. NOW, I am looking elsewhere. I brewed my 1st 6 batches with nothing but 100% of everything from them. But it's time to look around cause that's just not cool.
5) Their website has been down for over 24 hours. I placed an order last night almost exactly 24 hours ago. I noticed that the site was very, very slow. It got so slow that I quit shopping and just decided on $70 of basics needed including yeast to brew (2) other kits I ordered from California at the same online session as shipping was free over $59. Sigh. But I didn't want the yeast exposed to a heat duration as my location 1.5 hours from Austin provided overnight delivery at ground rates (plus TX tax which makes it okay). And the site crash when I entered my order. No order confirmation, don't know if my card was charged or not and it's been down ever since.
I like Austin Home Brew because of their great past service. Let's admit it, the websites of home brew suppliers suck. I forced myself to learn their old site and then the new one. But I think they are getting too busy to be able to keep up. When ordering they were out of almost 50% of everything I was looking for including basics such as sugar.
I hope everything is okay with them. But the website problems have caused me to order my next (2) kits from out of state. And now I can't not order my yeast from them to match the arrival of the kits, cause their site is indeed down and has been for about 24 hours.
Yelp!
http://www.yelp.com/biz/austin-homebrew-supply-austin?hrid=znAU74DVL3ucwfrleewMPg
