Hey everyone, I'm looking to start buying my ingredients online considering I'm a large distance away from any decent places to buy from. I wanted to get opinions on good places to buy from! Thanks advance for all opinions!
jgaepi said:I have had better success with NB than Midwest. And I have order at least 6 times from each. Midwest forgot to ship my yeast when I have ordered before - that was a headache. They also don't ship automatically with a cool pack and don't give an automatic option to add a cool pack to a kit. You have to separately search for it. I ordered once in the high 70s. Then 6 days later we had a heat wave and the package arrived at 99 degrees, no cool pack and sat on my doorstep all day. Lets just say that the yeast kick started after about 60 hours. Pretty peeved. NB automatically ships with a cool pack in the summer. My only Q for NB is that they don't seem to like White Labs as much - not automatic yeast option for a kit.
I continue to use Midwest. Their prices and shipping times have been a bummer. Their shipping prices are also quite high.
Just curious, but compared to whom? I have seen this said a few times, but whenever I've compared order prices, the differences have been negligible---even including shipping. Am I just placing strange orders that somehow insulate me from these bummers?
No, I don't think you're wrong. In fact, I'm sure it's just my perception. [...] Northern brewer seems cheaper on some things and their site is much easier to navigate. For me, I just wait until Midwest has a promo code for 10% off then order everything I need all at once so my orders tend to be $400+ for each order.
Ah, well, my orders are generally a lot smaller (rarely more than about $75), so that may have something to do with it. The shipping charges are usually $15ish, and I don't qualify for free shipping elsewhere anyway, which cuts down on the difference.
I didn't experience long waits for grain, it seems like every order I've placed has taken about the same amount of time (2-3 days before shipping, about 5 days total to get here, so a Monday order gets here on Friday, I think). It doesn't seem to make much difference what I order, but it's only been 3 or 4 orders. My quantities are low, though, so again that may be why your experience has been different.
The only problem I've had was when they left out a strip thermometer. I talked to someone through their online tool and they reasonably quickly shipped one out, though just by first class mail. I would say that experience was fair---not spectacular service, but certainly not bad.
I've only used Midwest. I ordered my first group of newbie stuff from there... then placed an order 2 weeks later. Both times the packages arrived 2 days later... one was even on a saturday. I've talked w their customer service because they started the rewards program after I orderd about 180 worth of stuff. The guy actually gave me credit for the order so I have about 25.00 in rewards waiting to be spent... hoping to use it towards kegging stuff.
https://www.midwestsupplies.com/pages/midwest-supplies-rewards-program.html
HOLY CRAP! Looks like it started 2 weeks ago. That's awesome. Just when I'm about to do another big order.
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