Homebrew shops not supportive of Military

[Hex]

Bring our troops home.

 

[InfernoBrews]

I own a Homebrew shop and ship to APO all the time atleast 4-6 times a month. Never had a issue. I can see places not giving FREE shipping it can be pricey. I ship USPS for the majority and charge the EXACT amount to my Customer and work with the customer to fit every inch of space in the box to make it Cost effective.

 

[fdemt84]

I live in Germany myself, have the APO address and was looking into the same thing but I have a LHBS that helps me out big time and only charges what USPS charges them. Great place and great couple that own it. The home brew shops over here that I have found are great when the euro is not so high and If you only want German grain (10 euro for a 3lb recipe). I use the guys at www.kettletokeg.com check them out and call if you get the chance or e-mail them, they will hook you up, ask for jesse.

 

[caiafa]

Simply buy from Brouwland if you live in Germany. They carry a better selection than many homebrew shops and have decent prices.

 

[fdemt84]

caiafa- where are they located in Germany?

 

[caiafa]

they're in Belgium. http://www.brouwland.com
But the shipping should be rather cheap.

 

[fdemt84]

hey thanks a bunch Ill have to check them out myself.

 

[edecambra]

I am too lazy to read through these pages, but I listen to the BN and hear ads for Hop Tech all the time. They used to give discounts to active military personnel, with a current APO address, so I am sure they would ship to an APO address.
http://www.hoptech.com/cart/

 

[rosier9]

I'm confused on why you expected to get free shipping on this order. One click on the morebeer free shipping policy will quickly show you that it only applies to: "3. Ship your items to a physical address in 48 Contiguous U.S. States." The people of Hawaii and Alaska are used to dealing with this... It also shows that they are willing to ship usps to an apo, just pay for it...

 

[Acoma]

LHBS are not large corporations and probably cant afford to send products over seas for free. Expecting free shipping will probably lead to more let downs in the future.

 

[fdemt84]

I dont believe the true issue is that they wont send it for free, is the price they charge to ship it to an APO/FPO. All APo/FPO's go through New york. Once it hits New York the DoD takes care of shipping it to is locations. I priced out an order from More beer it can to 30$ and was about 15 lbs of stuff. they quoted me 47 in shipping charges, which I found flat out wrong...

 

[iaefebs]

And yet a small company in China can send a package to my house for $3.10. If I buy something from Sears they charge $10.00 for the same size box.

 

[mrkabal]

I work at the military hospital in Landstuhl, Germany and use Midwest all the time. They have a shipping calculator that lets me see that they are charging me the same amount to ship to my APO as they would to a New York zip code. Homebrewing is a must over here if you're a hophead; German and Belgian beer is awesome, but they're light-handed with the hops.

 

[dallasdb]

Thanks guys! Plenty of shops ship to APOs via USPS. The issue however, is that they charge above what it actually costs to ship. That was the point of the link included.

Honestly it is probably because of liability they don't use USPS. You have to pay extra for tracking and they are much more of a hassle for commercial accounts. UPS and FEDEX have commercial software that make shipping and tracking efficient and easy compared to USPS.
I managed an Ecommerce warehouse for 2 yrs and I can't tell you how many times I had to refund someone because they never got their package and I never got my product back. We just quit using USPS because of the time it took to ship through them and not being as reliable as the others.
Hope this helps.

Why brew in Germany anyway??? Go enjoy local brew!

 

[Kunkemonster]

I get my stuff sent to an APO in South Korea. I order from Morebeer and Williams Brewing since they are located in CA and that's where my APO's ZIP code is. The shipping isn't cheap but not too expensive either, I can get a 50 pound grain sack or 60 pounds of LME for around $30 shipping. Try a supplier closer to NY. It also doesn't seem to matter how little or how much I order and the shipping is about the same price. Maybe you could go in on supplies with a fellow homebrewer and place a big order $200+ and cut down on shipping costs.

 

[bknifefight]

I'm not going to read all 5 pages of this but if you really think that this has anything to do with you being in the military, you're nuts. Sure, you're going a service for the country but that doesn't mean that any company is going to ship something overseas for less than they normally would.

 

[dallasdb]

You have to realize that a lot of APO/FPO addresses have restrictions AGAINST any product used in the production of alcoholic beverages. This is a quote from the USPS website regarding my buddies duty station:

"Restrictions for ZIP Code 9XXXX

* R. All alcoholic beverages, including those mailable under DMM 601.11.7, are prohibited.
* R1. Materials used in production of alcoholic beverages (i.e., distilling material, hops, malts, yeast, etc.) are prohibited."

I deleted a lot of the restrictions because the list was quite large. Not only are there restrictions but you have to make sure you have the right declarations forms properly filled out and yada yada.

IMO, most HBS are probably just wary of screwing something up or losing product in shipping. It is a hassle that you can't buy from whomever you want but be thankful that you have some HBS that are willing to figure this out for you.

 

[SKYY]

I'll have to pile-on to this thread because MoreBeer's certainly aiming to take advantage of military servicemembers.

I tried to order one of their homebrew starter kits the other day. Despite their advertisement of "free shippping applies for orders over $50", when I talked to a salesman over the phone, the price of their $380 kit jumped up to $590 when I tried to get him to ship the packages to my APO address. I hung up and dropped them like a rock.

They only have to pay for the (CHEAP) USPS shipping from Concord, CA, to San Fransicso, CA! (that Concord warehouse is literally 5 miles from the USPS shipping destination!) It should cost next to nothing for them to ship stuff that far. They apparently want to milk overseas military members for as much as they can, since they must be aware of the fact that our AAFES beer variety sucks over here.

Anyway, I've found better suppliers of equipment and expendables. The APO situation will never be good, but at least I'm not getting raped by the price scalpers at MoreBeer.

 

[Malstorme]

As has been stated several times in this thread, it's a little unfair to brand businesses as "unsupportive" etc. There are a lot of restrictions to APO mail (I know because I spent about 2.5 years in Europe) that you may not be familiar with. One of the bigger ones is that packages sent to APO addresses have to be hand-delivered to the Post Office (not something a lot of businesses can/will do). Additionally, there are size/weight/content restrictions that are prohibited.

I found a website that will allow you to read up on said restrictions (and to find out additional restrictions to a specific APO zip) and figure out that it's not simply a bunch of commies refusing to support our military. God bless you (all) for your service and I'm sorry that it's difficult to get supplies.

You can view restrictions (and find YOUR specific restrictions) at:

LINK



Mals

 

[mrgstiffler]

I'll have to pile-on to this thread because MoreBeer's certainly aiming to take advantage of military servicemembers.

I tried to order one of their homebrew starter kits the other day. Despite their advertisement of "free shippping applies for orders over $50", when I talked to a salesman over the phone, the price of their $380 kit jumped up to $590 when I tried to get him to ship the packages to my APO address. I hung up and dropped them like a rock.

They only have to pay for the (CHEAP) USPS shipping from Concord, CA, to San Fransicso, CA! (that Concord warehouse is literally 5 miles from the USPS shipping destination!) It should cost next to nothing for them to ship stuff that far. They apparently want to milk overseas military members for as much as they can, since they must be aware of the fact that our AAFES beer variety sucks over here.

Anyway, I've found better suppliers of equipment and expendables. The APO situation will never be good, but at least I'm not getting raped by the price scalpers at MoreBeer.

Their free shipping is probably through a relationship with UPS or Fedex. Also, you can only ship packages under a certain size with USPS, so they would have to ship multiple packages for a complete brewing kit. 3 large packages from Concord to SF would be ~$180. So no, they are not gouging you. That's the actual cost of shipping.

 

[SKYY]

Well, I should have added this as a comparison: I just had 3 very large & heavy packages shipped from B&H Photo (in Brooklyn) via USPS (it goes to San Francisco), and I did not pay for shipping. The cost for all three was actually cheaper than even Amazon (which would not ship the same items to my APO address). FYI, I ordered a Privia PX-130 piano + stand + 3-pedal add-on. These are not small or light items.

Anyway, yeah, APOs get screwed often, but not by all vendors. At least Amazon opened up more of their subscribe & save products to us overseas--you wouldn't believe the things you just CAN'T buy in stores over here (even in the base exchanges).

I just wish the rest of the e-vendors out there could figure it out...although there's little reason to since their APO/FPO market's so small.

 

[Dude]

To the OP...is your beef only that morebeer won't offer the free shipping? IIRC, that is for UPS orders only--and going to an APO that's a whole new ball of wax. I'm just glad Morebeer is one of the vendors that even offers a USPS option so brewing stuff can be sent to us at APOs. I utilize Brouwland almost exclusively, but they just don't have the options as far as hops or specialty grains or those hard to find fittings that our US retailers do.

The companies you (we) should be calling out are the places like "Ship it APO" who REALLY gouge us. Sometimes we have no other options (like buying tires for our cars) and those places are bending us over without vaseline for shipping to an APO.

 

[TimmyWit]

I spent quite a few hours one evening loading my shopping cart on multiple stores. From what I've found, homebrew4less has the most reasonable shipping rates for USAFE (East coast APO). If you're in PACAF (West coast APO), I believe williamsbrewing would be a good place to look. For example, a ten gallon mash tun will run you about 11 bucks to ship from homebrew4less. You can even order the Blichmann top tier to your APO from this site for a very reasonable shipping fee.

 

[rico567]

OK, I think there has been enough good advice on this thread that we can cut through the "yes they did / no they didn't" and "oh yeah?" and make a more specific recommendation.

1. Shipping depends on weight, time & distance.

2. Find a supplier who sells at a price acceptable to you close to a third party who is willing to ship in a USPS Flat Rate Box to you (I have read one such post in this thread).

3. I have shipped well over a dozen USPS Large Flat Rate Boxes myself to relatives stationed overseas. The box costs $12.XX.

4. Forget all grain. Most 5 gal batches under 1.060SG based on DME should easily fit in a Large Flat Rate Box.

5. The shipper will have to do a PITA customs form on each box. Just fill in "food," because that's exactly what it is.

IMHO, whatever we may speculate about all this, it's your best option.

 

[BrettFitz]

Allright Sgt Stogie,

I hope you get enough info here to get what you need, and don't feel slighted about having to jump through hoops. Bogus tho it truly is, sometimes we just gotta do what we gotta do.

I didn't brew when I was in the service so I have no practical advice except to keep pursuing until you find what you need to get at it in Germany. I'm sure you will and in the end I'm just as sure that you will be glad you did.

I hope your remaining deployment goes as smoothly as possible and you catch a few breaks along the way.

Cheers-
Brett


Cheers-

 

[Onihige]

Wait, how is 2-ish euro per kilogram for malt too expensive? Or an all grain recipe kit for 24 euro? Malt is generally 3-4 euro per kilogram here. And I have never seen an all grain kit in Sweden.

http://www.brouwland.com/en/

http://www.hobbybrauerversand.de

Although, after a quick look, the selection DOES seem a bit limited. Suprised German stores have a even more meager selection than Swedish ones. But it should still be enough, IMHO.

Edit: Ah, did not notice this was 6 pages long. Sorry if I've repeated something already mentioned.

 

[Brockway]

I'm in the US military and stationed in Sicily. I buy most of my ingredient kits through homebrewers.com. I love their canyon cream stout by the way, a nice dark milk stout. Shipping can get kind of ridiculous, doing it online usually comes out to like $10 an item. For an experiment 2 kits shows up as $20 shipping, but adding an airlock bumps it up to $60 shipping. I'm sure they'd probably fix it if you ordered over the phone, but I tend not to need more than 1 kit at a time anyways so it hasn't come up yet. $10 seems perfectly reasonable to me for shipping on 1 ingredient kit.

*Edit - Did some more experiments. I think the shipping for small items is broken. It always comes out to $10 a kit (totally fair) for priority shipping but adding an airlock or other small doodad adds $40 to shipping.

 

[Dude]

I would gladly send discount priced hops of all sorts to anyone here in Germany. I have a great selection of hops and run a business of selling discount hops to German Homebrewers because I live in Germany myself. Please if you want discounted hops without all the shipping costs here in Europe send me an email and I will give you discount prices below the cost of my shop. All hpps are sent from the Frankfurt area in Germany.

[email protected]

That's pretty awesome. Do you have a website? What kind of varieties do you have?

I'm in Heidelberg, but we leave in January. I'll only be able to brew a few more times but I'm desperately trying to find "American" varieties.

 

[mbauer013]

Dude you dont pay rent. Get over it.

Umm, maybe true but he gets paid less per hour than a worker at a fast food restaurant and gets shot at to boot.

 

[GioGomez2010]

Umm, maybe true but he gets paid less per hour than a worker at a fast food restaurant and gets shot at to boot.

Most definitely true! I converted the 7 months into hours I spent in Iraq with the Marines and subtracted my average daily rest/sleep time which was maybe 3-4 hours. And yes the rest of the time was spent working patrolling, post, etc. Divided my bi-weekly salary by the two week total hours worked and I got paid a whopping four dollars an hour tax free! Haha it's even less if I include my rest time because we were always "on call". Sorry off topic from the OP!