Shipping beer?

[thisgoestoeleven]

So HYPOTHETICALLY if I were planning to ship some beer WHICH OF COURSE I'M NOT BECAUSE IT'S ILLEGAL, what would be the ideal way to do this? The alleged beer is in cans, so no worries about bottles breaking or caps coming off. Should I use the postal service, UPS, Fedex, etc? I've never done this before NOR WILL I EVER IN THE FUTURE BECAUSE IT IS ILLEGAL, so any advice would be appreciated.

 

[amandabab]

its not illegal to ship beer/alcohol to someone that you know is legal drinking age and the person receiving the shipment is legal drinking age.
It is illegal to use the US post office to do it. Other shippers may have private policies and are a different matter.
Beer and wine tasting clubs do it all the time, sometimes on an official "something of the month" basis.

california wine club delivers via fed ex.

 

[Fid]

Never done it either. There's answers on here though. My 2 cents says stay away from the USPS... thats Federal territory there.

Hate to leave you with a "use the search feature" type of response but theres about 10 pages worth of search results for threads asking about shipping beer.

Shipping Beer Search Results

 

[Brewskii]

Sticky in the DIY section... Check it out

 

[jeepinjeepin]

I believe that the USPS has amended their rules on shipping alcohol. It doesn't benefit us directly though. Private parties still can't ship homebrew or commercially produced beer, but the producer or distributor can ship signature required to a person 21 or older. I don't know all the stipulations. I got put off when I saw the commercial part.

 

[Fid]

Oh, the other piece of advise I have is to take every measure you can to select the slowest possible shipping option in hopes that your package doesn't end up on a plane. One of my bosses once shipped a quart of a paint product via UPS GROUND from Seattle to Alaska. Turns out, even if you pay for ground shipping... if it makes more sense to the courier to get your package to its final destination by flying it there they will. Long story short, UPS decided to fly the package to Alaska. By the time it made it to security screening at the airport it had begun to leak. A few days later some suits FAA showed up at my job and grilled my boss for the better part of 4 hours. No Bueno.

 

[Gunrunner]

Remember you are not shipping beer you are shipping yeast samples.

 

[jonmohno]

I shipped mine through USPS,when i was shipping it he asked me if i had anything that could possibly explode or something something. I was a bit terrified for a second and replied-"glass" it could break and that was that-it arrived safe and sound although i was sweating it until it arrived-wont do that again.Ill go Fed-x next time.

 

[Knittycat]

I often ship my mother "olive oil". She can't get the variety of ...olive oil... I can where she lives, so I am obliged to send her some. I may have to attempt to send her yeast samples in liquid suspension one of these days though.