Thumbs up for morebeer.com!

[artguy]

I have only placed online orders with Midwest and Northern Brewer before, but I was looking at MoreBeer specifically because of their free shipping offer. So, I decided to do an pricing experiment by filling my online shopping cart with the same items that I needed to order at MB, MW, & NB, and then seeing what the order with shipping included came to.

My experiment quickly hit its limit at MoreBeer, however, because of their more limited ingredient inventory (compounded by a number of items listed as "temporarily out of stock"). For instance, they have only 15 kinds of pellet hops, but 4 were "TOOS" (=11) & only 5 leaf hops, but 3 were TOOS (=2). Midwest, on the other hand, had 49 kinds of pellet hops alone with only one unavailable (=48), (NB had fewer hops than MW but far more than MB). Basically, I would have had to make a whole bunch of recipe substitutions to hops and partial mash grains if I ordered through MB.

I continued the experiment with just MW (which charges actual shipping costs) and NB (which caps shipping for most non-bulk items at $7.99). Including shipping (which was around $20 at MW vs. $8 at NB), the total cost of my order of hops, yeasts, and grains came to $99 at Midwest and $105 at Northern Brewer, so basically pretty close with a slight edge to MW. I suspect that the capped discounted shipping of NB would have made an order of heavy stuff like 36 lbs. of LME slightly more economical, so the impact of shipping cost probably depends on the items ordered. In the end, all I really learned from the experiment is that free or discounted shipping is often offset by higher prices per item. It is just a marketing strategy on the company's part.

This is probably a bit of a tangent and TMI...sorry about that!

 

[Pangea]

Ordering online I prefer NB to morebeer. I ordered a keg kit from morebeer, including regulator, CO2 tank, everything. There was nothing when I placed the order about anything being out of stock, so I was surprised to get an email 5 days later saying that they were out of CO2 tanks. I asked if they could ship the rest of the order now and ship the CO2 tank later. They said no, because it was all part of a "kit" even though everything is seperate in their warehouse anyway. Long story short I got the entire order after about 3 weeks. It was a little rediculous. Not terrible service from morebeer, but the experience has made me switch to using NB anychance I get.

 

[SpanishCastleAle]

I went through a few OHBS and Midwest ended up being my #1. Their malt prices always seem to be the lowest. I still need to try BW since they're way closer but the malt prices aren't even close and it looks more like it's geared towards kit/extract brewing. Can't remember what morebeer did wrong but they quickly went to the bottom of the list.

 

[ArcaneXor]

I would discourage anyone from ordering from Morebeer online. Austin Homebrew and Brewmasters Warehouse are my preferred stores. If they don't have what I am looking for, I'll go with Midwest or Northern Brewer. Anyone issues I have had with any of them were quickly resolved.