Flat Rate Shipping

I’m strictly an extract brewer…mostly because I like keeping my brewing time down to under 3 hrs…flame on to clean up!

NB has awesome extract kits…great flavors, great selection and fun to brew…and they had my loyalty. But, between increased prices on extract kits and increased shipping costs, I’ll now be forced to shop around a little more…my “local” LHBS is about 30 minutes away…and I’ve bought some items I needed right away from them…but I may be giving them a harder look now for ingredients and kits (they just might be a little more competetive now)!

All that said…NB is still an awesome company with great products and great service, but economics does matter…

Cheers!

:cheers:

[quote=“SolomonsCommune”]I know I just placed an order with MoreBeer (LME, DME) and then realized if I added hops to the order it’d put me over 59 dollars which anything over that gives you free shipping on most of their items. I’d have to compare the prices of the LME and DME but I do know the same ingredients would have cost more from NB due to shipping.

I will say however it seems like MoreBeer took 3 or 4 days longer to ship it to me than NB. I still love NB and will continue to try to give them my business but if I can save 10 bucks or more shopping elsewhere, I will.[/quote]
I’ve been buying a lot of stuff from Morebeer lately. Their prices combined with free shipping have really brought down my per batch costs. They also tell you which malting company the grain comes from. I have to budget 2 weeks for delivery, because they always take 4-5 days to process my orders. My experience has been: order on Sunday, ships on Friday, and arrives the following Thursday.

I feel bad promoting a competitor on NB’s forum, so I feel compelled to add that there are a lot of things to like about NB. They are the best if you need something in a hurry–particularly if you live in the 2 day UPS ground zone. Their product selection is the best around as far as I can tell. Great customer service. I love Brewing TV. They give great product information. They even tell you exactly what’s in their kits. I don’t think anyone else does that. Also, they allow threads that are critical of their company and that praise their competitors. A class act all around.

Back around the beginning of the year I was in the market for a lot of stuff, equipment, ingredients, kits, etc. I priced them out buy buying them all at either Northern Brewer and MoreBeer and overall NB was slightly higher. Plastic fermenting buckets and bottling buckets were on the list and I found that NB was significantly more expensive on those than anywhere else. After some looking I found that Bells Beer sells homebrew supplies and offered the best price for those. When I looked at individual prices and split the order between the three shops I saved about $40-50. The difference on buckets between Bells and NB was the most significant. For less than a single fermenting bucket with lid and bottling bucket from NB (equipment only, no shipping) I got two fermenting buckets, two lids, two 3-piece airlocks, two stick on thermometers, a bottling bucket, bottling spigot and paid actual shipping cost. The speed difference in shipping was also significant between all 3 stores. Bells was with me less than 48 hours after placing the order, NB was within 4 days I think and like others MoreBeer was around 10 days.

I’ve done some combined orders from NB in the past with people I know which made the shipping very economical and easy to split, with the new policy it might not be worth doing that since the bigger the order the more the shipping will be and the harder it will be to split costs.

Strange on the shipping differences. My last order was 7 lbs of grain and a bucket of One-Step, about 10lbs or so and it was $10 and something.

I buy most all my stuff at my LHBS because he is only about 20 min away, well stocked and somewhat price competitive. Plus I want to keep him in business. My next go to is NB unless the price is way cheaper somewhere else.

I’ve always bought my yeast from my LHBS and buy most of my base grain and hops in bulk. I usually only use NB for smaller items that are easy to have shipped to my door and not really worth the time to justify a trip to my LHBS. I doubt the loss of flat rate shipping sways my business.

I liked the flat rate because its less than the $10 it takes in gas to go to my lhbs and I dont have to mill grains, saves time etc. Now shipping is twice what it was for what I order. I will still go order from NB for now because grain prices are staying basically the same. $1.25 for my 2-Row. My lhbs is up to $1.50 now and specialty stuff is crazy. I paid $2.87 a lb for special B. Im assuming NB pricing will be on the rise as well.

Bought several kits and supplies from NB, but due to increased prices on kits and shipping. I am afraid I will be only using the forum. I hope the flat rate comes back.

my 2 cents.

MaSheriff

http://www.northernbrewer.com/what-happ ... -shipping/

Shipping is starting at about where the flat rate used to be, $8.65 to ship just a single vial of yeast.

Some price comparisons. Keep in mind that MoreBeer has free shipping over $59 potentially saving $30 per order.

http://morebeer.com/view_product/16731//Raspberry -- $17 http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/oreg ... puree.html -- $20 http://morebeer.com/view_product/11507/ ... llet_Hops_ -- $18/lb http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/casc ... -1-lb.html -- $15/lb http://morebeer.com/view_product/17122/ ... unich_Malt -- $1.68 /lb if buying 10lb http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/german-munich.html -- $1.50 /lb at even just one lb http://morebeer.com/view_product/12156/ ... _50_-_1450 -- $5.75 http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/wyea ... te-50.html -- $6.25 http://morebeer.com/view_product/19815/ ... nglish_Ale -- $5.75 http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/wl-e ... yeast.html - $6.99 http://morebeer.com/view_product/16023/ ... an_-_32_oz -- $15.50 /32oz http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/star-san.html -- $15.99 /32oz http://morebeer.com/view_product/17138/ ... l_60L_Malt -- $1.65 /lb http://www.northernbrewer.com/shop/brie ... l-60l.html -- $1.75 /lb

In general, more beer is cheaper. Especially when you consider shipping. But keep in mind I’m doing this comparison as an AG brewer who doesn’t brew kits.

Does anybody know why the flat rate shipping stopped?

One thing seems to have gone down, the price to ship wine kits (juice). After the “Wine not” ep on BTV, I ordered the starter equipment kit, but found the shipping of the juice cost prohibitive. Now its about $20 on a high end kit which doesn’t kill the deal for me. I’d guess there are several factors involved in dropping the flat rate. NB may have found having exclusions problematic…wine, glass carboys, etc, we’re not flat rate. They may be testing the waters, and perhaps leading what will be a trend with other Internet stores. The killer will be when in addition to increased shipping costs, all Internet sales include tax.

What a bummer! Flat rate shipping was one of the main reasons why I ordered from Northern brewer. Me and a couple of buddies could all throw together on a order.

NB needs to do a more saver program. order over X amount and get flat rate or a discounted rate. my order always ran over $100 cause i like to brew 3 kits at a time.
my shipping went to close to $19 dollars. not to mention the price hike on top of it.
I will hate to shop else where…

Flat rate was always a plus. My LHBS is nearly 50 minutes from me and has the strangest ours of any business ever. But I did work in the shipping business for over 4 years and keeping a flat rate shipping price is very very difficult. The prices FedEx and UPS charge change literally daily. Our software would update once sometimes twice a day to compensate for their increased shipping prices, which usually came in the form of fuel surcharges. Somedays are cheaper others more expensive. This is a big reason why flat rate is hard to keep up with.

I’m in the same spot as everyone else on here, love Northern Brewer, ordered 3 kits + extras at a time and live far from LHBS. Putting my vote in for a brew saver program over $X. I wan’t to be able to keep ordering from here, the kits are great!

I went through the homebrew shop listings in the back of BYO and Zymurgy and found some shops that still have a flat rate. When I have the time I plan to look at the prices of each and amount of stock to see if any of them are worth it.

I’m a bit of a newbie brewer here. I recently joined our local homebrew club and even more recently one of the local stores decided to give club members a discount. I worked it out between what I would’ve paid (including “special” flat-rate shipping) to one of the in-state on-line vendors, and the discount I got for being a member of the homebrew club, it worked out to pretty much even. Now the nice thing is that they have a guy who’s pretty knowledgeable about homebrew to give advice to novices like me as well. That being said, if I’m not in a hurry and I can get a better price via mail-order (hint, hint, NB) I will be happy to order on-line.

I’ll take the blame.
I knew that if I kept ordering 54# of base malt they would catch on eventually.
Sorry.

I didn’t mind the change from base rate to normal shipping.

Though, I ordered a new spring tip bottle filler and a carboy cap and it’s 8.65 to ship that? I mean, I get it that it’s coming from MN to PA but still…seems a bit steep.

Still love NB though, and do all of my online brew shopping through them.

I was disappointed to find out that the flat rate has been discontinued. Seems like NB was a pioneer of flat rate and others have followed suit in order to stay competitive. Now, morebeer and Austin homebrew each have an aggressive flat rate shipping program. Just entered a big grain bill in each site for comparison. AHB with $6.99 flat rate (compared to NB’s $21.00), for the same order. Also, AHB base price was a few bucks cheaper as well. Even with this understanding, I had always been a loyal NB customer. Super bummed. And, in my opinion, as long as their competitors can can generate an overall savings, I think NB has a problem. Epic blunder NB :frowning:

I just price compared my recent order from NB to AHB and the Pumpkin Ale AG kit was ~$5 less w/ NB and the 80-Shilling Scottish Ale AG kit was a whopping $15 less at NB. That $20 right there more than covers the ~$7 more I spent on shipping! (So I saved ~$13 by going with NB over AHB.) (And I didn’t even finish pricing out the rest of my order.)

Yay for Northern Brewer!!
:cheers: