I’m from Youngstown, OH but I live in Honolulu. There is one shop that has a decent selection. He only carries White Labs and dry yeast and I often wonder about freshness of hops and grain–his store is a re-purposed garage basically. He is a good dude though.
You should count yourself lucky–at least you can order from the web and get flat rate shipping or free shipping from a lot of places. I tried to order 2# of Carared from our host and shipping would have been $21. There are very few places that ship here for cheap.
[quote=“DaveGY”]I’m from Youngstown, OH but I live in Honolulu. There is one shop that has a decent selection. He only carries White Labs and dry yeast and I often wonder about freshness of hops and grain–his store is a re-purposed garage basically. He is a good dude though.
You should count yourself lucky–at least you can order from the web and get flat rate shipping or free shipping from a lot of places. I tried to order 2# of Carared from our host and shipping would have been $21. There are very few places that ship here for cheap.[/quote]
I would email the shops first before driving around , my shop gets back to me quickly. If they don’t have it at least they can track demand and maybe start to carry it. Find out what they have and if you like the people buy from them what you can.
We had a new LHBS open up recently. It’s actually part of a local hardware store, which is smart as they don’t depend on the sales of homebrew supplies to stay in the black. When they first opened that part of the store, it was dry yeast, kits and equipment, some pellet hops and bulk 2 row and maris otter. I bought an ounce of Hallertau ($2.50) but typically I have most stuff on hand. I’m told now that they are selling Avangard pils for $42 a bag, Avangard Munich for $44 and Munton’s Maris Otter for $57 and White Labs yeast. I can get MT grown 2-row from a local brewery for $45 per bag. Without the current shop having bulk specialty malts, I’ll still place online orders for those and stock up. I’m just happy we now have a functioning LHBS, even if I don’t shop there a lot. Never know when I’ll need a pack of US-05.
My LHBS is about a 30 minute drive which I can just get to from work and back over my lunch break. Whenever I am looking for new equipment, I tend to do my research online and then I make the drive over to support them. They do have a good selection and their prices are very reasonable plus when you factor in shipping for larger equipment such as kegs and kettles etc, it’s worthwhile to make the trip. When I make the jump to All Grain I will definitely check out their pricing for ingredients but as I’m still doing extract kits, I tend to just pay the $7.99 and have NB ship it to me because it’s cheaper than the gas to drive to the store and back. It it was closer, I would probably do all my purchasing there.
I used to have this PITA as the OP described and I was so disgusted I quit going to these guys (Kuhnhenn in Warren, MI). Now they’ve got one helluva good brewery but they still suck at the homebrew stuff. My LHBS of choice is Cap’n’Cork in Shelby, MI and they have everything. That being said, I buy lots of stuff in bulk 1-2 times per year so that I can brew most anything I want, whenever I want.
I can probably find the answer to this somewhere on the web, but how do you ensure that your fridge door doesn’t have coolant lines in it before drilling holes for the faucets? I have a great old fridge that I want to use as a kegerator.
I can probably find the answer to this somewhere on the web, but how do you ensure that your fridge door doesn’t have coolant lines in it before drilling holes for the faucets? I have a great old fridge that I want to use as a kegerator.
Thanks![/quote]I don’t believe they ever put lines in the door because of the hinge or relative movement between the door and the fridge. Look for lines near the top and bottom pivot points if you’re not certain.
We have one shop in the immediate vicnity (20miles) and they are a Carlson shop. They do make a regular group buy though so I can get sacks at a decent price. Then I periodically go to St Louis (100miles) to get in on a really good group buy thing down there. Buying in bulk is definitely worth it, sacks of malt and pounds of hops.
