I have some family who live a different states. Is it possible to ship beer with ups or the usps? I’d like to send some beers for a Christmas gift.
It’s possible to ship yeast samples via ups. How you package them is up to you, but 12 or 22 oz brown bottles work nice.
I believe it’s illegal to ship alcohol via usps.
I don’t believe any of the carriers will ship alcohol if they know what it is. That said, liquid yeast 
would be OK. Package very well so none of the bottles break. If one does and they discover it was beer the package may never arrive. PET bottles are safer.
I would go with UPS rather than USPS. Get a label ahead of time and use a UPS store to drop it off. My experience with them is once they see it is prepaid they say “your all set” and that is it.
It’s actually against the law to ship alcohol via USPS. So I would not even bother trying to “fool them” as you could wind up in federal court. UPS will ship it but don’t tell them it’s alcohol.
As others have said, package it up at home and get a prepaid label and just drop it off at a UPS store.
I package mine by wrapping bubble wrap around each bottle then put the bottles in 6 pack carrier and then wrap the 6 pack carrier in bubble wrap. Then either styrofoam peanuts or plastic grocery bags make a good padding to full the space between the box and the beer. Be sure to put arrows with “this side up” and “FRAGILE” on it.
They’re on to the yeast samples thing…
do not write this side up or fragile. thats like writing kick me on your package. trust me your ups driver/home brewer.
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Now I know why my specialty malts are pre crushed,jprx21! How do those places offer to get wine shipped to yer door without getting in trouble? Now this was a while ago, but some friends that traveled all over would find wine they like and buy a case and ship it home….Sneezles61
UPS delivers my “beer of the month” club beer my wife got me. I’m guessing that they enter into contract ($$$$) with UPS to do this. After all, money rules the world and most everyone and everything has a price. They do check my ID when they drop it off. Now we have it delivered to my in-laws as they are retired (or else I’m driving 20 miles one way to pick it up from UPS).
sooo, we pay fer shipping… Hey, thats part of the money part! We paid some one off to send BEER to another person! I like how this works! I personally haven’t sent any, yet, and yes, I think it would be a great experiment to pusue within this community. Sneezles61
I have always have very good success using wine shippers, which you can get from U-Haul, or any other online packaging place. I like them because the outer box is the perfect size for the inner styrofoam containers. I’ll wrap a little bubble wrap around each bottle, which gets it to roughly the size of a wine bottle, so they don’t move around too much, if at all. Then, nothing needed outside of the styrofoam.
As others have said, use a prepaid UPS label.
Using this setup probably 6 or 7 times, never had a broken bottle or a lost shipment. That said, those dividers, plus shipping, are not the most cost effective. If you’re planning on doing it once or twice just to share it with some family, it’s probably not a big deal. If you’re doing it more often, you may want to find a way to recoup some of that investment. For instance, I ship some to a friend down in Texas. He’s also a home brewer, so he then ships them back with his own offerings, and it’s a nice bottle exchange.
I’m going to trust a guy who claims to kick packages when provoked by text asking him not to?
