The Great American Beer Exchange - Broken Edition

As promised, it's been brought here this year! I know I personally have gotten some amazing beers the last couple years doing this, and seen others get some great things. (I just consumed the nice Southern Tier Creme Brule Stout over Christmas with the family that I got from Bad Neighbor).

Here's the basic deal:

You live in XYZ region. You probably have some great beers near you that you've told us about and while some of the rest of us would love to try them, they just are not available in our area at all for purchase due to regional distribution! The solution? Send some of these beers out to your fellow Broken Forum members and get some distant beers of your own!

"But nixon! I'm not a beer geek!" - Good! Doesn't matter. Do you like beer? Want to try new things? Perfect. That's what I'm looking for! I don't care if you drink crazy rare bourbon barreled beers released only on the third Tuesday after a full moon every other year, or just like your local pale ale. I just want people who like beer and want to try new ones and are willing to share!

Here's how it will work.

- Post your interest and your region and a few beer styles you like or enjoy.
- Send me your contact information/address.
- I'll do my best to match you up with someone far away from you.
- You purchase at least 4-10 beers of various sizes and flavors from your local area.
- Ship it to your beer exchangee, and in return they will send you some as well!
- Receive beer, drink it and post pictures and thoughts on the great beverages you've received.

Try and spend at least $20-30 on the beers (more if you want), and shipping is usually around $10-15 or less depending on the method. Go wild if you really want to showcase your areas good stuff!

Restricted to US members only as I don't have a clue how alcohol shipping works internationally.

Must be 21 to participate.

Cut off for participation - January 31st.
Ship by date - March 22nd.

@RyanMM did a great Q/A for the thread last year, and I'll repost it here:

So let's get some stuff out of the way, as I'm sure you'll have some questions.

Q: Isn't this illegal?

A: Not at all. It is against United States Postal Regulations to mail alcohol, so if you sent it via USPS, it would be. And neither FedEx nor UPS will guarantee the safety of alcohol if you ship it, you will not get reimbursed if they break it, but they do not prohibit private citizens of legal age from mailing each other alcohol. If you are going to ship alcohol, there are several precautions you need to take with regards to packaging and sending them out for shipping, but we'll get into that later.

Q: Why would I want to trade beer? I can go to the store and buy some right now.

A: Sure you could, but even in the best markets in the US, you might only have available 20 to 30% of all the beer available in the world. There are over 1500 craft brewers in the United States alone, and many of them do not distribute outside of a very small region. By trading beers, you are giving others access to stuff that may be exclusive to your market, and getting stuff exclusive to theirs. And in the process, you're finding new and exciting beers that you might never have had!

Q: So how do I go about packaging my beer?

A: What I do is get a box with the partitions already in them (ie a wine case). Beer stores give these out whenever you buy 3 or more bottles, usually. I take the partitions out and place a plastic bag in the box as a liner. I then place the partitions back inside the box, within the liner. I wrap each bottle in that thin green foam wrap that you can get pretty much anywhere and place 1-2 bottles per compartment. If I have a particularly heavy shipment, I will add a couple layers of this material to the bottom of the box, under the partitions. Any space between the bottles is filled with bubble wrap, "peanuts", or more green crap. If the shipment is to be expected to get above 70 degrees, I use one of the compartments in the middle to house an ice pack. Don't forget to use extra tape. I ship through UPS, making sure to tell them it's glass and fragile.

In! Totally in.

As for me, I'm in Kansas City with both Boulevard and Schlafly beers easily accessible, as well as some neat local smaller breweries. Boulevard's Smokestack Series is usually among what I send out for these, they concentrate a lot on ales (farmhouse, winter warmers, Trappist-style) with the occasional tripel/quadrupel that aren't bad.

I myself am a fan of darker beers, stouts and porters mostly. I can't recall off the top of my head who sent me the Kentucky Breakfast Stout but that's by far my favorite. Doppelbocks are also always a hit (Spaten Optimator is my go-to there, so anything of that style is always appreciated). Not a huge fan of overly-hoppy beers, most IPAs I find too bitter - although someone sent me Surly's Abrasive Ale which was awesome.

I do, however, promise to drink everything I get sent.

nixon66, before you get underway with collecting responses, you may want to do what Matt Bowyer did for the Secret Santa and create a Google Form for input of the vitals.

21st Amendment, Anchor (although if you send anyone Anchor Steam they are legally allowed to kill you by beating you to death with your own spine), Bear Republic, Sierra Nevada...

Well, probably not. But Sierra Nevada is pretty much your archetypical Northern California beer. And Anchor is vile swill akin to tepid bong water pissed into a bottle.

Sierra Nevada has pretty wide distribution. We get plenty of it here in Michigan. Same with most of the year-round lineup from Anchor.

Some of the best local stuff here is only available in growlers. Would folks be okay with that?

Possibly, tentatively in. I live in Northern Virginia, so I have access to a lot of mid-Atlantic stuff.

Elyscape, there's a lot of little breweries in the bay area that I know of but don't see on the East coast. Marin Brewing is one that immediately comes to mind (mainly because that's where I'm from, heh.)

Growlers are very difficult to ship successfully and have a shorter shelf life than bottles, much shorter if the people pouring it don't cap on foam.

If you can package it like a mofo and make sure the people pouring it do it right though, I don't think most people would have a problem receiving a growler.

He will also have access to any of the Russian River stuff! And I know I miss Green Flash and Bear Republic myself. You'll do fine!

I'll have to look into the shipping, I guess. Custom Brewcrafters does bottles now, but Rohrbach's (my personal pick for best local beer in this area) only does growlers. They pour them properly--they sell out of their brewery at the Rochester Public Market, where selling growlers is their entire business. They also have a brewpub on the west side, but sadly I don't think that the wonderful German food that they make would ship well (they serve a fantastic Sauerbraten on Saturday nights, after marinating it all week).

As for other options, I guess I'll have to figure out which area beers are really limited to local distribution. I used to think that Southern Tier was only available in this area, but I think they started to distribute nationally at some point, because I've seen a number of non-New Yorkers here talking about them.

I'm really tempted to get in on this. Nashville has a few good local breweries; Yazoo's Dos Perros is my current fave. I'm a little intimidated by my lack of beer geekery in general, so this might be educational for me.

(Not counting Ommegang, which I think is already available just about everywhere).

DO IT! Beer Geekery not needed! Just the enjoyment of beer and wanting to try new things!

I've seen it occasionally on the pick-six shelf, but very rarely.

We have it here, though I've not tried it.

Lots of Lagunitas in Metro Detroit. Year-rounds and occasionally their special releases.

Lagunitas is pretty much everywhere now, I have a 6pack of Dogtown in my fridge.

This is by no means definitive, but Seekabrew can help you cross-reference beers distributed in your state versus another state. Sometimes it lacks smaller breweries entirely, as you can see by my effort here to pin down what breweries are and aren't in my Secret Santee's state of Iowa, almost half the breweries I could send beer from weren't even listed in their database.

But it's a start, and can help narrow down your recon once you know who your Beeree is.

What the heck I'll go in. I don't know that NJ has much in the way of unique beer sadly; while we've got twenty or so breweries in the state most are pretty average.

That map is pretty cool, it shows, for example, that Starr Hill is pretty much unknown outside of my region and would be a great candidate!

To make things easier guys, may I suggest for areas that don't have a lot of breweries that bottle, that stuff from the region that's not distributed in the Beeree's region be acceptable as well?

I definitely think that's acceptable.

This sounds fun, so I'm in. I live in St. Louis, MO so I have access to Budweiser.

Just kidding. I know a guy who can get me access to Schlafley's (I had a keg of their Heffenweizen at my wedding) and some other microrews if they haven't changed the secret handshake.

In the spirit of the event, I'm open to trying any and all kinds of beer.

Don't forget Boulevard!

Fuck yes fuck yes fuck yesssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss

- I'm so in. I live in the Philadelphia area, giving me access to Troeg's, Stoudt's, Dogfish Head, Yard's, Sly Fox, Weyerbacher, and a bunch of other ones.
- I like things that aren't too hoppy, mainly big Belgian styles (dubbels, tripels, saisons, and Duvel-style ales) and most German styles other than pilsners.

I'm PMing you my contact info, OP.

Forget Boulevard, it's mine! St. Louis, ptui! Wichita, ptui! Kansas City number one!

You may have to go more local than that. All four of those are pretty readily available in the Boston area at least.

I don't think I'll be jumping in on the exchange, but I don't think Pretty Things, Long Trail, Slumbrew, or Smuttynose are widely available outside of New England. Slumbrew especially; it still counts as a startup. Just to give New England traders some ideas on what to offer.

Berkshire Brewing Co. has some good stuff, too.

I am tempted to ignore Nute just based on his slander of Anchor Steam.

That said I wouldn't waste money shipping Anchor or Sierra Nevada to people, that stuff is obtainable with a little effort everywhere, and even smaller batch stuff like Lagunitas is going to be available anywhere with a real beer store or even a BevMo.

A better choice would probably be finding a local brewpub that sells stuff but doesn't have wide distribution, of which we have approximately a billion.

Huh, who knew. That might promote stuff like Lagunitas to worth shipping then, depending on where the person lives.

Some other good options would be Anderson Valley, Speakeasy, Sudwerk, North Coast...

EDIT: MOAR: Russian River (HA HA GOOD LUCK), Deschutes, Lost Abbey (in SoCal but I see their stuff up here), Stone (same). Alesmith is also way down in San Diego and I've never had any of their stuff but it is supposed to be amazing and you can probably find it here sometimes.

Anderson Valley is about as ubiquitous as Lagunitas, and I've seen Deschutes here in VA as well. You guys need to use that beer map that Ryan posted!

Please folks don't worry about if some hypothetical person might have access to a beer. I'd rather you be more concerned about which of all the great beers in your areas that you'd like to share with someone else. If you do have a concern when it comes time to really pick and send them, a quick line to your beer partner asking if they've had beer XYZ yet or would be interested in getting a bottle and then the problem solves itself.

As long as I get someone in the left half of the country, I should have a lot of great NY beers to choose from that they probably can't get. Great Lakes (technically not NY, but not that far away from me), Custom Brewcrafters, Brooklyn Brewery, Sixpoint, etc. And I'll probably send a bottle of Ommegang even if they can get it, because goddammit, Ommegang rocks.

I got lucky and scored a late six pack of Troeg's Mad Elf. So as long as I get paired with someone who's not in the east coast, that's one!