Would there be any interest in a forum beer swap? This idea is sprouted from a secret santa I participated in, but different.
If we can do it, you would PM me your info. Once all the participants were in the hat, you would get a PM back with who to ship to. You would ship a beer to that person leaving out any clues to who you are. When you get a beer you enjoy it and post your comments on that beer. Only the brewer would know whose beer you are talking about. If they want to the brewer can reveal their identity. Only rules would be a commitment to follow through in a set timeline, and no rude comments in the beer reviews.
What do you think? If we’re allowed to do it and there’s at least 8 or 10 willing participants, we’ll go from there.
I’ll do the organization. For now 1. Can we? 2. Who’s interested?
Also, I’m not into dragging things out. If we do this it will go quick, like shipping deadline of end of the month. Fail to ship and you might get outted. Only join in if you know you’ll ship a beer. If you dont have a beer to ship right now, join up the next time we do it.
I’m interested and I’m reliable. If its OK with the AHA I’ll do it. My only concern is that some will not follow through. I say we do a one strike and your out policy. Lost in the mail is the only excuse. If you are not positive that you can always have something to send don’t do this.
Jim I’d love to do it, but shipping can be difficult. I would love to know a shipper through whom I could ship reliably for these purposes. Last year’s NHC entries for me was an all day runaround trying to locate a shipper willing to do this. I finally found one, but that place was a member of some kind of wine club, so they were tied to a special group or had some kind of special rights with a national operator. Now that place is closed down, so I don’t know where to ship from (I am in the far western suburbs of Chicago). I don’t want to lie about contents, like has been suggested by others regarding NHC entries in the past.
It’s been years since I’ve done one of these. We should come up with a list of rules and guidelines so no one gets surprised or screwed or anything like that. Personally I would usually share 2 bottles each, 12 ounces each, of perhaps 3 or 4 different recipes. In the past I have seen forums where they said the minimum should be 2 recipes. To some extent you can use PMs to negotiate with whoever is swapping with you and jack this up or down as necessary to keep things even. I have also swapped commercial beers such as New Glarus, etc. It’s all good, as long as you work it out with your specific swapper via PMs or email.
Yeah, but there has to be at least a dozen guys named Jim in Klickitat. It could be from any of them.
I’m definitely interested in a future swap. I haven’t brewed in a while, so I’m going to sit this one out. Unless I find something good in the cellar that I can spare, but I don’t think I have anything that fits the bill.
While we’re in the discussion phase - do we want this to be beer-only, or is cider and mead ok, too?
If you ship FedEx and have it picked up from your home with the label already on it you never get asked about contents. I’ve heard shipping may actually be illegal in some states though and I’m not sure where to find a definitive answer?
This does sound like fun, unfortunately I’ll have to pass this go around. New baby didn’t leave time for brewing the last few months and my kegs are all running dry on me. I will have to get back instock.
I would love to include mead because I always have some. If there was a month I didn’t have a beer ready I wanted to give someone I would always have that. As far as shipping goes UPS picks up at work all the time, I can’t imagine them asking questions.
I would be willing to participate, but not this month since I have a cruise in a couple weeks and shipping by the end of this month would be tight. I also already participate in a few similar exchanges on Facebook. One group is specifically a shelf beer mystery box exchange where they do only that sort of thing. The other is a trader group that occasionally does a ‘beer it forward’ type thing.
For people with shipping questions, the secret is to set up an online account to create and print your shipping label yourself. You don’t get any questions that way and you can drop off at a UPS/FedEx drop off location. Personally I prefer FedEx ground, but YMMV.
Both UPS and Fedex have it on their website that you can print a label and pay on the website. Then drop it off at their store, or have it picked up. I have never been asked the contents.
I think it’s a great idea, but I also think it needs to be done outside of the forum in order to make sure the AHA has no liability. If someone wants to set up a website or mailing list for it and post links here, I think that would be fine.
Same here - Neither UPS or FedEx ever asks me about contents as long as I pre-pay and print and attach the label at home. It’s a very simple drop-off process at that point. In the very unlikely event that they ask, just tell them it’s non-perishable food, glass/fragile, so be kind of careful with it, etc.
It’s also important when packing it, if you haven’t done this before, to line your box with a big garbage bag and put everything inside that bag and tie it up. Then if there are any bottle cracks or cap leaks (both of which occasionally DO happen unfortunately), it won’t soak into the outer cardboard and cause them to question the contents en route. They should have no reason to question a well packed box unless they totally mutilate the box, and then that’s THEIR fault, not yours.