So you wanna mail your friends or family homebrew? Well, let’s make sure it arrives safely! Here are a few helpful tips so your friends don’t get an unfortunate surprise in the mail.
- Secure Lids – Make sure the bottle caps are 100% secure and also double check the beer is fully fermented out so you don’t have any bottle bombs. If need be, you can create an additional seal but adding a strong tape around the lid (electrical tape works great for this, its just stretchy enough to make a great seal).
- Bottle Safety– Personally, I love using Crafty Shipping’s inserts for my homebrew. I’ve been using these for years now and haven’t had a single break! They just came out with these large inserts that fit bombers and 19.2oz cans! Less glass = more beer! Also for extra safety in case anything spills, wrap all in a trash bag or individual wrap each bottle with a waterproof bag. If you’re going the bubble wrap route, I prefer the small bubble sheets. One 12″ x 12″ sheet will wrap a 12 oz bottle fully. I personally hate having to remove yards of tape to unwrap anything so I just tack the wrap in place with a small piece and call it a day. Make sure you place the bottles in your box with the seams facing away from each other in case anything shifts in transit.
- Packaging – Always write “fragile glass” on the box. I like to believe no one intentionally throws your boxes around but if they don’t know it’s fragile why wouldn’t they toss it over your receiver’s fence?
- Shipping – It’s illegal to ship alcohol with USPS, not that you would want to with the delays now days. I always use Fedex just because I have an account. If you want to compare rates of multiple shipping companies I frequently use shippingeasy.com. They offer free accounts and you can copy and paste addresses in (that’s what had me sold)!