MAXED OUT: Beers in the mail

Max assures us that he will be getting around to the mail bag soon... unless he didn't... we're not quite sure. Until then...

Welcome back to the mental institution my fun loving friends, how the
hell are ya? Today on Maxed Out, I will be putting on blast the act of
buying beer on Ebay and trading beer online. Why is this even an
issue? Well I’ll tell you! Don’t get ahead of me. Geez. Ok, here
we go!

The selling of craft beer on Ebay is not necessarily a new thing but
a growing concern for some breweries. Greg Koch, the CEO and Founder
of Stone Brewing recently released a bourbon barrel aged version of
one of his collaboration beers. He numbered each of the bottles and
held a raffle, vowing that anyone who sold the bottles online would
automatically be disqualified for future raffles. At first, I didn’t
understand why this could be an issue for the brewery. I just thought
it was a rash move by Mr. Kock…. I mean Koch. Dean gave me a good
reason that this could be an issue, and I have thought of a couple
since then. So the reason that Dean gave me was that if you were to
ship a beer it might lose its luster, its pizzazz, its gravitas so to
speak. Sure. It may. But what did you really expect? YOU BOUGHT A
BEER ONLINE!!!!

So Ebay sucks. I mean, kinda in general, but especially when it
comes to beer. While I think that Greg Koch is a total DB, I don’t
think that he is entirely in the wrong. Buying an amazing beer on the
west coast and selling it to someone on the east coast is a brilliant
idea. TRADING it is even better, and something that I’m hoping you’ll
check out.

There are two websites to check out when it comes to this:
tradebeer.com as well as beeradvocate.com. A good friend of mine just traded some pretty mediocre San Diego beers for some pretty freakin’ awesome beers from Odell’s Brewing Company out of Fort Collins,
Colorado. I mean he got hooked up! And it didn’t really cost him
anything. SCORE!

Oh, and one more thing. I have had a lot of friends drive up to
Oregon, or Northern California recently. Or even fly up and drive
down. That sounds neat. Listen to what I am saying now, though.
Bring San Diego beers with you. Send them if you have to. They don’t
even have to be amazing, just decent San Diego beers. They are as
good as gold. If you don’t drive up, ship them up to where you will
be staying! Trust me, I’m a professional.

So what did we learn today, kids? Don’t buy beer online. Lame.
Trade beer instead! Sweet! And take San Diego beers with you if you
are going to good beer towns. I know what I’m talking about.

Until next time my beer loving brethren, have a beer for me.

ed. note: Yes, buying beer online is totally lame and we're still skeptical of trading as there would seem to be a lack of control on both the age and heat factors which as you all know are the death of good beers. How-evah (comma) we are, as Max advised, big fans of travelling with, as in, travelling with great San Diego beers to share with friends and soon-to-be-friends abroad, especially on road trips. As an example, whenever we go river rafting on the Lower Kern, we always tote along in the cooler some of San Diego's finest up to Kernville and the folks at Kern River Brewing Company. Sharing and caring: it's good for business, it's good for the soul. How can you go wrong?