Trader Joe's

V: The vibe is typical Trader Joe's: Kind of stripped down, bare bones, packed with organic food. It's clean, well laid out, and a little colorless. In general, nothing special, but good - in a corporate kind of way.

Q: As far as I could tell, Trader Joe's has a high quality of beers; no stale stuff to be found here.

S: The service was quite friendly, though I didn't quiz anyone on the beer.

S: Trader Joe's dedicates much more space to wine than beer by a long shot. They do manage to squeeze some good stuff in there, though. There's a lot of beer from Trader Joe's house brewery, but also tons of local stuff (Ardent, Hardywood, Smartmouth), some standard national brands (Stone, Founders, Bells), but only one foreign brewery that I could see (Lindemans). Overall, it's not a bad selection, but not overly creative or interesting.

 

The store has a limited selection of beer but I have found that some prices are less than the big box stores. What I especially like is that you can select any beer from a six pack and pay one-sixth the price of the six pack. I have found that in other stores you cannot buy a single bottle from a six pack but must get it from the make-your-own six pack area. Typically, these single bottles are old. In other places, the cost for a single bottle is quite high when compared to the six pack equivalent.