Poll: Where do people get the beer they drink?

I voted store , but I get 75% of my beer from home brewing.

 

Can't vote. PA has retail stores which sell only beer and by the case or 12 pack and that's where I get most of my beer.

 

I don't have local breweries that are close enough to make them a reasonable source for most of my beer. 95% of the beer that I consume comes from store shelves. I historically don't buy beer from supermarkets, but the one at which I shop just started offering it as a possibility.

 

I get my best beers to take home from breweries, with bottle shops a close second. Bars/ restaurants and grocery stores fill in the rest. Would like to start trading when I return to the states later this year.

 

I buy from my local bottle shop, unless a brewery around me offers something brand new thats hasn't hit stores.

 

Colorado is great. We have liquor stores, and can't buy beer in Grocery stores.

Selection is huge.

I buy some beer to take home from breweries, but usually spent all my money on draft beer, so I can't afford to take any home.

 

I used to go all the way up to Stateline near Delaware (from NOVA) but that stopped as most of the stores now carry as good selections. That was a two hour drive.

Now:

The growlers from Devil's Backbone in Lexington, Heavy Seas in Baltimore, and Dogfish Head in Milton Delaware (obviously when I make it out to those places, on average once every two months).

Most of the 6-packs from Total Wine in Northern Virginia.

Used to get cases of Sierra Nevada in Costco for $27.99, but they stopped carrying it. So I stop buying beer there, although they do have seasonal specials with great prices such as Guinness for St. Patrick's day, Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale for Christmas, sometimes the will have a mix pack of beers from Belgium (with Duvel, Chimay, etc.). The price at Costco cannot be beat). Maybe every once in a while I will get a big bottle there if the price is right (e.g. Lagunitas Sucks for $5.49, etc., the price at Costco beats the price at Total Wine). Every once in a while I will stop at the Washington D.C. Costco (they carry whiskey & bourbon), heck every on a trip to San Diego I stopped at the original Costco store to get some beer!

 

In VA we have a good selection in our grocery stores, bottle shops, and chain beer stores. It's nice to be able to pick up good beer no matter where I go.

 

All of the above, except trades.

 

Not entirely true. What is available in grocery stores is mostly 3.2 beer, so if you don't consider 3.2 as real beer the statement is true. But it is technically beer and it is for sale in grocery stores.

 

There was one outlet for beer that wasn't on the poll - namely raiding a friend's beer fridge. There are alot of posts here about people helping themselves to other's selections.

 

Warehouse type liqour stores. My local bar sells take out beer but they are super expensive since theyre the only one for 15 miles. It would suck if i didnt work in a more populated area where i can pick some up on the way home

 

Majority of my beers come from a fairly even spread across bottle shop, supermarket, and breweries. Friends and trading not as often.

 

Bottle shops, mostly, for me. And the odd phenomenon here around Cincy of some gas stations starting to carry a few hundred beers, including stuff like Jackie O's and Jolly Pumpkin, but that's not a poll option and I don't know if that should roll into "bottle shop" or "grocery store".

Grocery stores around here carry an all right selection, but usually nothing special - the most obscure craft beer I've found at my local Kroger was New Belgium Cocoa Mole. There's a couple exceptions, but they're farther away from me than bottle shops, and lack the customer service touch from my favorite shops.

 

Being located in Montgomery County, MD it's bottle shops for me. If I make a trek to VA or DC then some supermarkets have solid selections.

 

Lately my go to place has been the Whole Foods Market near my home. They have a bar with 20 taps that are constantly changing and are always up to date on Taphunter so I know what's there. They also have a great selection of bottles and fill growlers--what more is there to want. Oh wait, the let you sample the beers on tap before committing and you can bring bottles to the bar and have them opened for you to drink there.

 

All of the above

 

The poll selections do not limit the beer to only that which is consumed at home, so I'd be hard pressed to figure out which of my selections is responsible for my greatest consumption amount. I buy a lot at bottle shops, but I also visit many breweries, bars and restaurants. And when I homebrew, I have that source too.

 

I used to go to a specialty bottle shop, but since I started working at a supermarket as their beer guy I've shopped at my store almost exclusively. I'm not much of a whale hunter anymore, so I've little reason to go half an hour out of my way.