Homebrew Supply Chain

I brew with gluten free grains, so options are limited. Malted grains and enzymes come from glutenfreehonebrewing.com. I also buy most of my yeast there because it's convenient. Adjuncts like oats and quinoa are purchased in bulk online.

Hops from YVH.

Gear related items from adventuresinhomebrewing or morebeer.

 

Hops Direct
All grains home brew store
Yeast- home brew store
You can get dried yeast cheaper on Ebay

 

I'm another customer of Hops Direct.
Base malt and wheat malt from my LHBS by the sack.
Yeast from my local store or by mail.

 

Hops Direct.

Sacks of malt from a LHBS that has good prices; used to drive up to North Country Malt before they cut homebrewers off.

Yeast from commercial bottles when possible, but that is getting harder with the IPA takeover. I like Omega Yeast and WYeast.

Hardware from online shops or craigslist/ebay/restaurant supply stores.

 

The bulk of my ingredients are ordered online. There are no brick & mortar (L)HBS convenient to me. The closest one is 45 minutes one-way, unless my travels take me near one when they’re open (rare).

Some of my larger equipment has come from Craigslist. Smaller stuff (fittings, tubing, airlocks) often comes from ebay, or from online retailers especially if I need to bump up an order to get free shipping; typically, MoreBeer, Adventures In Homebrewing (AIH) and sometimes Williams Brewing.

Base malt comes from MoreBeer more often than not. When possible, I get specialty grains and small items from a HBS, otherwise I add them to an online order.

My brewing schedule is on again off again, so I get dry yeast because of its shelf life.

Hops are nearly all ordered from MoreBeer or AIH.

McMaster-Carr is great for finding obscure fasteners, seals, grommets, etc., but you gotta to know what you’re looking for.

I have no affiliation with any of the above-mentioned vendors, other than as a customer.


Semi-related to the topic is a site called Homebrew Finds, which lists recent 'deals' on stuff and links to other interesting tidbits, like this.

 

hops

grow my own or buy from morebeer. but seeing lots of folks getting Hops direct i ll look into that.

specialty grains and yeast are mostly from morebeer. I will look into yeast on ebay and other online venders.

base malt and other specialty grains from brewer pals, and the inlaw-outlaw relations i used to write about before covid came to town.

 

Can’t recommend Hops Direct enough. Not all but a large chunk of what they sell is grown and pelletized by them on the farm. The prices are 10000 times better than buying from places like Morebeer and Northern Brewer and IMHO the likelihood that you get better quality hops is considerably higher. Plus the scale they use to weigh things on is clearly broken in the customers favor. I’ve paid for 1# bags that have weighed more than 1.75# sometimes. I wouldn’t buy leaf hops from anywhere else. YVH definitely has a much bigger selection and now that they’re partnered with HAAS they’ve got even more variety. However I’ve bought some unbelievably bad hops from them. Open the bag and can’t even fathom putting what’s in that bag in a beer. Never had that experience with anything from Hops Direct. Big fan of the 2020 Comet I got from HD this year. Big fan.

 

I buy 2 row in bulk from Empire Malting or Great Lakes Malting, two local companies that also sell to Bell's and Founder's. Specialty grains I get as needed from LHBS. Not the cheapest way to go but I like going in there and having a beer and shooting the shit with other brewers.

Most hops I try to get from MI Local Hops if I can. I'm a crop consultant and they're a customer of mine so I try to return the favor. Again, Bell's buys from them and most of the Centennial in Two Hearted comes from them (it's cool having even a small part in that beer!) Hops that they don't grow I get from the LHBS as well, or from MoreBeer.

 

And if you really want the same-ish Centennial hops that Bell's uses (since they get first whack at hop selection), you can buy them from Bell's.

 

Almost sounds like they pay you to take them.

Quality differential aside, do they give a break on shipping costs for larger buys? I had a half-pound (I think) in my cart there once and, IIRC, shipping was more than the hops.

 

If you buy enough, shipping is reasonable. My last order was for four pounds, and IIRC shipping didn’t break the bank. Of course, with an order that large, you either need to be brewing every day like @wasatchback or have a way to effectively store them long term, which I do by vacuum packing and freezing. Cheers!

 

I bought some earlier Comet from them (don’t recall which year), recently used in my West Coast IPA. It’s a nice very old school hop that works well in modern hoppy beers. Cheers.

 

I have gotten hops from Yakima Valley a couple times.
Can anyone compare them and Hops Direct, are they similar, etc?

 

Yeah you need to order enough to make shipping worth it as it’s not cheap (but not horrible). They always have older stuff that so cheap which is cool. I think I bought a Half a pound of 17, 18, 19, 20 cascade earlier this winter Just to see how they compared. The old stuff was maybe $2 or less for a half of a lb. 17 wasn’t great so I tossed it but 18 was phenomenal. Did something similar with Mt Hood and Centennial as well. Pretty sure I paid $1 for 8oz of some of those. And it’s great that you know the harvest year. With a lot of the online Homebrew shops you have no clue what year you’re getting and it’s all the same price.

I do have a vacuum sealer so I’m always buying in bulk.

Ritebrew seems to have some pretty good pricing on hops these days as well.

 

I buy bulk base grain, generally from Mecca Grade (which is just an hour away). A local brewer also recently offered to source sacks at cost for our club members, which is neat. For specialty grains I buy in 2-5lb increments from FH Steinbart or MoreBeer. Hops I get from YVH or HopsDirect. Since the LHBS closed last year, I've been mostly using dry yeast or saving slurry from older liquid yeast batches, but occasionally I sneak some liquid yeast onto a specialty grain order.

 

As an FYI, Mecca Grade used to sell grain only by the 50-pound bag, but these days they sell it by the pound. Shipping costs still make it uneconomical to buy small amounts, but you don't have to buy a whole 50 pounds anymore. (You could always get it in smaller increments from homebrew retailers but now you can get it directly from Mecca Grade.)

 

They are both good. I probably buy more from Yakima than hops direct these days, but I trust both. I buy from whichever has the best deal on the hops I’m looking for at the time.

 

I buy sacks of base malts (pils, standard 2 Row, and some sort of pale ale malt) from my local. Obviously the price is inflated for them to cover shipping and profit, but it still saves me some money. All my specialty malts and yeast also come from the local on a batch to batch basis. I will buy some specialty malts, like acid malt, in lager increments to use for multiple batches.

On the other hand, I order bulk hops for a handful of batches at a time online. YVH is my go to. Big savings over what the local can offer from what I can tell. I don't mind supporting the local guy, but only to a certain extent.

 

I will just add to beware of Yakima Valley sales as they are very addicting. I bought so many hops that I had to give away 12-15 pounds when I sold my house and I'm still working through another 5! Too many great prices for high quality hops to pass up and if you keep them in the freezer they really do hold up a long time. I usually buy my base grain (2-row, Maris Otter) in bulk from the LHBS. If you brew a lot its a huge costs saving to buy in bulk.

 

I just went there a couple days ago for the deal on Idaho 7. Grabbed 2 pounds... and another 4 pounds of various other hops