Starting a beer cache for beer trades?

Locals 4 locals is the way to go.

 

So you were 10 min away when posting this?

 

Trading is basically local for local which makes a lot of sense. You could go get the whales locally I guess, but you sometimes would need to trade a whale for a whale I suppose. Just keep it simple but worthwhile, like if you were in CA and wanted some ZD, trade some Russian River offerings that you can get relatively easily to a guy in IN who goes to FFF brewpub twice a week.

And another thought of mine is that if you start a cache for trading, just be sure you're willing to consume the beer yourself! I.e. don't get a beer for which you dislike its style just to trade, but one that you'd be willing to consume on its own.

 

Locals for locals man. So much fun to trade and I imagine trading solely for whales is more annoying than anything. Get RR anything. It's been the main part of my 2 trades so far. And know now that your wallet will hate you

 

I concur with everyone who has said that locals for locals is fun and the best way to get into trading. Quite frankly, locals became popular because they were good and there are certainly locals (in most if not all areas) that are on par or better than whales, just more common.

 

Unless you get exclusively 50/50 Eclipse bottles, this will get you a lot of good locals. Figure $12/bottle for RR sours, don't get too much Pliny unless you plan on drinking it soon. It fades fast IMO, like a month and you can tell a difference in it. And anything else local should be relatively affordable.

As mentioned before though, get stuff you wouldn't mind drinking. Don't hunt for trade bait unless its a one off cellarable beer that won't be available another time (beatification comes to mind), but focus on local shelf gems that you wouldn't mind drinking if you can't find a trade partner. Anything Bruery is good also for trading, also real good beer, but can be a little pricy. Good luck. $300 should be more than enough.

 

Not "everything" from The Bruery trades well.

 

Wrong wording on my end. You're right. However, still good beer IMO.

 

In all honesty, it sounds like you havent tried a lot of the locals from Cali, ie Russian River, Firestone Walker, Bruery, 50/50 etc. I bet if you do, you would rather just drink those for awhile at first rather than trade them away.

 

I'm new to trading, and my locals-for-locals have meant snatching some shelf CCB brews and special release Swamp Head, as well as one offs and seasonals when they come in (and they do come into the bottle shops). These have landed me Parabola, Zombie Dust, Dreadnaught, Black Tuesday, Brooklyn Black Chocolate, Foothills BA Porter, fresh Pliny, Westvleteren 12, Sculpin, and more 3F and other brews. Much of that was thanks to a lucky find of Moat Water bottles laying around untouched for some reason at a local shop. Apparently they "forgot to drink them" at their staff holiday part and just stuck them up on the counter for the customers.

Moral to the story: figure out what breweries near you gets people up in a tizzy and offer it up!

 

That's a good point. I live near Three Floyd's and have relatively easy access to Dreadnaught, Zombie Dust and the like which could be good for trades.

 

Could?.............. Would.

 

Nah, it's awful for trading. Matter of fact aslamm75, I'm willing to lose this trade Im gonna offer you. But you send a 6 of zombie dust and I will send a limited edition SF Giants 2009 World Series Champs Bud Light Tallboy. Hell, I'll throw in the 2012 edition one too. I know, I'm giving up too much. But I'm an advocate, what can I say?

 

You could simply just but the beers as needed from your local store.

 

I built up my cellar through 6 and 4 packs of beers that I knew would cellar well (imperial stouts mostly, but also other things like old ales, barleywines, barrel-aged scotch ales, etc.), and lots of various bombers of other cellarable styles (stouts, sours, barleywines, etc.). The 4 and 6 pack beers (things like BBCS, Expedition, various stuff from Founders, Wake-n-Bake, etc.) are obviously not trade bait, but they serve two good purposes:

1. Many of them make nice extras to throw in to trades, and having a lot of them ensures it never feels hard to include them.

2. When you pull stuff from your cellar, you can immediately go to these tasty but readily-available beers, rather than grabbing bombers you might prefer to sit on and/or trade.

 

Make sure you get a lot of West-coast IPAs..... people love west-coast-IPAs.