Interesting Experiences Shipping Beer

Everytime I ship beer from Germany to home I get the third degree from the shippers clerk, the reason I do it, is cause you have to claim each item and thier value, but it easier to say there is one trinket worth roughly 5 euro, when you ship, while you WILL get searched by customs at the airport and end up paying about triple. Even though they claim you are not allowed to ship beer. It costs me about 32 Euro to send 4 bottles of German beer that cost me less than 1 euro a piece. whereas at the airport, it would be close to 90 and Ive had them throw my beer away due to their limit....

 

I routinely order beer online and naturally I have to sign for the boxes, and they often state they contain alcohol. The regular driver began to get pretty curious about what I was receiving. I never told him exactly what I was ordering, but simply told him 'good beer'. The next package fails to show up on the delivery date because it was 'damaged' on the delivery truck. Subsequently, the shipper was told the driver had destroyed the package because it was unsalvageable. The same shipment of beers gets resent to me, and again it is 'damaged' from the local shipping center to my doorstep. I report to the shipping center that this has happened twice in a row, for the same package, essentially, and it seems suspect that this happened after the driver had inquired about what I was receiving before this happened. The next day my 'damaged' package shows up on my door step, undamaged, delivered by a new driver. Never have seen the old regular driver since.

 

Note to self: Tell driver packages contain "shitty beer."

 

Its an awesome experience to travel but go ahead and double what your initial budget is for the trip(especially Belguim) , some German people are lax, however they are very into following the rules, you will get searched at the airport, check the weight restrictions on your luggage and weigh them before, the customs charges usually exceed the cost of the item by about 10% Its quite a process depending on how honest you are initally, and how much the agent cares... WAY easier to send them to yourself. And shippers near breweries are used to Americans sending beer through the mail.... which is "illegal" in some places. So show up with the box sealed!!

 

A few months back my driver probably saved a package from theft. We had a lot of houses getting new roofs after a hail storm and packages had been going missing throughout the neighborhood. We had a larger than normal "crew" roofing a house across the street the morning my box was supposed to be deliverd. The driver showed up, saw the roofing crew across the street, and instead delivered the package to my wife's office (our house and my wife's office were on the same route so the driver knew my wife). We got home that night and our house had been broken into and we had some jewelry missing. They actually caught the guy a few weeks later and the prints lifted from our house were a big part of the case.

It sucked that we had to go though that, especially since it was the week of GABF and I subsequently didn't go, but it was nice to have a Zombie Dust to calm my nerves that evening.

 

For cases I imagine it'll be hell so shipping may be your best option. But when I went backpacking a few years back I brought like 6 bottles of wine and limoncello home and went through customs with no problem and didnt pay a dime. Just said it was for personal consumption and walked right through. I wish I was into sours at the time and went to Belgium. I skipped it completely for more time in Italy and Bavaria

 

My wife and I brought 2 styroshippers and several more bottles packed in our suitcases back from France and Belgium with absolutely no problems at the airport or customs. Yes, wrangling 200lbs of luggage was a pain in the ass, but no one gave us any trouble. We declared everything to customs, but the agent elected not to charge us any duties. (Probably didn't feel like doing the paperwork.)