Help Establishing a Trading Partner

At the OP, you may live in a beer wasteland, but you travel to states with distro that are easy to trade. 3F, Surly NG all work, $4$ locals is the way to go. And if you can get Surly and NG, 3F you shouldn't be dying for good beer either.

 

Generally the trade forum is mostly about pumping up the value of the rare beer you own and trying to devalue the rare beer you want to trade for. You can see lots of douchebaggery going on. There are some great traders out there though. If you post locals for locals threads you will get responses. Maybe not a ton of interest, but definitely some takers. Just try to be specific on which brewers or regions you are interested in. That might help.

 

There's a lot of beers I like I can't get here, 3F, Surly are some of my favorites, Half Acre makes some great beers. Check out seek a brew too it will give you a good idea what the distro is across the country. As an example Founders distro doesn't go out west, so most things Founders are pretty easy for a simple locals trade. Most of my trades are simple locals and I've tried a lot of great beer keeping it simple, we get some easy to move limited releases, but there are really no whales to be had here.

 

- If you can get Surly, NG, Three Floyds offerings, you can certainly find trading partners - as shocking as it may be, there are people out there who want to just try good beer they can't get regardless of hype.
- Don't randomly message people and ask them if they want to trade, I personally find that really annoying.
- Just put up an ISO and say what you have available and what you are looking for.
- Expect to ship first since you are new at trading and look for someone who has a decent amount of trades since new traders shipping to one another turns out terrible a large percentage of the time.
- Take care of your trading buddies down the road and they will take care of you.

 

Are there any brewpubs in your state which bottle their brews, or would fill a growler? Some folks (like me) try to sample beers from every state, and the Dakotas are tough.

 

It's like dating....sooner or later, someone will love you...flaws and all.