Where do you get your beer?

+1, hit up your local breweries. Fresh local beer can usually beat out 90% of the stuff you find on shelves.

 

I buy most of my beer direct from the breweries. I am a strong believer in supporting local businesses - especially if they produce great beer - and I like getting to know the brewers.

 

Nice beer shop there Bevis.

 

That is a nice looking beer shop, very similar in outlay to Valhalla's Goat in Glasgow.

 

There are quite a few good beer shops around Stockport - The Beer Shop in Heaton Mersey, Heaton Hops and Bottle in Heaton Moor, High Peak Beer Co at the Market Place all selling excellent local and imported ales. Slightly further afield there's the aforementioned Beermoth, Harvey Leonard's in Glossop and Chester Beers and Wines in Chester. They get some exclusives, I picked up a Sierra Nevada/Dogfish Head collaboration beer there.

I'd also recommend Beer Merchants for online orders and sometimes Brewdog. If you join the mailing list you will get e-mail alerts about new beers for instance a couple of weeks ago they received a hoard of Cantillon beers but they sell out quick.

Just generally, in terms of trying top rated beers on here, you can sometimes pay a fortune for imported stuff particularly from the States. You can get excellent beers from Buxton, Siren Craft, Thornbridge etc from many sources which will be fresher and cheaper than imported ones. Recently saw a Stone/Smuttynose 9/10% IPA recently being sold within a month of it's 12 month expiry date selling in double figures for 750ml bottle so you might not be paying for what people rave about.

You can always pick up random bottles from bars to take away, but they hike up the prices.

 

Still patiently waiting for the day dogfish head core range is available here again, Gutted I wasn't aware of them at the time.

 

@hdtrice If you're not against importing you can find Westy 12 on belgianbeerfatory.com and it doesn't state it's out of stock. I've considering ordering but it costs 13.50 euro's for a 330ml bottle, so got to pass on that for now.

Buxton make consistently good beers Their The Living End aged in Bourbon Barrels was world class and cost about £5.

I also saw recently Three Floyd's Dark Lord available for worldwide shipping from the Mikkeller website. The cost including shipping when converted would be about £70. Unfortunately, the best thing to do would probably be to go to America. However, Founders KBS has made it's way here recently which is an amazing beer. You can always find Stone products too.

Breweries like Alesmith and Lost Abbey have good distribution but the 750ml bottles only makes them expensive.

 

@emperorbeavis was in bier cell just last week actually, didn't spot it there. Made do with mcchouffe and la trappe tripel.
Yeah heaton hops is ace, though only popped in the once. They threw in a first chop/shindigger saison in free because it was out of date, but still good.