BeerBorg

How far away is your local home brew store?

Mine is 30 miles, 45 minutes away. There's a brewery that sells supplies that's closer, but they don't really have a storefront presence and homebrewing is not their main business. At least the store I'll be using is Love2Brew.com.

There is a Northern Brewer store 3 miles from my workplace.

14 miles to Adventures in Homebrewing. When I make a trip, I buy for current batch, 3 weeks from now batch, and sometimes 6 weeks from now batch.

I'm out of luck for the most part near home (no true homebrew shop in our county... seems like an opportunity for some enterprising chap...), but have several options near work (in order of my shopping frequency):

- All Seasons was within walking distance of my work until my work moved to a new building (how rude...). Now they are a 10 minute drive. This is about a 30 minute drive from home, so it's doable in a crunch if I need something on the weekend, but I generally don't make it up to Nashville on the weekends.
- Also about 10 minutes away from work is Craft Brewed, which is a growler fill/bottle purchase/have a pint place that also has a decent little homebrew shop. They are just down the road from All Seasons, so also about 30 minutes from home.
- Rebel Brewer, which is one of the most popular online shops, has a little store at their warehouse where you can buy anything on the site. It's about 20 min from work, but worth the trip on some things because they are generally the cheapest in town. And, a homebrewing friend lives on the same exit, so he can generally hook me up.
- Also about 10 minutes away from work is the Lil' Ole Winemaker Shoppe, which is a small shop that has a winemaking focus, but also has a beer supply section.

Whole Foods has a very, very small HBS shelf that I can use in a pinch... They have a location within 10 min or so from work, but also have a location within 15 min from home. They are my "in a pinch, forgot to buy an ingredient on the weekend" place, though it is very limited... Mostly Brooklyn Brew Shop kits and accessories. I see that some Whole Foods have full-fledged homebrew shops in them now. I wish ours did. I'm reading, though, that some of the Whole Foods HBS are closing. Bummer...

Adventures in Homebrewing is about 15 miles from me but I am really close the expressway so it is under a 20 minute trip most of the time.

A 20 minute drive. There's a small garden shop who's owner has been talked into supplying homebrew supplies for his friends biput they don't offer much. I doubt it's fresh and who knows to go to a garden shop for yeast?

Austin Homebrew is 10 miles from my house. Usually takes me about 20 minutes driving each way. But it's actually only about 3 miles off my path to and from work, so more often than not I just swing by on the way home from work, which is very convenient. Adds about 10 to 15 minutes to my commute home (not counting the time inside the store, of course). I feel very fortunate.

2 hours

Beer-lord wrote:who knows to go to a garden shop for yeast?

There were two garden shops around here that had homebrew supplies, though one has stopped selling them. All Seasons, my main LHBS, is primarily a garden shop, though they make it clear in their signage and ads that they are a gardening and brewing shop. Worm's Way did not do that, and I wonder if that's why they ended up phasing out the homebrew items. Well, it could also be because, outside of yeast, they were about twice as much as their competitors on ingredient cost. Hmm...

Adventures in Homebrewing is a glorious 2.76 miles from me, according to Google maps. But basically it's right on my way home anyway.

AHS and about a half a tank round trip.

2 hours, about 120 miles. Not exactly an easy trip. And, I don't know about garden shops. That sounds at least more closely related than what is at my LHBS. The primary business is pool and hot tubs and supplies. The guys that run that store started brewing, and set aside a corner in their pool store. The whole LHBS smells like chlorine, so it does not smell anything like a brew store. And at least in a garden store they are used to things growing, albeit not yeast. In a pool store they are trying to keep organisms, like yeast, from growing.... But, all things considered, they have a decent selection, they are really nice and just like to help guys get into brewing. They are in Las Cruces, which is in between here and El Paso where my sister lives, so I try to stop in when I visit my sister. Unfortunately, neither of those happen as often as I like.

Adventures used to be a whopping 4 blocks down at the end of my street, but they decided to make things a hassle for me and move about three miles down the road.

About 6.5 miles from my house.

BIY Homebrew Supply

There is one about 2 miles from me, but it is very limited in what they have. But useful if I just want a bag of Muntons Extra Light DME or can find something useful in their very limited White Labs selection.

Two better ones are about 30 miles away in different directions - as in if I wanted to go to both I'd have to drive 100 miles.