Shop bought beer in a Swing top bottle

[Northern_Brewer]

There is a deposit on crates in Germany but it does not cover the cost of them for a lot (if not all) breweries. As there is essentially no chance of the crates being returned it’s not a great thing to ask, some of the more famous German breweries are taking quite a financial hit from people “collecting” their crates.

Quite - just to give you an idea, beer wholesalers in the UK expect eg £4 deposit for ordinary crates and £8 for the "sexy" ones like Delirium, Solent Plastics will do you a pallet's worth at £6.95+VAT. If you're prepared to pay that or more, then perhaps there's a deal to be had....

 

[Kye]

Just a quick update on buying from Biermarket.de It's still quite a painful process but at least it has got cheaper!

For my most recent order I tried their new way of sending an order by clicking a button to send a screenshot of the shopping cart. When I had no response for over a week I emailed and they informed me that feature wasn't working well and they had deactivated it but checking today it is on their website but I don't know if it is now working. I resorted to my usual method of manually emailing a screenshot.....it's not ideal as I have to zoom out to get the whole cart into one picture but it works.

They then informed me some of my choices were out of stock but coming later.

Now the good news: they told me that if I was was willing to wait until Monday 16th November for despatch the shipping price was dropping from Euros 23 to Euros 8.50. (I checked this morning, it now shows as Euros 9.50 but that's still good value in my opinion for a box of 30 bottles) Having already waited over 2 weeks another 10 days seemed acceptable and my beer duly arrived by DPD on Sat 21st. It was superbly packed as usual and no damage. There seemed to be one or two substitutions from my original choice but they were intelligent choices and completely acceptable to me.

Hope that helps someone. Prost!

thanks for this awesome tip, was looking to try and get some German beers in for Xmas. can I ask did you get stung for customs handling and VAT when it came through customs?

 

[rocketman_k]

No customs or VAT to pay, this was at least the 5th time I've bought direct from Germany and have never had to pay duty or VAT................but of course things are probably going to be different after Br***t is done next year.
By the way, do also check out web-bier , less choice but much easier to order from and very fast delivery.

By the way, I have no connection with either company, just a fan of German Beer! (I have German roots so it's in my genes!)

 

[rocketman_k]

Further to my earlier answer about duty and VAT: I just checked, the government website and it states "....from 1st January 2021...........you need to pay customs duties and VAT on all imports" For "beer made from malt in bottles holding <=10l" (commodity code 2203 0001) the duty rate stays at 0%. VAT on alcohol is 20%

Not sure why they talk about container size because the next lines show the rate is still 0% on larger containers.
I'm no expert on this but my simple interpretation is that from Jan 1st the cost of my German beer imports will go up by 20% (I have no idea if this will be offset by the German VAT I may or may not have already been paying)

Having said all that there is a massive "Gotcha" to come........on another unrelated group I belong to there has been a discussion about buying cheap electronic components etc. direct from China. Some are saying that the courier companies (And Royal Mail) will be charging an admin fee for collecting Duty and VAT with minimum charges for doing so varying between £15 and £45. I don't know if that is true but if so it's probably game over for buying direct from Germany for me. My guess is the only way to know what will actually happen will be to place a test order in January but that could turn out to be an expensive experiment!

 

[gibbo_sd]

Had two orders from here this year with no problems. Delivery by UPS. Usually arrives 6-9 days.
www.supermarkt24h.de

 

[Kye]

No customs or VAT to pay, this was at least the 5th time I've bought direct from Germany and have never had to pay duty or VAT................but of course things are probably going to be different after Br***t is done next year.
By the way, do also check out web-bier , less choice but much easier to order from and very fast delivery.

By the way, I have no connection with either company, just a fan of German Beer! (I have German roots so it's in my genes!)

Great, thanks for the reply! same here - german helles and pilsner, love it

cheers

 

[Spratt]

thanks for this awesome tip, was looking to try and get some German beers in for Xmas. can I ask did you get stung for customs handling and VAT when it came through customs?

If you want to keep it simple you could try

https://www.beersofeurope.co.uk/beer/country/germany
I'm not sure how they compare with the German sites price-wise, but they usually have a reasonable range. If you're within striking distance of King's Lynn, they are well worth a visit, especially for their out of date stuff which often goes very cheaply and tastes fine as long as you're not after a freshly hopped IPA. Having said that I see from their home page that they're closed to visitors at present because of building works, so you won't be able to browse for this Christmas, but their on line shop works well.

 

[rocketman_k]

gibbo-sd: Thanks for the suggestion of supermarket24, I've just placed an order with them so will wait and see how it goes. I was interested to find out how they calculate shipping and by playing around putting various things in and out of the online shopping basket I discovered they charge Euros 17.40 for up to 25Kg then it doubles to Euros 34.80 (I didn't go over 50Kg. To calculate shipping they use the weights for the various beer shown the product description.............and I see a catch there. From experience a 500ml swing-top full of beer is in the 800g to 1 Kg range but some of theirs are shown as much lighter so I fear there's a chance they may undercharge carriage in some cases......not necessarily a problem for the customer but I see there may be problems once the parcel reaches the courier depot. I like their range of beers so very much looking forward to receiving my parcel.

Spratt: I live about 30 minutes drive from beers of europe and have been in there a few times before they stopped visitors during their building works. It is true they had an amazing range of beers but in some cases where I knew the beer (talking about British beers here) I was surprised at how high the prices were compared to other outlets. That said it was always fun to stock up from their wide range. They also have beer from outside Europe although they didn't have an Armenian beer I wanted

 

[Kye]

No customs or VAT to pay, this was at least the 5th time I've bought direct from Germany and have never had to pay duty or VAT................but of course things are probably going to be different after Br***t is done next year.
By the way, do also check out web-bier , less choice but much easier to order from and very fast delivery.

By the way, I have no connection with either company, just a fan of German Beer! (I have German roots so it's in my genes!)

emailed biermarket about a pre xmas delivery and a guy called Marco has given me a 3-5 working day delivery window (i will 'definitely' get it by xmas apparently). So I've put an order in for a box of 30 bottles. I'll be pacing the house for the next week!

Cheers

 

[rocketman_k]

It's usually Marco that e-mails. I'll be really interested to hear how you get on, how did you actually place the order?

 

[Kye]

It's usually Marco that e-mails. I'll be really interested to hear how you get on, how did you actually place the order?

will let you know for sure. I filled my basket on their website, took screenshots of it and then sent via email and quoted him the price it had given me (nice bonus of a 10% discount given the order size), he added shipping and sent me a paypal request that I've just paid an hour or so ago. v prompt replies over the weekend from him. interestingly I just had an email from honestbrew saying order tomorrow for delivery before Xmas,so now I'm even more stressed!

 

[Kye]

It's usually Marco that e-mails. I'll be really interested to hear how you get on, how did you actually place the order?

update - after ordering on Monday evening (yes - 3 days ago) my biermarket.de delivery has just turned up via DPD. Great packaging (see pic) and all in order. Amazing really, especially considering I ordered a small amount of hops from crossmyloof which were posted 1st class on monday and still aren't here...

 

[rocketman_k]

Wow that is far better service than I've ever had from them, excellent. Yes their packaging is superb, I've never had a broken bottle (not even on my first order with them when the box arrived showing signs of having been dropped somewhere in transit)

Enjoy the beers !

 

[An Ankoù]

I tried using using some flip top bottles I had emptied(consumed) and the carbonation levels were below the other bottles. Should you change the rubber ring whenever reusing flip top bottles for the first time?

Some bottles have a red ring which you can pull off and replace. I tend to pull them off and turn them over. Other bottles have a moulded ring, which is there until it wears out.,

 

[rocketman_k]

My order from supermarket24 placed on 7th Dec arrived in two parcels, the first (6 bottles) on Wed 16th and the second (24 bottles) on Thur 17th. Not an unreasonable time especially at this time of year. Lovely beers so I'm happy. The packaging of the 24 bottles was not great, several bottles had got loose and crashed into each other during transit but thankfully no breakages. To be fair it looked as if someone had done their best with the available materials but the packaging was in different league to Biermarket or web-bier, both of whom use superb bomb-proof packaging.

I'll now have to work hard at emptying the swing-tops before my next bottling session !

 

[Laszlo]

I think I lucked out finding this thread, I think. I guess brexit made this go ****-up? I've just gotten into brewing, and I'm looking for some bottles and I too realised that the price of a full beer and just the bottle is very close, yet flip-top beer bottles are pretty much extinct in UK now :/.

Luckily I still have around 30 bottles of Das Helle from Aldi in 2015 that I drank when I was 15; knew they'd come in handy .
Anyone had any issues with importing since Brexit? Looking at getting beers from Czech Republic or Slovakia instead. I'm registered in Slovakia too so I might be able to use that to my advantage.
From the Czech Republic, you can get 12plato Bernard flip bottles for 89p a bottle, just unsure on delivery to UK, no option for that.

 

[Scrattajack]

I suspect that ship has sailed, unfortunately. Some European businesses are refusing to ship to the UK as they are now expected to collect taxes for someone else's government and those that do will likely have to raise their prices. So while it's possible you'll be able to get an order in, it might not be so attractive economically.

I too am watching this space for anyone who's actually gone for a post Brexit order...

 

[Hanglow]

Yes a lot of businesses are quite rightly saying bollocks to the complete nonsense that is the current tax policy. I


Here is the current policy that came into effect a few days ago for anyone who isn't aware
https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...s-goods-sold-to-customers-from-1-january-2021

 

[rocketman_k]

I too am watching this space for anyone who's actually gone for a post Brexit order...

I looked at placing an order from Germany yesterday: supermarket24 have removed UK from their list of countries that that will ship to, web-bier have a note saying (rough translation)
"Dear British beer connoisseurs,
It looks like there can be unlimited deliveries to you even after Brexit. But .......... The little virus is causing us much more trouble. Hundreds of trucks are waiting on both sides of the Eurotunnel. Sometimes the last location in UPS is Frankfurt; however, this is the final scan. Your beer is well chilled at the gates of Calais. Since UPS does not allow normal transport at the time, the last orders cannot be processed. The delivery time can therefore be delayed."

Biermarkt.de didn't have any guidance and are still showing shipping to UK but I'm going to wait a few weeks to see in things settle down.

 

[HockleyPete]

I had a box from Web Bier suddenly arrive yesterday ordered from the 21st December - UPS tracking was useless with the package in no mands land...

Looks like pricing has stayed the same as far as I can tell so all sounding good for future purchases