Shipping “Yeast Samples” Across Statelines

It is inevitable for a home brewer to ask the question: can I ship my home-brew to a friend in another state?

My good friend and itsbeer-o-clock.com contributor Marsh lives in New Mexico, and I’d like to send him a couple of bombers of my latest brew.  So I started to dig around the internets, and came up with the following:

Cellar Help: http://cellarhelp.com/law.aspx

California

A resident may bring in or receive by direct shipment up to two cases of wine per month from wineries in states that give California wineries the same privileges. Wineries from states without such “reciprocal” policies may ship small quantities into California if they get a license.

New Mexico

Residents may receive up to two cases of wine a month from sellers in states that allow similar shipments from New Mexico.

The key phrases there are “from wineries,” and “from sellers” so that doesn’t seem apply to the home brewer.  The more I looked into it, the more it became clear that is was illegal for a home brewer to ship beer, but I couldn’t find it specifically stated anywhere, even when I went to:

New Mexico’s own Alcohol and Gaming site.

I did find numerous posts, on various forums, of it being specifically illegal to ship via USPS, but that you could use UPS or FEDEX.   I decided to check it out at the source:

USPS:

422.1 Nonmailable Matter

422.11 Intoxicating Liquors

Intoxicating liquors having 0.5 percent or more alcoholic content are nonmailable. Taxable liquors with 3.2 percent or less alcohol, including those obtained under a prescription or as a collector’s item, also are nonmailable. The prohibition of the mailing of intoxicating liquors is contained in federal law (18 U.S.C. 1716).

Fedex:

Only licensed entities may ship alcohol of any type with FedEx. For more information, go to fedex.com/us/wine. Consumers may not ship alcohol.

UPS:

For shipments containing beer or alcohol, shippers must enter into an approved UPS agreement for the transportation of beer or alcohol as applicable, must be licensed and authorized under applicable law to ship beer and alcohol, and may ship only to licensed consignees

From what I understand, because the alcohol shipping laws differ from state to state, UPS and FEDEX have chosen to make it a company policy to restrict shipping of alcohol in order to avoid confusion or fines.  There is also a lot of talk about shipping your home brew using the following steps:

1. Do not specify the contents of the package
2. If anyone asks, just say that you are shipping samples of yeast for your friend to analyze with a bit of wort to keep them alive.

Absolutely brilliant.  Though, I have not been able to verify whether or not shipping live yeast is legal either.

I also stumbled upon this company: Clark Brewing Innovations.  They have a bottle shipping system that looks pretty sweet.

That’s all I got for now.  I may send an email to New Mexico’s Alcohol and Gaming Department, or I might just ship some yeast samples for analysis.