• PATRONS: Did you know we've a chat function for you now? Look to the bottom of the screen, you can chat, set up rooms, talk to each other individually or in groups! Click 'Chat' at the right side of the chat window to open the chat up.
  • Love Gotmead and want to see it grow? Then consider supporting the site and becoming a Patron! If you're logged in, click on your username to the right of the menu to see how as little as $30/year can get you access to the patron areas and the patron Facebook group and to support Gotmead!
  • We now have a Patron-exclusive Facebook group! Patrons my join at The Gotmead Patron Group. You MUST answer the questions, providing your Patron membership, when you request to join so I can verify your Patron membership. If the questions aren't answered, the request will be turned down.

Craigslist finally pays off

Barrel Char Wood Products

TAKeyser

NewBee
Registered Member
Mar 4, 2012
1,228
3
0
50
Detroit, MI
I obsess over checking Craigslist for people giving away wine bottles and I finally responded in time. 2 cases of cleaned and de-labeled (is that a word) bottles are now sitting in the basement and they cost me nothing. Still wish I hadn't missed out on the guy giving away 15 cases on Sunday, missed by 20 minutes.
 

Whatshisface

NewBee
Registered Member
Mar 3, 2012
52
1
0
Michigan
Wow good job. I use craigslist for a few things but I never thought about getting bottles there. What category are they under?
 

TAKeyser

NewBee
Registered Member
Mar 4, 2012
1,228
3
0
50
Detroit, MI
Wow good job. I use craigslist for a few things but I never thought about getting bottles there. What category are they under?

I usually just type wine bottle or wine making into the search thing over on the left any everything wine related pops up. Sadly it's everything wine related so it takes a few to get through the list. You can also try the free stuff area as I've seen them in there also, but the free listing show up when I just type wine bottles.
 

TAKeyser

NewBee
Registered Member
Mar 4, 2012
1,228
3
0
50
Detroit, MI
today's score from Craigslist is 11 cases of mixed bottles. Now I just have to get all the labels off :(

They came from a wine shop/tasting room, so of course I had to sample a few reds from Chronic Cellars http://www.chroniccellars.com/ Really liked the 2010 Purple Paradise which had a great purple color and was like a dark berry bomb. Gotta pick up a bottle or two soon.
 

TAKeyser

NewBee
Registered Member
Mar 4, 2012
1,228
3
0
50
Detroit, MI
Today's Craiglist goldmine was Twenty 1 gallon carboys and 3 cases of Beer Bottles. Cost was only the half gallon of gas that got used to get there and back.
 

Penguinetti

NewBee
Registered Member
Dec 20, 2011
375
3
0
Eliot, ME
I obsess over checking Craigslist for people giving away wine bottles and I finally responded in time. 2 cases of cleaned and de-labeled (is that a word) bottles are now sitting in the basement and they cost me nothing. Still wish I hadn't missed out on the guy giving away 15 cases on Sunday, missed by 20 minutes.

today's score from Craigslist is 11 cases of mixed bottles. Now I just have to get all the labels off :(

They came from a wine shop/tasting room, so of course I had to sample a few reds from Chronic Cellars http://www.chroniccellars.com/ Really liked the 2010 Purple Paradise which had a great purple color and was like a dark berry bomb. Gotta pick up a bottle or two soon.

Today's Craiglist goldmine was Twenty 1 gallon carboys and 3 cases of Beer Bottles. Cost was only the half gallon of gas that got used to get there and back.



Holy crap you're like a freakin craigslist whisperer...

What did you look up to get the carboys? I can't seem to come up with anything when I look up carboy
 

TAKeyser

NewBee
Registered Member
Mar 4, 2012
1,228
3
0
50
Detroit, MI
Holy crap you're like a freakin craigslist whisperer...

What did you look up to get the carboys? I can't seem to come up with anything when I look up carboy

Whenever I search I use the terms "Wine Bottles", "Wine Making", "Beer Bottles" and "Beer Making". You end up with a lot of wine cabinets, racks and other stuff that you may not have any interest in but sooner or later the equipment that you're looking for will pop up.

I really didn't need another 20 1-gallon carboys, but hey they were free and they do come in handy.
 

Whatshisface

NewBee
Registered Member
Mar 3, 2012
52
1
0
Michigan
Today's Craiglist goldmine was Twenty 1 gallon carboys and 3 cases of Beer Bottles. Cost was only the half gallon of gas that got used to get there and back.

Wow that's great. I thought I was doing good when I found three cases of flip top bottles and a Bottle capper at a garage sale the other day. I actually paid $20 but I was planning on selling the Capper on Ebay for $25 (it seems to be in good shape). I like your deal much better, you don’t have to sell anything.
 

TAKeyser

NewBee
Registered Member
Mar 4, 2012
1,228
3
0
50
Detroit, MI
Wow that's great. I thought I was doing good when I found three cases of flip top bottles and a Bottle capper at a garage sale the other day. I actually paid $20 but I was planning on selling the Capper on Ebay for $25 (it seems to be in good shape). I like your deal much better, you don’t have to sell anything.

You still seem to have gotten a great deal
 

Fisk Jaegaren

NewBee
Registered Member
I think I got the best deal of all today...

2-5 gallon carboys
1-6 gallon carboy
2 cases beer bottles
4 bags caps
1 lever corker
1 hydrometer
1 thermometer
1 bottle washer
2 racking canes
1 bottling wand

FREE!....drove less than a 1/4 mile out of my way on the way home from work, just had to promise to share a bottle in the fall.
 

TAKeyser

NewBee
Registered Member
Mar 4, 2012
1,228
3
0
50
Detroit, MI
I think I got the best deal of all today...

2-5 gallon carboys
1-6 gallon carboy
2 cases beer bottles
4 bags caps
1 lever corker
1 hydrometer
1 thermometer
1 bottle washer
2 racking canes
1 bottling wand

FREE!....drove less than a 1/4 mile out of my way on the way home from work, just had to promise to share a bottle in the fall.

damn, all that the one day I didn't check :mad:
 

056r

NewBee
Registered Member
Aug 26, 2011
26
0
0
OK, I am going to help everyone out on their craigslist monitoring even though it may cut into my own craigslist success. I just found this out about a month ago and it will greatly improve your ability to get in on deals quicker. Almost everyone has a smartphone these days and using what is called an RSS feed and an RSS reader you can easily monitor craigslist for ANYTHING your little heart desires.

If you are familiar with the above items I will simply state that when you perform a search on craigslist if you scroll to the bottom of the page in the lower right hand corner there is a link to subscribe to the search as an RSS feed.

Now for those of you who are not familiar with these things i will elaborate. First you will need to sign up for an RSS reader. I use Greader(LINK) which is Googles RSS reader. It is completely free and costs nothing. Once you have a Greader account you will need to go to the respective market for your smartphone and download the Greader application. You can however use any RSS reader that you want.

Once you are setup with Greader you are ready to start subscribing to RSS feeds. An RSS feed is basically a stripped down version of a website that provides you simple and quick updates of the site you are subscribed to. You can change the settings in Greader to check the site at specified intervals for updates.

In the case of craigslist whenever you perform a search you can scroll down to the bottom of the page and there is a small orange button with white letters that simply reads RSS. If you click on this button after performing a search it will add an RSS feed to your Greader for that search. I have my phone set to check every 30 mins so basically it runs my search every thirty minutes on craigslist and if it finds a match it gives me a little notification icon to let me know to open up Greader and see what it found.

It sure beats the heck out of trying to remember going to craigslist every day or several times a day to check for things.

Another trick that you can use to make sure your search only returns what you want is to use advanced search functions. Here is an example of an issue that we would run into. Say we search for bottles, this will return ANY posting that has the word bottles in it. The problem is this returns searches with baby bottles, pop bottles and so on. If you find that your search is returning too many hits you can narrow down your search results using the "minus" advanced search function.

Using this looks like this in the search field, bottles -baby -pop. this will return any postings with the word bottles in them but will basically filter out the postings with the word baby or pop so you don't get the junk you don't want. That is just a simple example of what you can do to customize your searches.

HERE is a link to craigslists webpage explaining all of the advanced search options that you can use. You can use multiple ones on the same search so you can see how you can completely customize what you are searching for.

You can of course simply use your Greader account on your computer without a smartphone so this will work for anyone with a computer and internet access. However the app and smartphone route will greatly increase you efficiency. Happy craigslisting!
 

skunkboy

NewBee
Registered Member
May 30, 2005
2,003
8
0
Between Jackson and Detroit
I think I got the best deal of all today...

2-5 gallon carboys
1-6 gallon carboy
2 cases beer bottles
4 bags caps
1 lever corker
1 hydrometer
1 thermometer
1 bottle washer
2 racking canes
1 bottling wand

FREE!....drove less than a 1/4 mile out of my way on the way home from work, just had to promise to share a bottle in the fall.

Very sweet deal!
 
Barrel Char Wood Products

Viking Brew Vessels - Authentic Drinking Horns