Online Ordering

I still consider myself very new to home-brewing, having only completed 1 successful batch. It was an Irish Red Ale and it turned out very well according to me and everyone else that has tried it. I have a Dunkelweizen sitting in my secondary right now and plan to bottle in about 10 days. Both of these were bought in a malt extract style kit from a local brew shop in my area.

My question is: What are the best options out there for ordering malt extract kits online (price and quality wise)? This local brew shop does not do very good business as they are almost always out of supplies and ingredients. They know their beer, just don't know how to run a business in my opinion. Both of these kits were pitched with a white labs pitchable liquid yeast vial. What is the best option for online ordering when it comes to yeast? Can you trust a liquid yeast shipment even if it is shipped well in a cold container? Would a "smack pack" be a better option?

Never got liquid yeast via mail before, but I tried NorthernBrewer, Austin Homebrew, and Morebeer for my extract kits back when I was an all-extract brewer.

I only used Morebeer in my last days of ordering kits, because of their "10 beers under 50c a beer" or whatever they were called. They were all low-to-modest gravity kits, and < 25 bucks for the kit. I ordered 2 kits, and 3 or 4 muslin bags for the steeping grains (because they weren't included in the kit) and it put me juuuuuust over the $50 threshold so I could get free shipping.

that was the cheapest I could get for my extract kits.

You could always get the cheap kits, and if you want liquid yeast grab some from your LHBS and just harvest and reuse from batch to batch.

EDIT: I liked NorthernBrewer's LME the best, BY FAR, because of the half-gallon milk jugs they put it in. Made it super easy to pour most of the extract into the kettle, fill the jug with hot h20, and shake it to get the rest of the extract out. The mylar bags Morebeer uses for their extract were a pain in the @ss, but I dealt with it because of the cheaper prices. AHS used white jar-type containers for their LME.

If you order liquid yeast, order the freezer pack with it, it ships just fine. Pretty much all of the big e-tailers make great kits, have great service.

Being so close to Wisconsin,I like midwest. Fresh ingredients,good quality,fast Feed-Ex home delivery. And their LME is in plastic jugs as well. I like their partial mash Cascade Pale ale kit with premium yeast for $25. Can't beat that. They have a lot of extract kits in different levels as well.