How to Travel with Beer

Learn how I successfully travel by airplane with beers in my suitcase.

Beer cans brought back from Southern California vacation.

If you have followed my Instagram for some time, you know I love a good (I mean, excessive) vacation beer haul. I have taken home over fifty cans at a time, flown with bottles, even taken multiple bottles home from overseas, and of the hundreds of beers I have flown with in total over the years, I have never lost a single beer.

Here are my tips and tricks for getting all your beer souvenirs home safe while minimizing baggage fees:

How to Pack the Beers

Most of the time, I travel with cans, which are not going to break like a bottle, but still run the risk of cracking open, getting cut open, or exploding open. Here are the steps I take when traveling with cans:

Use high-quality, sturdy, luggage

I never pack my beers into a flimsy duffel bag. Here are the two pieces of luggage I use when flying with beer:

I use a very old 28in Tumi suitcase. It's no longer made, but this is similar to mine:

Tumi Wheeled Packing Case. I also found more affordable, used options on ebay.

I also bring this Osprey Porter 46 backpack on trips. It can be carried on, but it's also sturdy enough to be a checked bag if more space for beers is needed. The ability to carry it on one way without beers is useful in reducing checked baggage fees. Check with your airline's carry-on dimensions because this bag is exceeding the limits with some airlines.

Pad the beers

I don't get fancy here with just cans. I typically just wrap cans in socks and place some other soft items around them. Sometimes, I use a cardboard flat to hold the sock-wrapped beers within the suitcase (seen on the right, other clothing was then placed all around). The less the cans are able to jostle around the better.

On the way to a destination, I will put beers inside ziplock bags as an extra precaution. While I never want my beers to spill, it would be extra bad if they soiled my clothes at the start of a trip when I can't just easily do laundry.

When traveling with bottles, I always use wine skins (designed for wine bottles, but work great for beers too). They're bubble wrapped and sealed for extra protection.

Additional Tips and Tricks

Avoid heavily fruited sours

Fruited sours/smoothie sours contain actual fruit and need to be kept refrigerated. When at warmer temperatures, the yeast inside the can becomes more active and consumes the fruit sugars, which release carbon dioxide that will build up until the can bursts open. I enjoy this style of beer, but I only purchase these in cans locally or enjoy them in the taproom.

Use a luggage scale

I never travel without a luggage scale. This $10 scale has saved me many times that amount of money in what would have been overweight baggage fees. You can purchase it here.

Beer cans, and especially bottles, quickly add weight to luggage. Having your own scale allows you to balance the weight of your bags before getting to the airport, preventing the time consuming last minute shuffling of items at the airport check in counter.

Monitoring the weight of your luggage throughout a trip can also give you a sense of how much beer you can still travel back with before needing additional luggage or risk paying fees.

But if you need more space or to reduce weight...

Pack a Foldable Duffel Bag

This bag folds up to the size of its small exterior pocket, which then easily fits inside my suitcase on the way to a destination. For the trip home, I can unfold this duffel and use it to carry the clothing and other items displaced by the beers in my suitcases. It's great for carrying souvenirs other than beer in a carry on format.

You can purchase my foldable duffel bag here.

For more practical travel items, check out my article: The Top 10 Things I Always Pack When Traveling.

Book Flights with Free Checked Bags

Southwest Airlines offers two free checked bags per person on every flight. I take advantage of this a lot and often choose to fly Southwest for this reason.

Several airlines will give you at least one checked bag for free once you earn a certain status level. I don't travel enough on any one airline to reach these milestones, but if you do, this is a nice perk.

Invest in an airline's credit card with baggage perks. I take advantage of this with both Delta Airlines and Alaska Airlines. For a $99 annual fee, which is waived the first year, the Delta SkyMiles Gold American Express card gives you and up to eight people traveling on the same reservation one free checked bag (a $30/person value). For a $95 annual fee, the Alaska Airlines Visa card gives you and up to six people on the same reservation one free checked bag ($30/person value). Both these cards offer other perks as well making them well worth their initial cost if you travel a particular airline frequently enough. Contact me if you would like referrals for either of these cards.

Do you have any favorite tips or tricks for traveling with beer?