Line Your Box with a Garbage Bag. Accidents happen. What you dont want to happen is for a small accident like a crushed can or broken bottle to soak your box, cause it to break, and result in a whole box of lost items. For that, I recommend lining your box first just as if you were putting it in a garbage can with a plastic garbage bag. Sure, its not unstoppable, but it gives you an extra line of defense in case the worst happens. Also, a plastic bag means that if the box does get soaked it will be harder for individual bottles to fall out. Some beer trading message boards also recommend using a smaller box inside a box when you mail beer. Ive never tried that personally or had it done with beer sent to me, but if you happen to have two similarly sized boxes available, it wouldnt be the worst idea. Line the Sides of Your Box with Bubble Wrap. Since I do this a lot, I have a TON of bubble wrap readily available in my house. If you dont, then using crumpled up newspaper or packing peanuts can have the same effect. The goal is to have a line of defense around the sides and bottom and top of your box. This box is absolutely going to get tossed around. Dont let your beer be right up against the sides. Wrap Individual Bottles with Bubble Wrap or Newspaper. Of the few dozen broken packages Ive gotten over time, the majority of them happened because someone didnt wrap each bottle in its own. DO NOT just put a 6 pack in a box and mail it to someone. It will break. The person you sent it to will hate you. The mailman will hate you. Its a waste of good beer. Dont be that guy. The place where bottles are going to break is at the neck. Wrap the heck out of it and the whole bottle. The best way to do this is with a lot of bubble wrap secured with a rubber band. If you dont have bubble wrap, then you need something thats going to keep the neck of the bottle protected. Think to yourself If I dropped this on the floor, would it break If the answer is yes or maybe, then you need to wrap it better. Seriously. If Im mailing 1. I sometimes pack them in freezer bags as well. It doubles up the water protection, and I can shove a lot of newspaper in the bag as an extra layer of protection. If youre really fancy, you can buy these sleeves made for wine that will keep individual bottles secure. There are also a lot of styrofoam setups for mailing wine. Theyre a bit pricey IMO for a one time shipment, but if youre trading regularly with the same friend then they could be a good investment and something you could use over and over again to send back and forth. Keep It Tight. When you seal the box up, you want to make sure nothing is moving inside. When stacking bottles I recommend going top to bottom. So the top of one bottle is next to the bottom of another and packing them on their side, not up and down. Ideally, you want to have an additional layer of protection not just the bubble wrap surrounding the bottles between each bottle. That busted can incident I mentioned earlier It came from me thinking Oh, a can wont break and putting it next to a bottle that crushed it mid journey. Dont be me. Before you seal the top, give the box a little shake and make sure theres no movement. If there is, stuff some more bubble wrapnewspaper in there. Protect those cans just like bottles, and think about situations where they might get crushed. Tape Every Part of the Box. Beer is heavy. Its best to just presume that your box isnt going to make it and reinforce it with tape. Im not saying cover the box with tape, but make sure to reinforce the seals at the top and bottom of the box with tape in case the glue gives out while its being tossed around. Dont Mail Beer in the Summer. Heat is bad news for beer and the summer is hot. At some point of your boxs journey or most of it, its going to be sitting in a hot warehouse or on a hot truck. Thats going to hurt your beer. Save your beer trading for autumn and winter when the temperatures are cool, your beer and its recipient will appreciate it. Know the Rules. USPS doesnt allow you to mail alcohol. USPS flat rate boxes are pretty great, and let you mail anything you can fit in a box across the country in two days for not a ton of cash. I will let you use that information how youd like. Heres a rundown on what you need to do to mail alcohol using traditional shipping services. Inform yourself before you show up with a box, not after. DNA Testing Suggests Dogs Needed No Convincing to Befriend Humans. Dogs have loved us for thousands of years, despite humanitys many flaws and foibles. New research suggests dogs were domesticated from wolves just oncethats all it might have taken for puppers and people to form an everlasting alliance. The study, which was published online yesterday in Nature Communications, analyzed the genomes of two ancient German doggosone 7,0. The researchers compared their dog DNA data to the genome of a 4,8. Zoom Review here. Ireland that other scientists had studied in 2. In that study, published last year in Science, researchers put forth a dual origin idea that dogs were domesticated from wolves on two separate occasions, in Europe and Asia. But in this recent study, researchers wrote their ancient doggos predominantly share.