Just in time for the weekend, Filling Stations is a weekly post that highlights one of Los Angeles’ destinations for craft beer, be it a bottle-shop with a great selection, a restaurant with great food to go with their beer list, or a bar serving excellent beers.

Beverage Warehouse

• Neighborhood: Marina del Rey / Culver City-ish  View Larger Map
• Type: Bottle Shop
• Yelp Page
• Selection: 4/5 Price: 4/5 Staff: 3/5

We stick to the Westside this week and visit one of the biggest liquor stores in Los Angeles. Beverage Warehouse lives up to its name, and if you are looking for something in particular chances are they’ll have it.

Beverage Warehouse, recently named the #2 Best Liquor Store in Los Angeles by the LA Weekly, is fittingly located in the back of a sleepy industrial park just east of Marina del Rey. The giant store is a veritable playground for the thirsty wine, beer, or liquor fan. We’re no wine aficionados, so we quickly walked through the large wine department to the liquor where we proceeded to ogle the near limitless selection whiskey, Scotch, rum, and any other hooch you could ask for. Prices on the liquor were average to slightly less than you’d pay at the chain liquor shops.

But we were really there for the beer of course, and Beverage Warehouse did not disappoint. A wide selection of imported bottles lines the back wall of the warehouse, and a rack of industrial shelving is dedicated to bombers of American craft beer. The selection of bombers is above average, bested only by some of LA’s specialty beer retailers, but where Beverage Warehouse really shines is the cases and cases of craft beer six-packs they stock.

Half of one perimeter wall is dedicated to pallet-shelves stacked with cases of beer and loose six-packs, and a huge floor-display area is dedicated to the popular and special release items. On a recent excursion to Marina del Rey we stopped in to BW to find cases of Stone’s special releases beer (Smoked Porter 12oz, Ruination 10th, etc) stacked chest high. Piny the Elder empty case-boxes were strewn about and we feared we had missed the feeding frenzy. Luckily the bottom box was still half-full and we were able to buy the limit of 4 bottles. Seasonal releases, hard to find cases of Dogfish Head beers, and local favorites were also available.

Prices on the beer is better-than-average, though not by a lot, and the staff has always been pleasant and helpful. They tend to know right where the bottles you’re looking for are stashed which is nice because the beer is not  organized in any way that we could discern.  They also carry some keg beer if you’re shopping for a party, and they have a cooler up-front filled with the most popular six-packs if you want to grab something chilled.

Beverage Warehouse might not be the most conveniently located spot to buy beer, but we’d wager that any trip out that way would reward you with some really difficult decisions when it comes to check-out time.