Frequently Asked Questions

Beer has been made for thousands of years, and up until prohibition in the US, it was just another part of keeping house. Almost everyone made beer or at least had a friend that did (possibly because it was safer than water in a lot of places).

We think you should brew because there's nothing better than inviting friends over, giving them a beer, and saying "I made this!" It's carbonated. It's alcohol. It's beer. And because you used fresh, whole ingredients and brewed it the way people have for centuries, it's really good beer.

Yes! Homemade beer tastes great. When you brew using the same grain, hops, and yeast that craft breweries around the world use, you can make some really good beer—beer that's as good, if not better, than what you'll find in stores. 

When you make it at home, you know where it was made, and you have access to the freshest beer you'll ever taste.

We originally designed our Beer Making Kit for New York City apartments, but we soon discovered that people across the country (and even the world) didn't want to dedicate an entire kitchen, basement, or garage to making beer. And although we think our kit is pretty nice to look at (especially when it's full of beer), we never wanted to see it if we didn't have to. That's why our kit takes up less than 1 square foot of space. We usually leave ours in a closet or under the sink while it's fermenting.

The only rule is you want to keep it somewhere dark.

Our Beer Making Kits are pretty unique because we think you should brew using real ingredients. Whether it's your first batch or your hundredth batch, beer should be made with grain, hops, and yeast.

Some other folks use extract syrups and powder to make beer--and maybe a pinch of grain for flavor. We try not to judge, but that just isn't going to make the best beer possible. Craft breweries don't need to use extracts to make amazing beer, and neither do you.

And on a small scale (like in your kitchen), using whole ingredients is easy. You'll learn so much that, after one or two batches, you'll be able to walk into a craft brewery and pretty much know what everything is. Plus, brewing with grain is a lot more fun than playing with a bag of old sugar powder.

Absolutely! One of our first customers turned our Grapefruit Honey Ale into a Ginger Honey Ale by grating fresh ginger into it while brewing. Brewing has a long history of people putting, what might be thought of as, strange things into beer, and you're limited only by your imagination. The same goes for leaving certain things out of your beer. If you can't find chestnuts (or are allergic to them), leave them out of the Chestnut Brown Ale. You'll still end up with a great, full-flavored English Brown Ale. All of our flavors are for you to brew, play with, and make your own.

Yeast is a little creepy, but it's also really cool. While your wort (that's your beer while it's fermenting) is hanging out in the fermenter for at least two weeks, the yeast is converting the sugars you extracted while boiling the grain mix (usually malted barley) into alcohol. All of the bubbles that you see—from the first few days of a lot of activity, to the last few days where there are just teeny tiny bubbles making their way to the top—are evidence that your yeast is still hard at work converting those sugars and turning your wort into beer.

Hops come from the flower of a plant called Humulus lupulus and are grown all over the world. There are dozens of varieties of hops in existence, and every year new ones crop up. Hops do a lot for your beer. They're bitter, so they balance the sweetness you get from malted barley. Hops also contribute fresh aromas to your beer that can range from citrus, pine, flowers, grass, pepper, to an old man's couch (yes, really).

When you add hops towards the beginning of the boil, it will meld in with your liquid and become part of the background flavors. This is when you add your bittering hops, as well as heartier spices like cinnamon. Fresh ingredients, like grapefruit, and your aromatic hops are added towards the end of your boil (or even after, while its cooling) because they contribute to the top flavors (aroma!) of your beer.

Dry Hopping: Dry hopping is when you add a portion of your hops directly into your fermenting beer (aka already in the fermenter) rather than getting boiled in the wort. 

If you've ever made pasta, you should have everything you need to start brewing. Except for what's in the kit, you'll just need: 2 or 3 stockpots(6 - 8 quarts are ideal)a large strainer, and a funnel. Check out our How to Brew Video for a better look at what you'll be using.After you have finished brewing your beer, you will need ten 12oz non-twist off bottles. A bottle capper and caps

Check out our How to Bottle Video to get a clearer understanding of how this works.

Bright light, extreme heat, and oxygen can be enemies to beer making ingredients, but thankfully we pack our ingredient mixes really well. As long as your mix is not kept in extreme conditions (ie: hot car or cold freezer), your beer mix will be good for up to a year after you received it. 

While all our grain is packed tightly, our hops are vacuum sealed and should be good for quite a while, the yeast does have an expiration date. 

Check the date on your packet. If it’s expired, you may need a new packet of yeast. You can find one here. 

While your beer boils, water evaporates. You want to keep it at a low, rolling boil. If your boil is very vigorous, extra water will evaporate from your beer. This means that when you fill your fermenter, the liquid won't go all the way up to the One Gallon mark. 

To fix this, just add cold tap water to the fermenter until you're up to the One Gallon mark. Then proceed as normal. 

A lot goes on while beer is fermenting. 

Your beer is becoming alcohol before your very eyes. It will change over time, and it might not even look like beer for a few days. So don't worry if your beer looks cloudy. Everything will settle to the bottom. Don't worry if your beer looks green for the first few hours. Hops are green, and they will settle to the bottom. 

In the end, don't worry. Beer will be beer, but if you're still not sure, just send us an email, feel free to include pictures, and we'll help you out. 

That crud is just yeast and sediment from your beer. 

It's a sign of an active fermentation, so it's definitely not a bad thing. If it gets in your blowoff tube, clean it out with a sanitizer solution and flush it with warm tap water. It may appear a little cloudy afterwards, but that's fine. 

Switch to the airlock if your beer's activity has slowed down.

Bottle conditioning means you're carbonating your beer in bottles with a little sugar, usually in the form of honey or maple syrup diluted with a little warm water. You'll find bottle conditioning used in traditional breweries around the world, but it's also what you do at home. 

Over-carbonation can happen for a few reasons. The first possible reason is that your beer was bottled before it finished fermenting. See the question on knowing when to bottle to avoid this problem. 

Another possible reason is that too much sugar was added when bottling your beer. This can happen if you boil off too much liquid when brewing but still add the full amount of sugar for one gallon. See the question regarding what to do if your fermenter isn't filled up all the way to prevent this from happening. 

If your beer is over-carbonated, move all your bottles into the fridge. Colder temperatures will help stop additional carbonation while helping the beer absorb some of its CO2. 

Once you're finished brewing, keep your beer in a dark place and try your best to forget about it while it is fermenting (the occasional peek is fine). 

After two weeks, check on your beer. Look at the surface of your beer for any sign of bubbles. Even the tiniest bubbles can mean your beer is still fermenting, so if you notice any, just come back in a few days. 

It's better to wait an extra week than it is to bottle too early. Bottling too early can contribute to over carbonated beer.

Once your wort becomes beer, you want to avoid getting oxygen into it, which can give you some off-tasting flavors. Siphoning lets you move your beer as gently as possible, avoiding splashing, so your hard-earned beer keeps all of it's delicious flavor.

Watch our co-founders Erica and Stephen walk you through the steps.

Growlers are great for bringing home beer from a brewery, but we typically advise pretty strongly against using them for bottling. Most growlers have thin glass and were not made to withstand the pressures of bottle conditioning. Plus, the lids on screw-top growlers often leak CO2 which may lead to a flat or off-tasting beer. When bottling, you should consider using non-twist-off glass beer bottles with a bottle capper or a keg. Additionally, recycling previously used swing-top beer bottles that have previously held a carbonated beverage will also work.

The thin layer of sediment at the bottom of your bottles is completely normal. 

When you added the bottling sugar upon bottling your beer, that was to wake up the remaining yeast to carbonate your beer naturally in the bottle. This is known as bottle conditioning (if you are in a beer store and look at the bottom of most Belgian style beers, you will see the same thing) and the thin dusting of sediment is just the remaining yeast. 

Make sure to pour your beer into a glass when you are ready to enjoy, leaving the yeast behind.

Your beer will last just as long as any beer you would buy in stores.  

We recommend drinking hoppier beers, such as IPAs as soon as they’re done to enjoy their fresh hop flavor.  Darker and stronger beers such as our Chocolate Maple Porter and Bourbon Dubbel will age nicely for months.  

There are a few reasons your beer could be under-carbonated. 

1. Make sure you are carbonating at room temperature. You want to make sure that once you have bottled your beer, they stay out of the fridge while conditioning. Cold temperatures cause the yeast to go dormant - causing your finished bottles not to carbonate.

2. Your beer could just need a little more time. It can sometimes take a bit longer than two weeks for you beer to carbonate.

3. Your beer may not have fermented fully. If, before you bottled, you noticed a fair amount of sediment (gunk) around the top of your jug (above the beer line), then your beer likely fermented properly and your yeast should have been active enough to carbonate your beers. If you never saw any activity, your yeast may not have had the right conditions to ferment and carbonate your beer.

4. Sugar. the amount of sugar varies by recipe. You should confirm that you added the right amount of sugar. That can be honey or maple syrup.

5. Bottle Seal. There are two great options. The first is to use regular 12oz crown cap bottles (like these) along with a bottle capper. The second is to use swing-top bottles with a rubber gasket. The key is to make sure whatever you're using to bottle is rated to hold carbonated beverages. Jars, some decorative bottles, and growlers shouldn't be used for bottling because they either can't hold the necessary pressure, and/or they can't hold the proper seal needed for carbonation.

Sure! 

We made our Beer Making Kit with a high quality glass fermenter because glass doesn't harbor any bacteria that may otherwise be bad for your beer. 

Just clean your equipment with sanitizer and figure out what you'd like to brew next. 

All you need is another Beer Making Mix and a new packet of No-Rinse Sanitizer. 

We take quality very seriously, so if the order you received was broken or missing something, we want to know about it. 

Please email us detailing what is wrong, where it came from, and what your order number is (if you know it). We're glued to our inbox, so we'll get back to you as soon as we can with a solution.

We don't have a store, but a lot of places across the country carry our products. We choose the retailers we work with very carefully because each one is, in some way, our store. We started out of the Brooklyn Flea, a great artisan market in Brooklyn. And in normal years, you can find us at the Union Square Holiday Market in Manhattan every Thanksgiving through Christmas. 

We don't always have the same mixes on our site throughout the year. The beers we make are seasonally inspired, so we change the mixes we offer with the seasons. Our retailers sometimes carry different mixes that you won't find on our site, so you may want to give your local retailer a call or visit. Otherwise, Brooklyn Brew Shop's Beer Making Book features 52 seasonally inspired recipes so you'll be able to brew up that Gingerbread Ale in Summer or that amazing batch of Apple Crisp Ale you’ve been dreaming of. Make some Beer: Small-Batch Recipes from Brooklyn to Bamburg features beer recipes, food recipes and tips on planning your next beer trip.

To set up a wholesale account, please visit the page.

You can also email info@brooklynbrewshop and let us know how best to reach you.

Absolutely! We ship all over the country. Simply enter your shipping details during checkout, and you'll receive a shipping quote. You can even find our Beer Making Kits in stores across Canada, Europe, Africa, & Asia. Feel free to email us at info@brooklynbrewshop.com, and we can help you find a retailer near you. We're always open to suggestions for great international stockists so if you have any, please send them our way!