Over the last few months, I have written about a new home brew shop based in Brooklyn New York called the Brooklyn Brew Shop.  I thought it was a pretty interesting concept, while most home brew shops are selling bigger and more expensive equipment, Brooklyn Brew Shop keeps it simple.  They only sell all-grain kits and they specialize in kits that you can brew in a small New York apartment.    They sell kits for making 1 gallon batches as well as 5 gallon batches if you prefer to make something more typical.  As I blogged about a few weeks back, I bought a Black and Tan kit, that comes with two brewing kits plus ingredients to make a dry stout and an ESB.

I received my kits a few weeks back and have already brewed my first beer.  I brewed the dry stout and it was the first all-grain beer I ever brewed.  I have wanted to try all-grain brewing for awhile now but I was intimidated.  I have read a lot but it was information overload and it made it seem a lot more complicated than it actually is.   The kit made it easy to brew and because it was only one gallon of beer, I didn’t need any more equipment.  Instead of adding a lauter tun to my pool of equipment, I simply needed a standard kitchen strainer and a 2nd brew pot which I already had.  You can read more about this at my first all-grain homebrew experience.

The point I am trying to make is that there are more advantages to the one gallon kit than just the space, it allowed me to brew an all-grain batch without any additional equipment and with very easy to follow directions.   I also like the idea of being able to brew small batches when I want to experiment with something new.  If I don’t want to spend the money on a normal grain bill for something I am not sure I am going to like, I can make a small test batch.  For a pretty reasonable fee, I received enough equipment to make two 1 gallon batches at at a time and enough ingredients to make my first batch.  I am very happy with my purchase.

I also want to mention that their customer service is fantastic.  My experience with them wasn’t completely without hickups.  When I received the kit, the thermometer was broken and it was missing one of the two rubber stoppers.  I emailed them twice and got no reply.  I was almost ready to give up before I found a contact form on their web site.  I used that and got a reply with an hour.  Apparently, the email I was using was no longer their main email address and it wasn’t forwarding on correctly so they didn’t get my two replies.  Within 2 days I received a package from them that not only had a replacement thermometer and the missing rubber stopper but it also had a hand written thank you note along with ingredients to make another batch of beer.  They went above and beyond to make sure my experience was a good one and they certainly earned a repeat customer out of me.

If you haven’t checked them out yet, I recommend you do so, you can find them at Brooklyn Brew Shop

I placed my order with them over the weekend and received my kits two days later.  They were running a Black and Tan Special.  You got two full home brew kits and ingredients to make a Dry Stout and an ESB.  The kit was supposed to include a pouring spoon as well but they forgot to include that in my shipment.  I will have to wait a few days for that piece of the kit.

The double kit I purchased includes two 1 gallon fermentors, a racking cane, tubing, sanitizer, rubber stopper, 2 airlocks and the ingredients to make the two beers.  I have never made an all-grain beer.  All of the beer I have made up to this point has been with extract kits.  I am hoping that doing a smaller 1 gallon batch for my first all-grain batch will be easier than jumping in and doing a 5 gallon all-grain batch.  I am going to brew this weekend so we will find out.  I will blog more about it after my brew session this weekend.

If the person you are buying the gift certificate for has a favorite local home brew store, than I would suggest going there first to see if they offer gift certificates.  If they are like me and don’t have a store that is local to them, there are a lot of great online alternatives.  Here are a few popular online stores that are well-stocked and offer gift certificates:

• Northern Brewer Gift Certificates
• Rebel Brewer Gift Certificates
• More Beer Gift Certificates

Please Note: This article is part of our Holiday series highlighting the top 12 gift ideas for beer enthusiasts and homebrewers. Read the original post to get the full list of beer gift ideas.