experimenting with beer

Erica Shea and Stephen Valand, started the Brooklyn Brew Shop out of the Brooklyn Flea in the summer of 2009 to get space-strapped New Yorkers brewing. With the idea that making beer (real beer from real ingredients) can be simple, tasty, and most important, fun, the Brooklyn Brew Shop created stylish, easy-to-use Beer Making Kits designed especially for stove-top brewing and ingredient mixes for seasonally inspired beers. In their own words : "Our goal is to get everyone brewing by simplifying the beer making process without dumbing it down."

The whole concept spans the entire brew process, with concise instructional videos that guide the prospective brewers through the whole process, from the actual unpacking of the kit, to filling bottles with the finished beer. Making beer consists of a few steps, none of which are hard, but since you're bound to have some questions, apart from the videos to watch, there is also a Q&A section available on their site, to answer most of your questins. Go here for more.

Do NOT forget, homemade beer tastes great, and it is something that YOU have created. However, 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.

For all available instructional videos, please go here. There is an extensive review of their beer making kit and brew process in three parts here (I), here (II) and here (III).