Home brew stores in Chicago

All -

Looking to do some home brewing. Tried searching for any past topics and did not come up with much (although I have tried searching for things directly and found nothing when there were whole stashes of posts).

Any rate, any of the home brewers know of a good shop in Chicago?

Did a google search and this place looks to be nice (Mt. Proscpect area).

Was thinking about starting with a kit. Thoughts?

Brew & Grow
1824 N. Besly Ct.
Chicago, IL 60622
773-395-1500

seems to be the favorite on the north side. Despite the rumors of cops occasionally watching to see who walks out with a big hydroponic grow light setup. (I've never seen any such thing.) But the selection of beermaking stuff is first rate.

Me, I wouldn't get a kit, they're not selling you anything you can't pick out for yourself from a recipe, and I don't see any reason why you shouldn't skip right past dry yeasts and go to wet yeast cultures, which I think make a much better beer (others may disagree). Get your copy of Papazian, pick a recipe, and have at it-- like making bread or soup, greatness may be a long road but pretty good-fresh-and-tasty is not hard to reach on your first try.

http://www.lthforum.com/bb/viewtopic.php?p=12085#12085

Cathy2 wrote:Hi,

Nowhere near Evanston, yet still a memorable stop on the Western-athon: the husband's brew and winemaking supply store sharing quarters with the wife's pet grooming shop. Those who went obtained a 1980's Chicago celebrity cookbook, which Seth Zurer developed into an amusing play called 'The Mayor's Mouth.' I heard so much about this place, that I tracked it down and visited it on a meandering tour of Chicago last December:

Bev Art Brewer And Winemaker Supply
10033 Southwestern Avenue
Chicago, IL 60643
http://www.bev-art.com/
bevart@ameritec.com
773-233-7579
Fax: 773-233-7579

Beverly Pet-Pride Professionl Grooming
10035 South Western Avenue
Chicago, IL 60643
773-233-5037

I'll basically agree with Mike about Brew & Grow, but I've been getting all my supplies at slightly better prices from Leeners in Ohio. (Many other online sites, but I've had very good results there.)

Also, dry yeasts have improved over the past few years, and while liquid yeasts are better overall, they're a little fussier to deal with (refrigerated storage, and many labeled pitchable should really be labeled "marginally pitchable"). If you're a first timer and don't want to deal with making a starter, you can brew a perfectly drinkable beer with a good quality dry yeast.

When you say starting with a kit, are you referring to a kit of malt extract, yeast, and maybe some hops? If so, I agree with Mike that you can do better picking out ingredients on your own.

But if by "kit" you mean a big box that contains fermenters, tubing, airlock, bottle capper, basic book, etc. - that's a great way to get started. You can get an idea of what's in a basic kit at Leeners.

Good luck and let us know how your batch works out.

Wow, thanks for all the great info guys (and gals).

I was referring to the kit with all the equipment not so much the ingredients.

However, now that you all have brought it up, we will most likely go with one of those kits the first time (want to have a good first experience you know).

Good stuff, I am off to follow some links!

The Brewers Coop in Warrenville is owned by the Two Brothers Brewery guys. It is a long drive, but they have a very good selection of products, and they are incredibly helpful. Truthfully, I haven't been out there for a couple of years because I started buying grain in bulk and growing my own hops (and getting yeast cultures from friends). I would call them before making the trip.

http://www.thebrewerscoop.com
(630) 393-BEER.

jpeac2 wrote:Wow, thanks for all the great info guys (and gals).

I was referring to the kit with all the equipment not so much the ingredients.

However, now that you all have brought it up, we will most likely go with one of those kits the first time (want to have a good first experience you know).

Good stuff, I am off to follow some links!

I remember seeing an equipment kit at Brew and Grow. I don't recall the price, but it had everything you'd need.

There's kits and there's kits.

What we might call the Airline Catalog Kit has cheap or too-small stuff in it that you'll end up replacing anyway. Size is the first problem-- making 2 gallons of beer is silly, it's like making one bowl of homemade soup.

A lot of shops, though, will put together all the stuff you need and sell it to you as a package. (Here's a typical example.) These are oriented to making 5 gallons, which is more normal, and it's quality stuff that will last a good little while.

Then there's beer ingredient kits, which is the cake mix rather than the pans, basically. A lot of people start with the cans of malt syrup, dry yeast in a packet under the lid. I did once or twice, but I quickly moved on to using dry sugars and real grains because, sheesh, you're hardly doing anything when you use the syrup, not even boiling it or adding hops. It's kinda boring to just mix cold goo. I wanted some sense of having used the real grains, start learning how they behaved and worked.

Steeping some grain for flavor along with dry sugars, or doing a partial mash, just isn't that hard, and it's much more satisfying (and the result is definitely better in my book). Likewise going to wet yeasts was a big improvement in my book, which is not to say lots of people don't make perfectly good beer with dry yeasts (which have a lot more variety, and a lot less contamination,* than they did when they were the only available choice 20+ years ago). I'd say wet vs. dry yeast is less of an issue than starting to get some experience with grain, just because you should.

* Don't panic at the word contamination. You're not aiming for absolute sterility, you're aiming for the yeast to be numerous enough to outgrow anything else, and to produce enough alcohol to kill off anything else. The books talk like skunked beer was a one in four times type occurrence, which maybe it was in the late 70s, but yeast cultures are much cleaner now, and I've never produced an off batch (though I've produced a couple of experimental ones that I thought were too lousy to bottle).

Just putting in my two cents on a couple of recommendations from upthread.

I stopped in Bev-Art recently 'cause it's not far from my friend's house and I needed some champagne bottles for a sparkling mead that's needed bottling for a while, and I figured I'd order ahead 'cause it wouldn't be likely that they'd have them in stock (the storefront seems fairly small). However, they had a case in the back and I had everything I needed in short order. I've been in twice and both times had good experiences.

Two Brothers in Warrenville, I haven't really gotten a feel for the homebrew shop, but I did attend a homebrew competition there a few years ago and spoke to one of the brewers and he really seemed nice and enthusiastic, which is perhaps to be expected but it's nice to run into anyway. He tried one of my homebrews and gave me some pointers. It also was a good experience. I haven't been there since I moved up here but I hope to get out there sometime. In addition, though I can't say I've tried a lot of their beers, the Two Brothers Cane and Ebel Rye is fantastic.

Agreeing w/ Mike G wrt kits. The equipment kits that come with a predesigned recipe from a homebrew shop are a good way to get started. The ones that come with prehopped extracts that are basically one-can solutions are the ones to avoid. If you've got the homebrewing bug you won't spend much time on the kits but they are a good way to get started. My first beer was a simple brown ale kit with some grains that were steeped and it made a good beer, unimaginative maybe but a damn sight better than what was on tap at the local tavern.

Good luck and enjoy the hobby!

jpeac2 wrote:Wow, thanks for all the great info guys (and gals).

I was referring to the kit with all the equipment not so much the ingredients.

However, now that you all have brought it up, we will most likely go with one of those kits the first time (want to have a good first experience you know).

Good stuff, I am off to follow some links!

Go to Brew and Grow on a Saturday and tell them what you're looking for. There's a guy there (Gary?) who is usually brewing and is very experienced and helpful. He'll figure out if it makes more sense to buy everything individually or get a kit. He'll probably give you a homebrew or two to taste as well.

Additionally, for hard to find items I've used northern brewer online to get a lot of my items for when I brewed a lot.

If you're up for a road trip, Bell's Brewery in Kalamazoo sells a full line of supplies (not the hardware, but the ingredients). A bonus is that you can go to their barroom for a glass or three of their now unavailable in these parts beer pre or post shopping (or pre and post shopping).

[quote="Mike G"]making 2 gallons of beer is silly, it's like making one bowl of homemade soup.
quote]

This definitely is a common sentiment among homebrewers, but personally I think there is a lot to be said for brewing in smaller batches, other than that it's silly (I'll actually see your 2 gallons and lower you a gallon Mike -- I recently did a 1 gallon batch that turned out well and plan on doing several others in the near future).

As others have mentioned, a standard amount to brew is 5 gallons. That's roughly 50 beers. Which is roughly about 30-40 more than I personally would ever want of a single beer, before they would go bad anyway. And 10-20 beers is a lot more than one bowl of homemade soup.

Again, I think I'm in the (extreme) minority on this in the homebrewing world. But before you get started and buy a 6.5 gallon fermenter, I'd suggest giving some thought to batch size.

5 gallons (or more) may be just what you are looking for, but just to present a differing view: Over the last few years I've been replacing equipment because it was too large, not because it was too small.

In general I agree, there's no hard law saying you have to brew in 5-gallon increments. But a couple of arguments for it:

Even at 5 gallons you have to be pretty careful with measuring your ingredients, calculating IBUs, etc. I'd think that brewing in a small batch size like 1 gallon would make slight mistakes in measuring or variations in AA% of hops throw the flavor of a beer way off quite a bit more than it would for larger batch sizes. Much of the homebrewing world seems to be geared toward the 5-gallon batch size, making it more convenient to brew in those quantities (due to size of equipment, pre-packaged ingredients, etc.). Also, bottle-conditioned beers can sit on a shelf longer than non-bottle-conditioned beers, so all 50 of them can be drunk and enjoyed (eventually), if not by you then by friends.

Sometimes I'll put a couple beers of a good batch somewhere where I won't find them for a couple of years, and then when I do find them it's like a little gift I left for myself.

JamPhil wrote:more than I personally would ever want of a single beer, before they would go bad anyway.

What is "going bad" in your mind? Some of my brews are 10+ years old, and they've changed, softened, mellowed, but I don't think they've gone bad. If anything, some have gotten better. But your experience may be different - how have you had beers go bad?

After at most say six of a beer over the course of maybe a month or two, I tend to want to move on. Variety of smaller amounts is my personal preference, sort of an alcoholic tasting menu (I also drink a lot of wine and mixed drinks, so beer is a smaller overall amount of my alcohol consumption budget than perhaps it is for many homebrewers).

It will usually be maybe another 6 months to a year before I want to go back to the beer. At say 48 beers (roughly a 5 gallon batch), it's several years to go through them all. With some beers I've found the flavors get duller, more boring as soon as 6 months out. Depends on the beer, but in lower alcohol, more subtle styles, maybe a year at most before they start to fade in a bad way ("going bad" was the wrong phrase probably -- they aren't tasting skunked or undrinkable, just "less" in a way that makes me not excited about drinking more). Higher alcohol, more intensively flavored beers can actually benefit from sitting for a while, even years. But the way I drink beer, even just making 1-2 gallons leaves a handful to put down for a while.

Again, I was just throwing out a different opinion, one which I recognize is a minority in the homebrew world.

Personally, I haven't found the measurement issues to be a big deal with smaller batches. At least so far. I've only done one 1 gallon, before that I was doing 2.5 gallons.

I'll just make a couple of points to add to what others have said. First, smaller batches are more challenging for several reasons: as mentioned before, measurement must be much more precise; moreover, it's harder to brew true-to-type in smaller batches, because of a whole bunch of factors, of which, two: temperatures change faster in smaller batches, and surface to volume ratios influence such delicate things as yeast behavior and chemical dynamics.

Secondly, be careful not to get addicted to the brewing habit. I started out with beer, two years later moved to wine, and within 5 years owned 14 acres of grapevines, and an estate winery making 10,000 gallons of wine and cidre a year. In other words: GO BACK! IT'S A TRAP!!

Geo

Where can I get your wines and ciders?

That was long ago and far away: my business partner and I sold the place in '85, after we started fussing at one another. We were called Midi Vineyards, in Lone Jack MO, Missouri Bonded Winery No. 14. I've got about 3 bottles left, in the cellar, that's all.

We made the cidre for Stephenson's Apple Farm, a famous old K.C. family restaurant, which closed its doors a few years ago.

Leon Adams, in his Wines of America (2nd & 3rd eds, I think) discusses visiting my place, and drinking the wines.

Wish I could invite you out for a visit! But the old place has been converted into a luxury home site, called, of course, "The Vineyards", following the old rule that you name the housing development after the feature that you had to destroy in order to build it.

Geo

Geo wrote:the old place has been converted into a luxury home site, called, of course, "The Vineyards", following the old rule that you name the housing development after the feature that you had to destroy in order to build it.

I always wondered why the new condos next door were named "Cracke House Pointe".

I always wondered why the new condos next door were named "Cracke House Pointe".

Ah, d4v3, one of the penalties of gentrification, I should say. : ^ )


Geo

JamPhil wrote:Again, I think I'm in the (extreme) minority on this in the homebrewing world. But before you get started and buy a 6.5 gallon fermenter, I'd suggest giving some thought to batch size.

Five gallon batches are just such convenient sizes, most recipes are geared towards that and, as has been stated, recipes are a little more forgiving of errors at this level. It's simply a very easy volume to work with and for beginners I wouldn't really recommend anything smaller. Besides, what if you brew something REALLY good, and you only have 10 to 20 bottles to show for it? I'd be extremely sad.

For me, a 5 gallon batch lasts long enough to get me through until I bottle the next batch (in other words, about four to five weeks).

As for homebrew supply stores, Bev-Art is my go-to. They got me started in my habit, and they've been nothing but helpful. When I began, they got me a kit together and drew up a customized recipe for my first brew, based on what I like (IPAs). Cost about $130 for all the start-up gear, which included both a 6.5 gallon glass carboy for secondary fermentation in addition to the plastic pail primary, and all the ingredients for the first brew (including liquid yeast, malt extract syrup, dry malt extract, steeping grains, pellet hops, etc...), and all the other random doodads. Bev-Art is fantastic. Plus you can purchase homemade mead while you're there.