Brewsy works with almost every juice or sweet drink you can buy or make. The Brewsy bag works best in juices larger in size than 1.5 quarts (or 1.5 liters) and smaller than 1.5 gallons (5.7 liters).

Brewsy will work in juices that contain preservatives, including any juice with the ingredient "potassium metabisulfite" (many white grape juices).

Brewsy will not work well in pure lemon or orange juice.

Yes!

Any container that is food safe for juice or beverages is safe for alcoholic fermentation. All glass is safe to use as well.

Any ingredient is safe to add to Brewsy wines and ciders before, during, and after fermentation. We highly recommend adding delicate flavors at the end of fermentation or even afterwards.

You cannot use no calorie or low calorie sweetener as a substitute for the sugar called for in the recipe, but you can use them in addition to the sugar called for in the recipe. We recommend you add these ingredients after your wine or cider is finished. A little bit goes a long way.

No worries! Add your sugar right away, shake to dissolve, and it'll be smooth sailing from here.

Yes! We must add sugar to feed our yeast, not to sweeten the wine. Yeast are not able to use low calorie or no calorie sweeteners for food.

It's okay, we can assume it will over time. feel free to add your Brewsy bag and move on!

Totally fine. It will un-clump over time.

Not to worry – dump it out, wash out the airlock, and add water to the fill line.

2-3 inches is more than enough for most containers, except for fresh fruit and pineapple juice. In those instances, be sure to leave extra room.

Brewsy will work 99.999% of the time, so we can practically guarantee yours is working, too! The most common issues:

1. Your juice is not 75°F or warmer. If this is not the case, your yeast won't have enough energy! To solve this issue, simply wrap your Brewsy in a warm blanket.
2. It really is working, but the airlock isn't tight on your lid so it's not bubbling -- leading you to think it's not working.
3. You might have accidentally added less (or more) sugar than the sugar calculator calls for.
4. You might have used more than 1.5 gallons of juice at a time.
5. Your juice contains 'potassium metabilsulfite' which means the yeast will be much slower to start.
   

If it has been less than 16 hours since you added your Brewsy bag, you might not notice anything at all.

If it's been more than 16 hours, use your phone flashlight to look for bubbles rising up in your juice. You can also try gently swirling your juice to see if bubbles rise up.

Total darkness is best (hint: wrapping your juice bottle in a blanket/towel works great) but partial darkness is okay, too. You can remove your juice from the darkness as often as you wish.

Brewsy will work best at a temperature of 75 - 78°F. Even if your house or apartment is colder than that, the top of a closet or cabinet could easily be a few degrees warmer than the rest of the room. Wrapping your juice in a towel or blanket is another way to keep it warm in cooler environments.

Short answer: Yes

Long answer: brewing wine and cider can have a huge variety of aromas and scents, from sulphur/eggs to bread to floral tones. There are no known human pathogens that can survive in 12% ABV wine, so please don't worry about any "off scents" coming from your wine or cider.

Ciders especially are known to occasionally release "off scents" of sulphur as they ferment. this is due to natural compounds found in apples. Rest assured knowing that these scents will not carry over into your final booze.

In some juices, a brownish or white foam will form at the top of the fermenting juice. This often goes by the german word krausen, and consists of yeast, nutrients, and juice proteins.

Pineapple and strawberry juices are known especially for their greater-than-average amount of foam/pulp produced during alcoholic fermentation. This is perfectly normal and to be expected!

No worries! this happens all the time, even to experienced winemakers. Simply empty your airlock and gently wash it with warm water, fill again, and replace.

This sometimes occurs when there is not enough headroom (empty space) at the top of your juice container. It may be wise to pour a little bit out to account for this.

It is better to let your wine or cider brew slightly too long than slightly too short. As mentioned, there are no known human pathogens that can survive in 12% ABV wine – the "worst" thing that could happen if you leave your wine out too long (even 24 hours extra) would be that you might have a higher than 12% alcohol content and less sweetness than you planned for (and slightly more bitterness)

The flavor of your juice/wine will rapidly change during and after fermentation. Please don't expect your wine to taste perfect before the end of the 5 day brewing process.

Your wine will rapidly improve with refrigerated aging.

You can adjust the flavor of your wine immediately after it finishes if it's not to your liking, or you can wait a week or so to see how much aging will improve the flavor.

It's okay! you can refrigerate it without the airlock (if that helps), or divide it up into smaller containers and refrigerate those separately.

Some juices have more pectins & proteins in them and will resist going clear more than other juices. If you're able, you can lower your refrigerator temperature, or simply wait longer. Almost every wine or cider will turn completely clear over a few weeks.

It's important to note that your wine/cider is 100% safe and ready to drink after 48 hours of cold-crashing. The only reason we sometimes try to remove cloudiness is for aesthetic reasons or to remove any remaining 'yeasty' taste

Yes! While it may not taste amazing, the sediment is safe to drink and is composed of yeast, nutrients, and juice proteins. Some particularly sensitive stomachs may experience bloating or gas if a very very large amount of sediment is consumed.

This is a common problem in very-carbonated wines & ciders. This most often occurs when the cider or wine has been refrigerated with an airtight lid. Remember, it's best to either refrigerate with an airlock, with the cap loosely placed on top of the juice, or with no cap at all.

You have two possible solutions, and can do both if you so desire:

1. Wait until the sediment is at the bottom again and carefully pour the wine/cider out into a separate container, leaving the sediment behind ("racking"). This is easiest if you can pour carefully as to avoid the "glugging" of a liquid poured too hard.
2. Completely shake up the wine/cider with the lid on until cloudy. Carefully unscrew cap (due to carbonation being released). refrigerate for 24+ hours with the lid completely off

That is perfectly normal! corrections and adjustments are commonplace in winemaking and occur in almost all commercial wines. Your wine will rapidly improve with refrigerated aging.

You can adjust the flavor of your wine immediately after it finishes if it's not to your liking, or you can wait a week or so to see how much aging will improve the flavor.

The flavor of your wine will improve quickest for at least 4 weeks, and will continue to improve for months afterwards – although more slowly. If you've racked your wine 2-3 times to the point that there is no sediment at the bottom of your bottle after two weeks of refrigeration, you may age your wine at room temperature. This may allow for accelerated flavor enhancement due to aging.

Your wine will last for years if racked until there is no sediment remaining!

In fact, it will only to continue to improve with age. Most winemakers report truly dramatic differences in flavor with just 1 - 3 months of aging.

The best place to store your wine is your refrigerator. If wishing to store your wine outside of your refrigerator, make sure that it has sat still for over one week without any sediment build-up on the bottom of the container or bottle. Then, feel free to age it at room temperature someplace dark and somewhat cool (room temperature is fine, 80°F is not ideal). Make sure your bottle is airtight. It may be a good idea to open your bottle to let out any additional carbonation build-up once a week for the first month of room-temperature aging.

Tons of stuff, but most importantly: three Brewsy bags and three airlocks. Each Brewsy bag turns one container of juice (between 1.5 quarts and up to 1.5 gallons) into wine in five days. Each airlock is like a special cap for your juice container. Ours are universal and fit almost every juice container. They’re also infinitely reusable, unlike the Brewsy bags.

Along with the three Brewsy bags and three airlocks, we send you a marvelous winemaking book we wrote called Brewing with Brewsy, some stickers, access to our private Facebook communities – Brewsy's First Pour Club and Club Brewsy – to share your new favorite hobby with others, and also a service that lets you chat back-and-forth with us via text anytime about any issues or questions you’re having!

Yes! You need some juice (or another sweet drink, like fruit punch), and you will need to add granulated white sugar. The reason we need to add sugar to our juice is that wine grapes are twice as sweet as regular juice, so we need to add sugar to account for this.

To make wine or hard cider from any juice with Brewsy, all you need to do is add sugar to your juice, then add a Brewsy bag. After that, you just need to replace the juice container cap with one of the special airlocks we send you. Now you have 12% ABV natural wine or cider!

The Brewsy scientists spent months and months reverse-engineering the factors behind commercial winemaking and scaled them down into a little friendly packet! Besides our super secret blend, Brewsy works no differently than other natural winemaking: yeast eat sugars in juice to produce alcohol, creating carbonation as a by-product. This is the same way all alcohol around the world is made, even beer and liquor! It’s called alcoholic fermentation, and it’s awesome.

Yes! When you add a Brewsy bag to grape juice, it produces 100% real, natural wine. In fact, the ingredients in the Brewsy bag are the exact same ones (and, in most cases, even nicer!) as those used by professional wineries. We just made a few adjustments to make it go really, really, really fast.

Absolutely! In fact, every single recipe we have can be made low-sugar or no-sugar. We let YOU decide how sweet you want your wine for every single recipe.

Note: It might seem strange, but you still need to add a little bit of sugar to your juice for these recipes, even for no-sugar. The yeast in your Brewsy bag eat sugar to make alcohol, and the sugar in your juice just isn’t enough!

Yes! All of the above. We are happy to have created a truly fantastic and good-for-the-world product. We wouldn’t do it any other way.

You can use any juice — or any combination of juices, with two notes:

1. If they contain any ingredient with the word "sulfite" — we're looking at you, potassium metabisulfite (common in many white grape juices) — the fermentation step will take 2-3 days longer, for a total of 7-8 days of 'brew time.' Organic white grape juices and the Whole Foods brand do not contain this ingredient.
2. The juice you use should not be more than 50% citrus juice at the beginning of the fermentation — with the exception of pineapple. You can add citrus juices after your wine is finished, but it’ll create too acidic of an environment for your yeast if you use citrus juices from the start.