Get Started

Welcome, friend!

Here's how to get started making Brewsy:

Ingredients:

☐ One container of juice (between 1.5 quarts and 1.5 gallons)
☐ 1 brewsy bag
☐ 0.5 - 3 cups of white or cane sugar
☐ 1 airlock + stopper

Note: if your juice contains the ingredient 'potassium metabisulfite', please add 2 days to fermentation time.

Getting your juice ready

1. Start by figuring out exactly how much sugar to add based on the juice you want to use and how sweet you want your finished drink. Use our Sweetness Calculator. 
2. Using the values from the calculator, pour out some of your juice and add sugar. Add cap and shake well. We want all of the sugar to dissolve, but sometimes it won't right away. That's okay – we can leave a little undissolved. ‍ Make sure your juice is at room temperature (not cold!) before the next step.
3. Pour in the entire Brewsy packet, even if you're only using 1.5 quarts of juice at a time. Close the cap and shake well! Then, add your 'hello' sticker to your juice and make sure to write down the date and time.
4. Add the clear airlock and rubber stopper. Don't throw away the cap to the juice bottle.
5. Remove the airlock's hole-punched lid and add water to the 'fill line'. then, snap the lid back on.

Fermentation

1. Your yeast are now waking up! in about 12 hours or less, they'll start eating sugar and producing alcohol & bubbles. Leave the container somewhere dark and warm (75 - 77°F) for 3 days. To keep your juice warm, we recommend wrapping the whole thing (except the airlock) with a towel.
2. For the next 3 days, your juice is fermenting. It can help your yeast to give your juice bottle a swirl whenever you remember to stir up the yeast from the bottom, but it's not necessary. If you did have time to do this, once every few hours would suffice.

Cold crash (2 days)

1. After 3 days, your juice is now wine or cider! Now, we need to get it really cold so the yeast falls out. Remove the airlock and save for another brew. Move the juice container to your fridge. Either leave it uncapped or loosely set the original cap on the wine.
2. Wait 48 hours while the yeast + nutrients from your brewsy bag collect on the bottom of the container.
3. (Optional, but encouraged) Rack your wine. This means pouring your wine or cider into a different container and leaving the sediment behind. Discard the sediment down the sink. Now, you can pour it back into the original container or leave it in the new container.
4. Enjoy! Your wine or hard cider will get better with age. Because there are no preservatives or stabilizers, we recommend storing in the fridge. ‍
   
   Some sediment will continue to build up again, but only once more – so feel free to rack your wine off the sediment again after another 48 hours.

For a more detailed walkthrough, check out our Starter Recipe!