Corrado’s Wine and Beer Making

I love this place, every time I have been here everyone is super helpful and knowledgeable. Today Marissa helped me find all the supplies I need for my wine/​sangria making. She awesome! Great customer service and very helpful.

Went in to purchase wine bottles for favors and clearly the staff was having more fun talking to each other than greeting us or asking if we needed help as we wandered around looking for the items. Best prices on the bottles. Did better on the price of the corks at another place!

Stopped here today since I was in the neighborhood and was curious about the place. I’ve never done business with them online since their website is such a trainwreck, but it looked like a good place, so I figured why not?
For the record, I’m a beer brewer, not wine, so as always, your mileage may vary.
The good:
— Large, nice, clean space. Good presentation. They obviously care about what they’re doing and selling.
— For beer brewers, a pretty good selection. Points off because they won’t mill grains for you; I don’t get that. But they have a wide range of grains, so if you’re in a bind, there’s a good chance you’ll find it here.
— Most of the ingredients seemed fresh, which, as I’m sure you’re aware if you’re reading this, is pivotal.
— They take credits cards. (I’m trying to remain positive and looking for any pros here!)
That’s about it.
The bad:
— The prices here suck. You’re paying ~25% more for the most basic items (i.e. $ 15.99 for Munton’s LME vs $ 12.99 *anywhere* else.)
— Their website is beyond a joke. You couldn’t conceivably ever use it to order items. (Not that I would with the above pricing reference.)
— The staff is clueless. Perhaps it was because I stopped by at 5pm today (Wednesday), but instead of being helped for anything I needed, I was followed around to make sure I wasn’t shoplifting. (I’m a bald, 45-​year old guy; hardly threatening.)
— When I did ask a question, he didn’t know the answer. Useless.
— While their hop selection was pretty respectable, there were empty boxes of Simcoe and Amarillo; the two hops I wanted to buy. I know they’re popular, so I can’t get bitchy about that.
Summary
I wanted to like this place — it’s a nice, open, clean, well-​stocked joint, but just couldn’t because of the lame (paranoid) staff and horrid prices. I will not ever come back here. Even in a brewing emergency, I’d rather drive to Maltose in Connecticut, half an hour further, or down to New Rochelle to Homebrew Emporium.

I’m super confused about the haters posting here. Particularly since their star ratings don’t seem on par with their complaints.
This is by far the best brew shop close to the city, particularly for wine makers. In the fall and spring they import thousands of pounds of grapes for all you home wine makers out there, and press them in shop if you desire, and year round they sell pails of varietal grape juice just waiting for you to add some yeast (and patience) to turn a pail into 30 bottles of wine in your closet for around $ 50. The shop is HUGE, and while focused on wine, with everything you could ever want to make it at home, the beer making section is also ample, with a large selection of yeasts and hops in coolers (the true test of a serious beer brew shop — whether they climate control these key ingredients!). Being a home brewer of both, I can attest to Corrado’s stock of both kinds of supplies. There’s also the fixings for the home cheese maker here (fresh mozzarella, anyone?). Old school Italian all around.
While I admit the floor staff can be kind of indifferent, and my first visit was bewildering given their indifference, my inexperience w winemaking at the time and the crazy amount of options in this store, I eventually figured it out. The prices are great on most things (they generally beat or are equal to internet prices, but without the shipping!) and the selection is out of this world. Well worth the trip.

All the beer and wine supplies that you need

I’m not sure why there’s all the negative reviews. They have a decent selection of most stuff, and the pricing is decent. They have all sizes of glass and plastic carboys. They have all sizes of stoppers and airlocks. They have plastic bottles, 12oz bottles, 22oz bottles, swingtops, etc. On all of these items, they’ve actually been $ 1 LESS than online prices. Quite surprising. For wine bottles, I saw about 3 – 4 different colors and varieties at least. Then of course, a huge variety of corks and caps. Two varieties of cappers, and tubing, auto-​siphons, etc. Then a bucket or two and some spigot selections. Pretty much comparable to the big online stores.
They lack slightly in malt extracts. There’s about half a row (4 shelves, 6 feet width), just 5 – 6 varieties in a few brands. I didn’t see anything hopped though, just unhopped. Just basic pilsner, golden, dark, wheat… the basics. Not much else. The other side of that aisle is dry malt extract, pretty lacking, just a few varieties. Light, very light, dark, then the wheat/​amber/​etc varieties. There’s like 5 – 6 sugar types on the bottom, and candy sugar syrup up top, and about 10 extract flavors.
There next row has packaged kits on one side. So I guess that makes…20 varieties maybe? The other side is full grain packs. Probably not the variety of an online store, but decent. The basics, then a chocolate malt or two.
The yeast and hops selection is pretty decent. Mainly vials of white labs, and a dozen dry packet yeasts. There’s probably 50 – 75 varieties, though the white labs are a bit costly. I’m guessing the other side of the fridge has about 40 – 50 hop varieties. The wine yeast cooler looks to have about ¼ the amount, I haven’t ventured in there yet. There’s about a dozen dry ingredients out of the fridge (orange peel, elderberries, etc)
So, you’re pretty set for basic hardware here. The ingredients are good enough for entry to mid-​level homebrews. The store seems to lack in wine/​fruit kits (They said they were on order for next week), and maybe advanced grain/​mash I haven’t gotten into yet. Half the store has expensive professional and factory-​ish equipment, which I have to wonder who cares about.
The lady there seems to know the inventory. Haven’t talked to her much. The guy that works there (wears a hat with ear muffs all the time) seems to know his stuff.

In the interests of full disclosure I do brew my own beer, with that being said, let’s roll…
This place is not in any way shape or form a home brewing store if you’re interested in brewing beer. This place is however great if you run out of sanitizer, caps, bottles, or need an emergency relief of DME. If you need yeast, good luck!
The person at the checkout didn’t really seem to know what she was doing, she just scans and puts things in a bag. That’s about the limited experience I got going here.

Pricey for equipment but they are the only gig in town! Ike is knowledgable and very helpful for all brewing questions

This place sucks. They have prepackaged grains and a couple of strains of yeast in a fridge and a few hops, but they are a home winemaking shop, plain and simple. The help is not interested in actually helping. The variety of homebrewing ingredients and equipment is just sad. And the prices… well… just laughable. They attempt to charge about 33% more than what you’ll pay for just about anything on a reputable online homebrew supply shop like northern brewer, austin homebrew or midwest supplies. I couldn’t even find a hydrometer that measured in specific gravity here. Inexcusable.
If they take the word «beer» out of their shop name I’ll delete my review. Till then, I pity the homebrewing newcomer that stumbles into this pathetic excuse for a homebrew shop.
When will north jersey get the homebrew shop it needs and deserves?

They have good assortment of equipment available, and lots of space, which is really nice.
Unfortunately the people working at this fine establishment are completely misleading, lack knowledge, specifically when it comes to beginners, and tend to mislead you into buying what you don’t need, at an elevated above average cost. I went here on a whim with a friend, and decided to pick up a kit. Unfortunately for me, I was duped into buying something that feels incomplete.
The description sounded great, but the kit was not entirely complete and it feels as though I was robbed blind. On top of that, I paid $ 30 more for a piece that I could have easily purchased online, for significantly less, INCLUDING shipping. If it weren’t a hike to get to, I’d return everything and order a kit online for less money and a better experience.
Lots of extract shelves were empty, things were all out of order and it felt as though the lights were on, but nobody was home.
Overall I was entirely overwhelmed by the scale of the operation, and entirely underwhelmed by everything else. Don’t go here unless you need something nearby in a crunch.

Note for all-​grain homebrewers: while Corrados sells base malts for all grain brewing, they will not mill them for you. You’ll have to own a mill yourself, or choose somewhere else to shop. Personally, I buy most of my stuff at the Gaslight in South Orange, and just use Corrados for last-​minute miscellaneous items.

Note: we’re beer makers, so the review will be from that perspective.
This place is definitely geared more towards winemakers, but that doesn’t mean it leaves beer makers out in the cold. This is a good Beer supply store. Their inventory of kits is a little spotty — but they usually have some, even if they don’t have the one you want. In terms of base ingredients, they have a nice selection of yeasts and Malt. They also have a ton of equipment, bottles (ALL styles!), cappers, and bunch of other nice little neat things (we got a nice, inexpensive milk frothing container here for our espresso machine!). They’ve also got some of the larger homebrew equipment like kegging equipment and larger pots and fermenting equipment that you may want to look at IRL before you buy.
The markup is a little high, but not outrageously so — you can definitely get stuff cheaper online, however, if you want it *now*, or simply want to browse and buy, this is a great place. The staff is knowledgeable, but their knowledge is usually leaning more towards the wine-​making side of things. What they don’t know, however, you can supplement with their nice array of homebrew books available for sale.
We come from Rockland County, NY to go here — it’s the best Beer Supply store we’ve found and have tried several in the lower Hudson Valley and Westchester.