The Flying Barrel

My sister and her husband bought me and my bf and gift card to brew our own beer! So flipping awesome! The whole staff was friendly and so helpful! We were able to brew absolutely any beer we wanted! Day 1 was picking out our recipe, mixing in the hops and malts and yeast and cooking it up. Came back 2 weeks later to bottle our beer and take it home. My bf and I had so much fun, we bought our own beer brewing kit and 2 beer mixes in their shop! Now we can brew beer at the house… yum! A gift card to brew beer will be my new go to for friends and family!

I’m really not a beer connoisseur, and I’m not going to pontificate about craft beers like a basic b_​_​_​_​. Give me a Corona and we’ll call it a day.
But I literally found this place on accident, and I love trying new activities, so I signed up to be part of the «brew your own beer» workshop. It was awesome.
To make two cases of beer is about 120 bucks, but that’s .a flat fee. So whether you go by yourself or bring one or two buddies along to take the class with you, the fee is still 120 bucks if you want to split those two cases amongst yourselves. That’s definitely cool rather than charging per person. I seriously thought it would cost more than that.
The also have a wine making and bottling class, but I’m not sure about the price.
So first you go in and pick out what kind of beer you want out of various catalogues, or you can bring in a recipe you have found and if they have the stuff, they’ll help you make that. The head «instructor» Sean we had was an awesome guy. If you’re talkative and can joke around, he can too and he’s a funny dude and definitely knows his stuff about beer. He let us sample some of the grains before we tried them, and helped us throughout the process of measuring out ingredients and grinding stuff and explaining all of the nuances of how different flavors work with beer depending on all kinds of factors.
The actual brewing part of beer leaves you with a lot of down time (you’re probably only working like one hour out of a two and a half hour class), so there’s plenty of time to chit chat with the workers and other people in your class, and there’s a beer fridge rigged with a few taps of whatever beer they’ve got hooked up to the kegs so you can sip on samples of beer for free while hanging out.
After our beer was done brewing we sealed it up to let it ferment and I’ll be heading back over in couple of weeks to bottle it. It’s during the afternoon on a Saturday but the experience was such a pleasant surprise, that I don’t mind spending my time there on the weekend.
So I’d definitely give this place a ⁵⁄₅ and highly recommend if you’re at all curious about beer brewing.
As an aside, their primary business seems to be selling home brew kits, so if that’s something you’d like to try, then this seems to be the place to go.

My husband and I learned how to make our own wine this weekend! How cool, right?! Especially from a company that brews and sells their own beer, Flying Dog. You can also learn how to brew your own beer too.
We finished step 1 of the wine making process and we go back in 2 weeks to do the second step. They encouraged us to take pictures during the whole tutorial so we will be able to replicate it at home.
Once they educate us on the whole process I feel confident we will be able to do it at home. They have a great selection of grape juice and supplies to get you started.
It’s a bit pricey get all the supplies for home BUT once you get everything you just have to buy the grape juice and then you are looking at about $ 4 a bottle and 1 batch of juice creates about 30 bottles of wine!

It is mystifying to me that with the popularity of home beer brewing and wine making today, we have less brewery/​wine making supply shops in the MD/​VA/​WV tristate area today than we did 20 years ago.
Thankfully I don’t have to care about that anymore since finding the Flying Barrel yesterday. So far all I have done is go there to buy supplies, so I’ll have to update the review later with info about the services that the store offers and the worker’s expertise. As far as supplies go, they carry pretty much everything you can think of for the home alcohol brewer.
They have a wide variety of yeasts, hops, and flavoring agents for beer and wine. They have a large selection of fermenters, carboys, and all the supplies you could want for bottling — wine bottles, beer bottles, growlers, caps, shrink wrap for wine bottle necks. They even have some equipment that you can rent rather than purchase.
Their prices are also very good — on a lot of items that I checked, they were around the same price or even cheaper than Amazon, which is outstanding. It’s great to have a store that has all these products for great prices and without the inconvenience of having to wait for them to be shipped to me… not to mention the fact that if you are new to brewing/​wine making, having an actual person to ask about the dizzying array of options as far as ingredients, techniques, and equipment are concerned is quite valuable. The internet may be a great place to buy some things cheaply, but there is no substitute for an actual person with some expertise (especially when a lot of the info on the internet about how to brew alcohol is just flat out wrong).
If you brew beer or make wine, you owe it to yourself to check out the Flying Barrel. It’s really close to Wegmans in Frederick — so the location is easy to find.

Bob and the staff are always friendly and willing to share advice and even a beer or two. Years ago when I was first re-​entering the world of homebrewing, they got me set up with a simple kit and a few basic recipes. As I’ve grown as a brewer, they have the equipment and ingredients to grow with me. They re-​located a while back and the new store is bigger and better. Even though this is one of the few choices in the area for homebrewing supplies, they provide the guidance and character that make them an asset to the local brewing community.

The Flying Barrel is such a great place for any beer enthusiast that has wanted to try their hand at brewing microbeer, without testing out one of those scary at home kits that leave a fermenting gallon of goo in your closet. You can brew 5, 10, and 15 gallons or however much you want. For $ 75 you get to brew two cases of beer, it includes all ingredients for brewing (you get to pick what type of beer you brew), the bottles, the storage while its waiting to be bottled and the staff being there to help you learn how to brew and bottle your own beer. Its a fun, social thing to do with friends. Be forewarned you MIGHT get addicted to making your own beer.
Oh wait… did i forget that you drink their house brews for free… all you want…