Feature
DIY BREWING
Queens’ Brewstoria invites beer-enthusiasts
to learn what it’s like to be a homebrewer
BY ANGÉLICA ACEVEDO
Brewstoria members have a saying they like
to tell each other, according to member
Robert Shalhoub: “You can give a man a
beer and he can waste an hour but you
can teach a man to brew and he can waste a lifetime.”
But after Shalhoub walked us through what home-brewing
is like, it hardly seems like a waste.
The meticulous, five-hour process begins with grill-ing
barley to “open up” the grain and ends with adding
hops — green, cone-shaped flowers — to seven or so
gallons of sweet liquor at the very end to add some bit-terness
and make it the balanced drink we know as beer.
“We make it in our own kitchens, basements and
backyards,” Shalhoub said.
Brewstoria — the only homebrew club in Queens
— has been around for 10 years.
The club has about 50 members and is meant to
bring beer-enthusiasts together to learn useful tech-niques
38 NOVEMBER 2019 I LIC COURIER I www.qns.com
for crafting their own beers, hear from each
other and other professional brewers about different
aspects of the industry and, perhaps more importantly,
taste each other’s beer.
“We all have a good time and have lots of laughs,”
said Shalhoub, who has been a member of Brewstoria
for five years.
The club got a chance to pour their own assortment
of beers at the Queens Beer Festival in Long Island
City, which proved to be a great success. So much so,
that the 25 gallons of homebrews that they brought
for the fest — an amount that was meant to last from
Saturday to Sunday — ran out way before then.
“With an hour left on Saturday we were out of beer,”
he said. “People were so excited because all the other
breweries were offering two beers and most of them
were an IPA or a light beer, but we ran the gamut — we
had a stout, we had an oatmeal brown, we had a Gose.”
The club is looking forward for next year’s Beer
Fest, which Shalhoub said they’ll be more prepared
Brewstoria
for. They’re also planning on hosting their second
Brewstoria Queens competition next year, since their
first one two years ago had about 150 entries from
all over the country.
Until then, Brewstoria will be meeting on the first
Wednesday of every month at the Rockaway Brewery
in Long Island City.
Shalhoub, a resident of Whitestone, said that the
local breweries have always supported their club.
One former member, Chris Cuzme, even went on to
open his own brewery called Fifth Hammer Brew-ing
Company.
“The breweries in Queens are very good to us,”
Shalhoub said. “They know us. They know we’re a
homebrew club and they know that we’re good cus-tomers,
obviously, because we love beer.”
The 51-year-old believes that Long Island City is
the place to be when it comes to beer.
“I don’t think you can go wrong in Long Island City,”
he said. “We’re very spoiled with quality local breweries.”
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