A First: Surly Brewing Selling DIY, "Open Source" Beer

John Biggs

Biggs is the East Coast Editor of TechCrunch. Biggs has written for the New York Times, InSync, USA Weekend, Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Money and a number of other outlets on technology and wristwatches. He is the former editor-in-chief of Gizmodo.com and lives in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. You can Tweet him here and G+ him here. Email him directly at... → Learn More

Monday, March 7th, 2011


Surly Brewing Company in the Twin Cities is a small, popular brewhaus with some pretty exciting beers. Rather than distribute nationally, however, they’ve teamed up with NorthernBrewer to offer something fairly unique: a DIY kit featuring some of their more popular brews.

Part of NB’s pro-series kits, the Surly kits are for advanced brewers and include everything you need to make a few of Surly’s signature beers. It’s a unique take on the old distribution problem and, without Surly’s specific instructions and ingredients you won’t be able to pirate the beer and make your own (not that brewers would ever be that douche-y.)

The kits run about $40 and are available now.

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