At least in the case of wine.. (I assume beer as well) When clicking the clickable-build object, my cursor turns to the wine barrel and gives no warning message(as I have all the proper ingredients if I do not it does give me a warning message.)
When I drag my mouse over a barrel (I am practically standing on top of) It does nothing.
Not a bug. Barrels need water added to them before they can brew. This is now noted in the description for brewing recipes [0.9.18].