 <blockquote> <p>consumer reads for a while and then shuts down due to any reason</p> </blockquote> <p>Not sure what exactly are you referring to as the consumer is supposed to run infinitely unless it is stopped explicitly. </p> <p>Now assuming you are using the storm's <a href="https://github.com/nathanmarz/storm-contrib/tree/master/storm-kafka" rel="nofollow">KafkaSpout</a> implementation, there is a config called <code>forceStartOffsetTime</code> which is used <code>to force the spout to rewind to a previous offset</code>. The way to use it as follows </p> <pre><code> spoutConfig.forceStartOffsetTime(-2); </code></pre> <p>As seen in the doc page </p> <blockquote> <p>It will choose the latest offset written around that timestamp to start consuming. You can force the spout to always start from the latest offset by passing in -1, and you can force it to start from the earliest offset by passing in -2.</p> </blockquote> <p>so setting it to -2 will always force it to read from the start what is the configuration you are using, would be great if you could post some code</p>