diff --git a/requirements.txt b/requirements.txt
index 362d05013..f92603d3d 100644
--- a/requirements.txt
+++ b/requirements.txt
@@ -8,4 +8,3 @@ six>=1.5.2
 PyDispatcher>=2.0.5
 service_identity
 parsel>=1.1
-brotlipy==0.6
diff --git a/scrapy/downloadermiddlewares/httpcompression.py b/scrapy/downloadermiddlewares/httpcompression.py
index 9202fd8da..04c9e355d 100644
--- a/scrapy/downloadermiddlewares/httpcompression.py
+++ b/scrapy/downloadermiddlewares/httpcompression.py
@@ -1,6 +1,5 @@
 import zlib
 
-import brotli
 
 from scrapy.utils.gz import gunzip, is_gzipped
 from scrapy.http import Response, TextResponse
@@ -8,10 +7,18 @@ from scrapy.responsetypes import responsetypes
 from scrapy.exceptions import NotConfigured
 
 
+ACCEPTED_ENCODINGS = [b'gzip', b'deflate']
+
+try:
+    import brotli
+    ACCEPTED_ENCODINGS.append(b'br')
+except ImportError:
+    pass
+
+
 class HttpCompressionMiddleware(object):
     """This middleware allows compressed (gzip, deflate) traffic to be
     sent/received from web sites"""
-
     @classmethod
     def from_crawler(cls, crawler):
         if not crawler.settings.getbool('COMPRESSION_ENABLED'):
@@ -19,7 +26,8 @@ class HttpCompressionMiddleware(object):
         return cls()
 
     def process_request(self, request, spider):
-        request.headers.setdefault('Accept-Encoding', 'gzip,deflate,br')
+        request.headers.setdefault('Accept-Encoding',
+                                   ",".join(ACCEPTED_ENCODINGS))
 
     def process_response(self, request, response, spider):
 
@@ -57,7 +65,6 @@ class HttpCompressionMiddleware(object):
                 # http://www.port80software.com/200ok/archive/2005/10/31/868.aspx
                 # http://www.gzip.org/zlib/zlib_faq.html#faq38
                 body = zlib.decompress(body, -15)
-        if encoding == b"br":
+        if encoding == b'br' and b'br' in ACCEPTED_ENCODINGS:
             body = brotli.decompress(body)
         return body
-
diff --git a/tests/test_downloadermiddleware_httpcompression.py b/tests/test_downloadermiddleware_httpcompression.py
index c47de54ed..b47b267e2 100644
--- a/tests/test_downloadermiddleware_httpcompression.py
+++ b/tests/test_downloadermiddleware_httpcompression.py
@@ -1,6 +1,6 @@
 from io import BytesIO
 from unittest import TestCase
-from os.path import join, abspath, dirname
+from os.path import join
 from gzip import GzipFile
 
 from scrapy.spiders import Spider
@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@ FORMAT = {
         'br': ('html-br.bin', 'br')
         }
 
+
 class HttpCompressionTest(TestCase):
 
     def setUp(self):