Home brewing has a 7000-year long history and had a resurgence after rationing in the Second World War led to a shortage in alcohol. After a brief hiatus, people all over the country are now taking up this rewarding hobby in their thousands and joining the homebrew revolution.
It’s a lot simpler than you think; most of the tools needed are household items: a cooking pot, a large plastic fermenting bucket (it is very important that you use food grade plastic when you ferment the alcohol, you may draw chemicals out of normal plastic which will tarnish the flavour), a long white stirring spoon, water and yeast – which produces the alcohol. For beer, you will need hops and malt extract, and for wine, fruit and sugar.
Then, it is as simple as following the recipe. Once you have the basic ingredients you can experiment. It’s all about trial and error.
I spoke with Jennifer Thomas who has been running a homebrew shop in Cardigan since 1978, selling everything you need to make your own alcohol.
“If you think of it as a process, it’s so simple; if you have all the ingredients, you combine them, you will produce alcohol. All you have to do it be patient; unfortunately, we don’t sell patience in a jar.”
To make a homebrewed beer, it takes around 4 weeks and for wine, it takes around 4-6 weeks to make a fuller bodied wine but with a kit, you can make a bottle in seven days.
People often like home-brewing because, like baking, you produce something that you can share with your friends and enjoy together. Not only is it sociable, but making your own alcohol cuts the cost dramatically. You can pay anything from £3 upwards for a pint in a pub, but with home brewing, after the initial outlay of the buying the reusable materials, the actual ingredients are considerably cheaper cutting the cost of a pint to under £1.
So if you fancy taking up home brewing as a hobby, find your nearest homebrew shop and get brewing – and drinking, of course.
ELOUISE HOBBS