Home is where the Brew is

Why did I want to homebrew? Well the price for a start. My walk to work used to take me past the Edina Home Brew shop, and I was always a little in awe of the prices they were advertising for a host of DIY beers. Prices like 30p a pint are quoted, and if you stick to the kits then that seems to be accurate, once you’ve discounted the start-up costs of barrel, keg, bottles, etc.

Edina Home Brew provided both equipment and support throughout the process. The company shop, set up by David Martin in 1983, is well known in the Scottish brewing community, and forms part of a friendly network of beer makers who do things like meet up once a month to exchange ales, lagers and wines and compare notes while eating cheese. Martin's daughter Shirley Easson came round to my flat to help me set up, and talked me through the processes and pitfalls as I supervised my boyfriend doing all the actual work.

For the basic starter homebrew, it’s surprisingly straightforward if you just follow the supplied instructions. The kit includes a barrel for first stage fermentation, a keg to mature the fermented beer in, a hydrometer,  a bubbler airlock that allows carbon dioxide to escape during fermentation, a very long spoon for sterilised stirring and a pipe for siphoning between barrel and keg. Sterilisation powder is also key, as sterilising every item of equipment before use helps avoid the vast majority of disasters in the brewing process.

Stage one involved around an hour of preparation, followed by a week of a barrel sitting and bubbling in the corner of my kitchen. Stage two required checking that fermentation was complete, transferring it into a keg with a pile of sugar (makes the bubbles and the booze apparently) and then leaving it to sit for a further 4-6 weeks.

Which doesn’t make for the most scintillating narrative. To find out more about beers and brewing, and to contrast an experienced brew with my own first attempt, I met up with two of the guys from popular beer blog Beercast, Richard Taylor and Paul Marshall.

So can they cast any more light on the rise of the homebrew? According to Richard; “Homebrewing started in the 70s and now it’s coming back in a big way, primarily because beer’s so expensive now. The duty’s just risen again.” Paul interjects, “That’s not the only reason though. Homebrewers want to make beers they really, really like. It’s not just about cheapness. It’s about brewing a beer that you want to drink.”

Says Richard, “There are two types of people who want to homebrew. People who want to learn about brewing, and work through all the styles, and then people who want to make crazy beer with chilli or lots of other stuff in it – experimental homebrewers. They probably get more misses than hits, but then when they get something right it tastes really good.”

Paul has been brewing for a year and a half, and fits into the first category. He started off with the brewing kits, then moved onto the more complicated (and pricey) process of experimenting with hops and mash and different types of yeast, all in the quest for the perfect beer. “I like the creativity that’s involved in it. I scaled it down a bit too, so I’ll take a recipe and reduce it down to five or ten litres instead of 40 pints and bottle everything.” He has had a bash at the crazy style of brewing though: “I did one Christmas brew that had allspice, ginger, cloves… We had it at Christmas last year and it tasted of medicine. It was horrible. I tried it again recently and it tasted alright actually. Just to prove that maturing of beer can really change it.”

What’s the next step after he’s perfected the process? “I’m trying to spend this year developing recipes and working out what’s involved in setting up a brewery. Understanding the full process, and working out if I can afford to do it.”

Perhaps setting up a brewery isn’t every homebrewer’s end goal, but it is certainly one possibility judging by the current climate. Says Richard, “In the 70s in America when homebrewing started, the guys who did it in their kitchens then, now own the big craft breweries. Guys at Sierra Nevada, Rogue, Odell... And now over here in the past 5 or 10 years, the guys who’re doing that now are starting to get their own small breweries together.”

And what happened with my own beer? Well, no plans to set up a brewery as yet. After four weeks it tasted good, but was somewhat flat due to an as yet undefined error at some stage in the process. The Brewstore folks were kind enough to come round with a Cornelius keg – think giant soda stream – and reinvigorate it, leaving me with 40 pints of pilsner for a fairly minimal effort. I’ll be trying homebrewing again.