Because brewing your own drinks is easy and delicious

Ever thought of brewing your own beer or wine? Or maybe you know someone who homebrews? Ever wondered why brewing your own drinks might be better than buying a bottle at the store? Here are 9 reasons why I and thousands of other love homebrewing, and you might too.

Whether you are brewing or want to start brewing, you might find a reason you hadn’t thought of before. Because just like our brews, the reasons behind why we brew are as varied as can be. Just think about the fact that even if you stick with the classics, you are already talking about beer, wine, cider, mead (honey wine), and country wines. And the country wines really can be made out of anything that isn’t grapes. Some use different fruits or flowers, and some even use vegetables, all with wonderfully unique results.

Personally, I brew mainly meads, which one could call country meads if that is a category. But sometimes, I brew an extremely lazy version of apple cider, as well as a country wine now and then. I also started brewing beer from kits and am working towards brewing beer completely from scratch. But like all great things, these things take time to learn.

But if you are just getting started, don’t worry about things being too complicated. Because they really don’t have to be complicated. You can buy a simple wine or beer kit and get started with the most basic of basic recipes. The very first brew I ever made was a plain and simple mead we added water, honey, and yeast to a demijohn (big bottle). Two months later, we had bottled that mead and were able to enjoy the fruits of our labour. Soon we wanted to experiment with different fruits and flowers to create new flavours. And you will find too that as time goes on, you will want to start experimenting too with different ingredients. But that is all in your own time and at your own pace, so don’t worry and just have fun.

Brewing is becoming more and more popular

In the last couple of years, home brewing has become more popular, but the focus has mainly been on beer brewing. More and more people started creating unique beers, and consequently, microbreweries started popping up more and more.

But home brewing is so much more than just brewing your own beer. When we started brewing our own alcoholic drinks, we started with mead. We had always enjoyed it at festivals and wanted to have access to it outside of festivals too. And since most shops don’t stock mead, we were unable to buy it. If you’re wondering what mead is, I’ve explained it all here.

A big advantage of the rising popularity of home brews is that learning to brew your own is more accessible than ever. Where once, you had to know someone or try and decipher a book to learn how to brew your own.

You can now surf the internet and find more than enough information on brewing beer and other alcoholic beverages. There are plenty of subreddits on all the different types of brewing, with everyone posting their own brews.

And even Youtube has more and more Youtubers that talk about homebrewing. My favourite brewing channel by far is CS mead and more since they give plenty of background info and are easy to understand. Another Youtube channel that I really enjoy when it comes to homebrewing is Happy homestead, where they always try out fun new things. And they are just so much fun to follow along with.

Brewing is easy and relatively hands-off

For years I played with the idea of homebrewing, but I always imagined it to be really complicated. That always held me back from actually trying it. Because I figured that if it would be easy, more people would be doing it. Right? But oh boy, was I wrong. Turns out it’s not difficult at all. It is actually surprisingly easy.

We started with a basic plain mead brew, and I recommend starting with either a basic mead or cider. Mainly because cider is just apple juice thrown in a fermenting vessel with some yeast and maybe some additional sugar. And mead is almost just as easy since you just add honey, water, and some yeast to your fermenting vessel. No need to overthink or overcomplicate things just throwing your ingredients into your demijohn and call it good.

If you want to start off with a beer, I would opt for a beer kit. When we first started brewing our own beer, we opted for a brew can from Coopers. Since most often the first step is the hardest. So I often like to make the first step as easy as I can. Because any step no matter how small is progress. And now that we have brewed our own beer out of a can, we feel surer that we can brew beer without a can.

Brewing your own will save you money

Now the amount of money you would save does depend on the country you are in. Since some countries tax their alcohol more heavily than others. But on the whole, you could make really cheap wine by using foraged fruits or flowers with some cheap sugar and a yeast packet. Some people brew their wines in old water bottles and milk jugs. Which is very cost-effective. Although in the end, it all depends on how much time, effort, and money you want to spend on homebrewing.

We really prefer to brew our meads and wines in glass demijohns (5 litre bottles) since they are more durable than plastic options. Not to mention that there is no risk of unwanted chemicals leaching into your drink. And unless you are uncareful with them and drop them, you can use them for the rest of your life. During which time, they will supply you with plenty of delicious homebrewed wines and meads.

There is some investment required when you want to start brewing, but you will soon earn it back. I highly recommend ordering a starter kit from a reliable company, since it will make starting so much easier. Since you won’t have to worry about which things you would need. When we started, we ordered a wine starter kit from Home Brew West, a wonderful company here in Ireland. We’ve ordered from them time and time again, and they have always been helpful and kind.

Healthier than commercial alcohol

Homebrewed beverages, whether they are wines, meads, or beers. Will already be better for you because you won’t add unnecessary additives. Because you don’t need to do anything strange to your drink to make it more shelf-stable. Nor do you need to make it more colourful or clear. Since you don’t need to impress potential customers. Although I’ve found that your drink will become clearer with time anyways. So there is no need to strain your drink, and which also takes out a lot of the vitamins and minerals.

But it is not just the missing additives that make your homebrew better for you than your standard store-bought drink. It is also the fact that you won’t be killing off any of the microorganisms. So all the yeast and other beneficial microbes will still be in your drink, ready to boost your gut health. I can’t think of a more pleasant way to boost my gut health. Although it is still alcohol, of course, that you are consuming, so do drink responsibly.

Do you want to learn more about healthier options for drinking wine? Then you can head over to dry farms or listen to this podcast episode. They both discuss why they prefer to not drink standard commercial wine and where you could buy good quality wine then. But of course, you could just brew your own as well, I know I prefer that over buying wine or beer. Since brewing your own just gives you so much appreciation for your drink.

Experiment with foraged and homegrown plants

What could be more fun than experimenting with different fruits and flowers to create your very own wines and meads. You can look up recipes or just wing it and see what happens. I must admit that I mostly just wing it, and it tends to work out quite well. And even our worst brews have improved with time enough to be enjoyable to drink.

Especially if you enjoy foraging for different fruits and flowers, using some in your homebrew is a really enjoyable use for them. People have been doing it for centuries, and plenty of people still enjoy country wines as they are called. Our personal favourite is elderflower mead, which is super easy to make and absolutely delicious. It creates a deliciously light drink that is sweet without being overpoweringly floral. But you can use loads of different foraged fruits and flowers like sloes, elderberries, hawthorn berries, dandelion flowers, nettles, and much much more.

Of course, if you have access to a garden. Then there is no reason why you can’t grow something to then use in your homebrew. Maybe you want to grow some strawberries and make deliciously summery strawberry wine. Or you might have an old apple tree in the garden and don’t know what to do with all those apples. Why not use those apples to create your own homegrown and homebrewed cider?

When you brew your own, you can play around with different flavours. It is so much fun trying new flavours and seeing what works and what you might not try again.

Sharing is caring

Your own home-brewed beverages are the perfect gift to give to family and friends. Last autumn, I send my nan and grandad a small box with my own homebrew in there for their anniversary. They were delighted and felt it was lovely to get a gift that was so personal. They wanted to know all about how I made the mead and thoroughly enjoyed drinking it. Especially my grandad, who is always ready for something strange and experimental to eat or drink, loved my elderberry mead.

Because what better way to show someone you care, than by giving them your brew you worked on for months. Well, work on it for an hour or so, after which you put it away in a closet for a couple of months. But it is the perfect personal gift for any occasion and much more original than your standard bottle of red wine. You can be sure that whoever you give your homebrew to will think of you while they drink it.

Whether you bring your own bottle of homebrew when you visit some friends, or you send a bottle or two to your grandparents. You can be sure they will love you for giving them such a personal and unique gift. Although if you do choose to send it through the mail, do make sure you double-check if alcoholic liquids can be sent through the post with whatever company you choose to use.

Traditions and history of brewing

Humans have been brewing for thousands of years and have been doing so all around the world. Mainly using honey and fruit early on and later also using grains like barley and rice. This, later on, is still 10.000 years ago, so that is a good long while back mind you. But I call that later on because scholars believe that people were already drinking some ancient version of wine around 30.000 BCE. Which means, that we were brewing our own drinks before the agricultural revolution, while we were still hunter gatherers.

Even today, some people will brew their own beverages through wild fermentation. It works similar to your regular sourdough, as in that it uses the yeast that is present on the fruit or other main ingredient and the yeast from the air. Now, because most wild yeasts are not very resistant to alcohol, it will result in a lower alcohol level. I always joke about this with my family that they kill themselves off with their own farts. Which is not exactly what happens but comes close enough. Since the alcohol is their waste product, and once that reaches a certain level (which is different per yeast strain) they die off.

And did you know that traditionally women were always the brewsters? It was only around the 18th century that men realised the amount of money that they could make if they took over the brewing industry. But for thousands of years, brewing was considered a typical household task, along with baking bread, spinning yarn, and caring for the children. And all over the world, where people are still living traditionally. Living as they have been doing for thousands of years. The women also brew alcoholic beverages, some societies use cacti or yucca, while others use grains like barley or corn, and some even use honey ants. So never think that you can only use certain ingredients when you want to homebrew, since cultures all over the world have shown you can use just about anything.

Expand your old fashioned skill list

If like me you are also continuously trying to expand your skill list, you will love learning about brewing. You will find that it is much less complicated than you might assume. Once you’ve learned how to make a basic brew, you won’t forget it easily. And it can become another old fashioned skill that you will have mastered to keep in your back pocket for whenever you need it.

If you’ve never considered building up an old fashioned skill list, then I would argue that you might want to get started on one. Because it is a shame that in a handful of generations we have lost so many basic skills. Skills like cooking from scratch, sewing, bread baking, darning, veg growing, knitting, fermenting, jam making, foraging, and many more. But by slowly learning one skill at a time, we can all work together and revive all these vintage skills.

And as an added bonus, you will also be less reliant on other companies to supply you with products when things don’t go as planned. Plus, you can then pass on your newfound skills to the next generation. Thereby giving them more power over their own lives. Because when you know how to do a certain thing, you won’t be reliant on someone else to do it for you.

If you want to get started with building your own vintage skill list, then why not try some of these.

Become part of a community of homebrewers

Once you start brewing, you will find more and more people who also make their own homebrew. Since we started homebrewing, we have found out that quite a number of our friends, brew their own drinks too. Some mainly focus on beer, while others focus heavily on mead. And it is always great fun talking to friends about different brews you’ve made or are thinking of making.

If, in any case, you don’t seem to have friends that also homebrew, there is always the internet. Which is filled with like-minded people no matter how obscure your hobby might seem. A great place to learn and talk about homebrew is the subreddit homebrewing. There, you will find so many others who are also interested in brewing, and you might even learn some valuable tips and tricks.

So why not give it a go and find out for yourself how easy it really is to do. You will be able to sit back and relax while you talk to your friends about your latest homebrew. And exchange some bottles with friends or post a picture of your bottle on Instagram, and tag me, so I can see your creation. Become part of centuries of tradition by brewing your own and experiment with traditional flavours as well as new outlandish ones. It will help your health, wallet, and grow your vintage skill list in the process.

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