Beer drinking is very popular all over the world. In Germany where the oldest and the largest beer festival is celebrated in late September and the first week October, hundreds of home brewing enthusiast would troop into the city Munich. Home brewing competitions are one of the highlights of the beer festival. For many people in Germany and the United Kingdom, the annual home brewing competition is part of a family tradition where the art of home brewing beer is passed on from generation to generation.

Why People Brew Their Own Beer

Home brewing of beer is more like a hobby and is often done is a very small scale. People who are engaged in this hobby just wanted to brew their beer for their personal consumption and not really for commercial purposes. For some people home brewing their beer and serving it to their friends during parties and small social gatherings is the highlight of beer brewing activities while for others.

On the other hand, some people just love the idea of creating their own beer that it doesn’t really matter if there are any special occasions where they can serve their concoction. Whichever reason these home brewers have for making their own beer, the fact still stands, home brewing is something that both the old and the young enjoys these days.

Basic Principles of Home Brewing

Making your own beer is very challenging and a bit complicated. Make no mistakes about it, making beer is not like making lemonade where you get to drink your juice a few minutes after squeezing lemon, adding water and sugar or honey. Making beer takes time and some knowledge in chemistry. Why chemistry? Well, making beer relies on chemical reaction between substances thus it is important that you know where ones should be mixed with what in order to get good results.

When making your own beer, you only need water, malt, yeast and hops. Note that beer home brewing is the art of converting sugar into ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide by yeast through the fermentation process. Note that yeast as a form of living organism is present in the air and it is capable of converting sugars from malt into carbon dioxide and alcohol.

The actual home brewing process takes about 9-10 hours and the fermentation or the aging process that makes the beer taste better will take about 20-35 days. If you can’t wait that long to have your beer, you better head for the grocery and just buy yourself a nice bottle or can of the 21st century beer and save yourself from all the trouble.