The History of Homebrewed Beer

For over two thousand years beer has been produced at homes. One of the earliest known examples of a home-use recipe book is a sumarian tablet detailing the production and consumption of beer. It was customary in medieval England for feudal manors to produce all the beer for the lord and his subjects. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were both homebrewers.

With the advent of Prohibition, beer homebrewing became both popular and disreputable in the US. With the repeal of Prohibition, homebrewing took a curious turn. The Constitutional amendment repealing Prohibition specifically re-allows the production of wine at home, but failed to include beer in its wording. This oversight meant that brewing your own beer at home remained prohibited. This prohibited status caused home beer brewing to be lumped with home distilling in the minds of the country’s citizens and policymakers. Getting quality beer making ingredients and advice was nearly impossible.

President Carter changed this in 1979 when he signed the Cranston Act which removed federal prohibitions on making your own beer at home. It was now up to the states. By 1981 most states passed bills re-legalizing homebrewing, and the home beer brewing/microbrewery revolution was on! Homebrewers by the droves came out of the closet and started opening commercial microbrewery operations. This in turn increased consumer awareness to quality beer and awareness in homebrewing. The two have fed off each other ever since.

In 1981 there were approximately 150 homebrewing hobby shops in America. By 1996 that number had grown to over 1000. There has since been a retrenchment and the current number of shops in America stands at about 550.

Today there are roughly 1 million beer homebrewers in the United States, according to the American Homebrewers Association. With this kind of consumer-driven power, the quality of ingredients and advice for homebrewers has improved dramatically. Gone are the days when homebrewing involved the use of a 10 gallon ceramic crock, a can of Blue Ribbon malt extract (that may or may not have been produced with beer making in mind), and a package of Fleischmann’s bread yeast. Today’s home beer brewers have access to scaled down versions of the same equipment craft breweries use, are able to purchase Coopers Beer Kits, one of the only kits made specifically for beer making, and have access to over 100 different strains of yeast developed for beer production.

Today’s beer homebrewer expects their beer to come out as good as, if not better than, anything available at the grocery store. The range of styles that homebrewers will make, range from “Budweiser” type light American lagers to high-alcohol, densely rich Barleywine-style beers. Most homebrewers produce British style ales that are both easy to make and diverse in flavor profiles. Recipes are typically produced in 5 gallon increments (approximately 48 12oz bottles). Making your own beer requires a total time commitment of about two hours, spread out over a couple weeks time.

Thirsty?

Ready to brew your own beer? It all starts with a Coopers Microbrewery Kit!