Brew it yourself

WHAT'S THE STORY WITH HOMEBREW BEER AND WINE?:WHEN THEY announced a year-long price freeze last December, publicans probably expected their largesse to be greeted positively by consumers. Instead a collective eyebrow was raised as people wondered why prices were being frozen instead of lowered, and it was quickly dismissed by many as a publicity stunt.

The Competition Authority was similarly unimpressed. Earlier this month, it wrote to the Vintners’ Federation of Ireland (VFI) and the Licensed Vintners’ Association (LVA) giving them two weeks to lift the price freeze. “In the current climate, prices are falling. Why are they freezing their prices? They should be competing,” a spokeswoman for the watchdog said.

The LVA and VFI hit back, claiming it “was always intended as a price ceiling not a price floor”, but any chance of it scoring brownie points amongst consumers had gone up in secondhand smoke.

The groups claim that they were concerned about value for money rang a little hollow as the provision of good value in Irish pubs has not seemed a priority for a very long time. A combination of high prices, the smoking ban, stricter drink-driving laws, a woeful night-time public transport system and a growing legion of people willing to travel across the Border to buy alcohol has driven drinkers away from pubs at an alarming level in recent months.

According to a Drinks Industry Group of Ireland (Digi) report published last week, 2008 was the worst year for the industry in a quarter of a century, with alcohol consumption declining by 5.9 per cent. The report also showed that 52 per cent of alcohol was bought in off-licences, with pub and nightclub sales falling by as much as 9 per cent.

A Digi spokesman called on the Government not to increase alcohol taxes in the forthcoming emergency budget. It seems like a forlorn call as alcohol appears to be firmly in the Government’s sights.

With alcohol – even the carry-out variety – set to jump in price, many people are seeking better value by looking towards a bygone era: homebrew beer and wine, which costs substantially less than any store or pub-bought product.

While many businesses have been struggling through the downturn, it is boom time for Shane Conroy, a microbiologist from Mountmellick, Co Laois, who got into the homebrew business in a big way last August. His website, thehomebrewcompany.ie, has been attracting new customers at a rate of nearly 100 a week in recent months.

The site supplies a wide range of beer and wine kits and all the equipment needed to get started in the brewing business. He runs the Homebrew Company in his spare time and was prompted to set it up after experiencing difficulties getting a local supplier for the equipment he needed to brew his own. “It’s getting very busy now and it seems that the worse the economy gets the better business is,” he says.

He insists that it is not hard to brew good quality beer, although he admits his first two batches went straight down the plughole after he made the schoolboy error of forgetting to wash the disinfectant off the jars in which he was fermenting his brew. “It was a simple mistake but if you do a little research and use the online forums, it really is very easy.”

He says more and more people are buying from his website as the economic gloom deepens. “One woman contacted me recently after she and her husband lost their jobs. She is fond of a glass of wine and so wants to start brewing her own, so she was very happy to take a kit off me.”

Whatever about homebrew beer, homebrew wine made from wine juice concentrate, water and yeast is a little ropey, surely? “Well, the longer you leave it the better it gets, obviously, and some of it is really good. We do have a wine kit that is ready to drink in a week. I haven’t actually tried it but it does sell.”

The site offers next-day delivery at a cost of €7, and business is booming to such an extent that that he and his wife are looking at ways they can grow it further.

“It is very hard to keep on top of it but we are planning to build a bigger house with a garage where we can store our stock and devote more time to it.”

HOME BREWING IS not a business for Sean Billings, but a passion. He has been brewing beer in Phibsboro for nearly 20 years. In the early days, as a student, he was motivated to make his own beer purely as a money-saving device but, over the intervening years, it has developed into much more.

“At the start, when I was a student, it was definitely about cheap booze, but little by little I got curious and started taking it more seriously and experimenting more. If saving money is your main focus, then certainly you can do it, but the results won’t be that great. You can buy a cheap kit for no more than €13 and a kilo of sugar for a euro. That is the rock-bottom price and for that you will get 40 pints – but it will be pretty lousy,” he warns.

Billings’s beer is in a whole different class and he is fairly confident it compares well with any microbrewery-produced beer available. He takes it very seriously and recently spent €400 on two fridges to keep his beer at precise temperatures while it brews. He produces 80 pints in two batches each month, “far too much to drink on my own, so I have to have people over to help”. He bottles it and puts some in kegs.

There is, he says, a growing brewing community in Ireland. They trade recipes online through the website irishcraftbrewer.com and meet once a month to swap beers and get feedback. “We are getting a lot of new users on the site,” Billings says. There are currently over 300 people registered with it.

“If I wanted to replicate Guinness it would be really simple, it is not a complex process at all,” he says, before explaining to Pricewatch exactly how it is done. Secret recipe how are ya!

Brewing up a storm: Three beer-making methods

Kit brewing:This involves using hopped malt extract, to which you add water and yeast. It is the simplest method of brewing, but it allows the brewer little or no control over the final product. The main problem with this kind of brewing is that frugal people tend to buy cheap kits and boost the alcohol content with table sugar, resulting in very poor-quality beer. Kit cost: €70 Brew cost: €26.99

Extract Brewing: This is more advanced, requires a bit more skill and takes more time, but results in better beer. The process involves using dry malt extract, hops, steeping grains and yeast. Kit cost: €250 Brew cost:€35

All grain brewing:This is the process of making beer from malted barley, hops and yeast. It is essentially the same process that commercial brewers use, but on a very small scale. It takes significantly longer than either of the previous two methods and requires more skill, but any style of beer can be made and the brewer has complete control of the final product. Kit cost: €325 B rew cost:€15