Making Homemade Wine and Beer: Fun Stuff

End of what started out as a really rotten week. The only thing nice is that I get a chance to relax and work on the computer. Found some fun stuff and thought I would share it with you.

From the Tennessean.com

A labor of love: Give birth to your very own homebrewed beer

By JIM MYERS
Staff Writer

While having a cheap source of good beer is certainly a mighty fine reason for homebrewing, the advantages go well beyond the fiscal realm.

For example, it's a natural mood enhancer. That's right. Brewing beer is fun. Even the bible for most homebrewers, written by Charlie Papazian, is called The Joy of Homebrewing, and he insists that stress and anger make your beer taste bad.

It's also a kick in the pants to make something wonderful, like beer, from scratch, using fresh ingredients and following recipes that, in some cases, are hundreds of years old.

Perhaps even more fun than drinking homebrewed beer is sharing it with friends. Assuming it's drinkable, of course, it's very enjoyable to hand someone a bottle of beer and say with pride, ''I made this.''

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And another article about homebrewing:

is it beer yet?

Home-brewing isn't a hobby for the thirsty, reporter learns

Pam Cowan
Lisa Hughes

(March 10, 2006) — My friends say I'm a beer snob. I can't blame them — I am.

So I figured I'd enjoy brewing it from scratch.

Measuring precious ingredients and tinkering with them, I'd create exactly what my palate craves: something like my adult beverage of choice — Guinness.

"If you want to make Guinness, you can go out on the Web or to a book and find the recipe for Guinness and try to duplicate it," said Brian Charles, 35, who invited me to a brewing session at his Irondequoit home.

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