Home brewing relates to the brewing of beer, wine, cider and other beverages, both alcoholic as well as non-alcoholic, through fermentation on a small scale as a hobby for personal consumption.
While legality of home brewing varies from country to country, most permit home brewing, some countries limiting the quantity brewed by individuals and even fewer countries permitting distillation of hard alcohol.
People homebrew for a variety of reasons. Home brewing is usually cheaper than buying commercially comparable beverages; it may allow people to regulate recipes to their very own tastes (creating beverages that are unavailable on the open market, or low-ethanol beverages which may contain fewer calories and thus be less-fattening); or people may enjoy entering homebrew competitions. From time to time referred to as “craft brewing”, home brewing has developed a variety of home brewing clubs and competitions.
Alcohol has been brewed domestically throughout its 7,000-year history beginning in Mesopotamia, Egypt and China. Understanding of brewing beer and wine was passed on from the Egyptians to the Greeks and eventually to the Romans.
Mass production of brewed beverages began in the 1,700’s with the industrial revolution. New innovations, like thermometers and hydrometers, allowed increases in efficiency. French microbiologist Louis Pasteur explained the role of yeast in fermentation in 1857, enabling brewers to develop strains of yeast with desirable properties (conversion efficiency, capability to handle elevated alcohol content).