How difficult is it to make wine or beer at home?

You don’t need complex tools to make wine or beer at home!

Most people believe that making fermented beverages involves using strange or complex equipment, ingredients that are difficult or impossible to find, or well-kept industrial secrets that companies will never reveal to you.

This is actually exactly what companies want you to think in order not to lose their market share. I must admit that I myself believed this before reading my first book on making wine at home.

Anybody can make beer or wine at home

The reality is that most of the recipes for making beer, cider, wine or other fermented beverages are actually just as simple or even simpler than preparing a soup mix. Even prisoners, with their very limited means, sometimes manage to make it in prison. They call it “bagosse” or “badoche”.

In fact, it is very likely that you already have at home several, if not almost all of the tools and ingredients necessary to carry out your first brewing experience. It’s as simple as making soup! Making fermented beverages, in the end, is like making a good spaghetti sauce recipe.

It can be as simple as taking a can of tomato sauce and adding some Italian spices, garlic and salt. But it can become as complicated as growing your own tomatoes, harvesting them, processing them, mixing up to 30 ingredients and spices to get the specific taste you are looking for.

With time, with trial and error, you will identify what you like and what you don’t like. Your beverages will improve and refine. Then you will end up creating your own or your own homemade recipes that you can pass on to your children or friends. Or you can keep them as family secrets and who knows, maybe you could eventually commercialize them!