WINEWORKS
Home Brew Specialists

What a choice we have of home brew kits. We have kits for making beer and for making wine. Home brew kits for making liqueurs and even now for making spirits.

We did have over 50 home brew kits manufactured and over 200 home brew retailers but these numbers are well down. We now probably only have 6 UK manufacturers and some 50 home brew retailers. supermarkets that give a national collection point and help us to have a national promotional image. The downside is they do not offer the range of products and some don't even keep the equipment needed to make your own home brew.

Many of the existing manufacturers produce a full range of home brew kits in many different sizes and many of these have quite a different price range. The reason we don't have as many manufacturers of home brew kits is the availability of cheap booze in the supermarkets.This has meant poor sales for the specialist home brew shop and reflected in the sales of the home brewing kits. Also we have seen kit prices rise steeply over the years mainly due to the fact they can no longer be produced in large quantities and the fact the ingredients in the UK have really risen in price.

At one time it was very cheap to make your own using the home brew kits and this encouraged people to have a go. Now they have gone up in price there is not such a saving although more people seem to be doing it for enjoyment and the knowledge they know what is going into the drink they are making.

There is still a saving but its not as good as it used to be from home brew kits produced in the earlier years. In the 80s we could make a home brew kit produce a bottle of wine for about 30p but now a similar wine is going to be around £1.50 per bottle. Quite an increase in the price of a bottle of wine made at home.

Beer is the same; home brew kits could produce beer in the late 70's for 5pence per pint. Now a similar beer is going to be 12pence or more quite an increase in the price. People used to "mash" their own beer from the raw ingredients as opposed to using the home brew kits. They claimed it tasted more like commercial beer than the home brew. We don't mind it's what ever turns you on although it was much harder work than using a home brew kit's recipe. The mash also caused quite a problem for the brewer at home with the smell of boiling grain and hops, the space it took up and the hassle with your partner- a good reason to go back to home brew kits.