People have been making there own home brew beer and wine since time began, but it was in the late 1960's when the then Chancellor of the Exchequer the late Reginald Mauldling passed a bill to legalise the making of homebrew beer. It had always legal to make your own home brew wine. This then opened up the floodgates for people to start buying their own home brewing beer equipment.

At the same time several manufacturers saw the potential and started to produce home brew beer kits made from malt extract and started to market these as complete kits. They contained everything needed except water, sugar, and yeast to produce 40pints of home brew beer. The quality was not great to start with but this has improved as time has progressed. The home brew market is worth over £15 million at retail value. However this is a drop in the ocean compared with the early 80's when the home brew rage was at its height. At one time there were home brew shops in every main town, but now there is a real shortage of specialist shops that have a full range of home brew beer kits. These same shops will keep home brew wine kits and some will offer liqueur and spirit kits.

To be fair the reason sales have fallen in the home brew shops is the availability of cheap booze in the supermarkets. It has been really hard for these shops to compete with these special offers and the cheap booze cruises.

The shame is the quality of the home brew beer and wine kits have never been so good. Some of the breweries have even launched their own home brew beer kits like Woodforde's and Milestone. The beer that is produced is excellent and very close to the product you can buy. In fact even some of the cheap home brew beer kits will make a great drink.

The home brew wine kits are just as well developed. We can now do cabernet sauvignon for example. Imagine serving your own home brew Chardonnay from a kit? The latest one is a Pink Pinot Grigio home brew wine kit designed to make a great slightly strawberry pink wine!!!!