Beantown Brews: A Boston Beer Blog

Homebrewing.

I get a lot of raised eyebrows when I tell people that I brew my own beer. Some people are curious, some are standoffish.  Two common questions that I hear are, “Is that legal,” and “Am I going to go blind?”

The Legality of Homebrewing

Home brewing is completely legal, provided that individuals are not making beer for the purpose of sale.  In 1979, President Jimmy Carter signed into law a bill explicitly allowing homebrewing and winemaking, which was at the time illegal as a holdover from the prohibition of alcoholic beverages. (Wikipedia, homebrewing)

Individual States remain free to restrict homebrewing by residents, but the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts, in its infinite wisdom,  has seen fit to allow denizens of the Commonwealth to brew to our hearts content – provided the our hearts content remains below 100 gallons of beer per person over the age of 21 and up to a maximum of 200 gallons per household annually.

You can find the statute information here.

Health Related Information

Let me first reassure you – you will not go blind from drinking homebrewed beer. This isn’t moonshine or bathtub gin. When people talk of going blind from drinking homemade alcohol, typically they are thinking of hard alcohol that has been distilled.  Botched distillation, a process not involved in brewing beer, can result in the formation of methyl alcohol, which is extremely toxic to humans. As I said, the process of making beer does not involve distillation.

Can you get sick from it? Well, you may get a mouthful of bad beer if a batch goes south, but there are no known pathogens that can survive in the level of alcohol present in beer. In addition, yeast tends to crowd out all other forms of microbial life during the fermentation process. The presence of bacteria may sour the batch (and in some cases you want this to happen) but it will not make you sick.

Additionally, hops – those wonderful flowers that contribute such a variety of flavors and qualities to a beer – are naturally anti microbial. Who knew?

So put your mind at ease. Yes – this is legal, and no – you will not go blind.

Homebrewing is a richly rewarding pastime that offers no end of variety and challenge to the practitioner. Like cooking, with a little bit of practice you will soon find yourself preparing a variety of wonderful products otherwise unavailable to you commercially.