Talk:Homebrewing

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Starting a merge

People have been talking about merging for some time. The task perhaps looks harder than what it is. I am starting the merge now, and generally tidying up the article as I go along. The only real concern about the merge would be the weight given to beer homebrewing as compared to other homebrewing - and I will look into that as I do the merge. However, it's looking as though the bulk of the Homebrewing beer article is dealing with material that belongs in Brewing. I will bring in here what looks useful and appropriate, and start discussions on material that I'm not sure about. SilkTork *^YES! 12:52, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

It seems that it may be best to split the homebrewing of beer from the rest of the material on this page, since it is quite distinct and there is a lot of information. I think that it would also be beneficial to have a more detailed section on the homebrewing processes, specifically where they differ from commercial brewing. There are several different techniques that could be discussed. --Nyqlas (talk) 08:25, 15 November 2010 (UTC)

History

The general history of homebrewing is better in this article (Homebrewing) than in the Homebrewing beer article. I see nothing useful to merge. SilkTork *^YES! 13:01, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

I brought over some details on US prohibition. SilkTork *^YES! 13:42, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Beer styles

I'm not entirely convinced that a section on beer styles is needed in an article on homebrewing (beer or otherwise). We have an article on beer style, and a sentence such as "Homebrewers can make beers in a variety of styles", linking people to the article should be sufficient. There is also some discussion on varieties of beer in the main Beer article. I feel this homebrewing article should deal with homebrewing rather than general comments about beer or brewing or wine or cider which are better dealt with in the parent articles. However, other people may think differently. SilkTork *^YES! 13:01, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Ingredients

The basic ingredients for homebrewing beer are the same as for commercial beer, so I have linked to Brewing#Ingredients with this sentence: "Homebrewers can select from ingredients identical to those used in commercial brewing." SilkTork *^YES! 13:42, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

"torrified barleys" The explanation/definition of torrefied grains used in brewing is more detailed and informative on the Torrefaction page (relating to biomass/energy), where it gives more specific reasons and results in brewing, simply as an aside. I don't know what the etiquette is here, but can you use that in this article? There is no citation for that info, but it is information brewers could use in making a decision about ingredients. Zlama (talk) 22:43, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Brewing

This section - Homebrewing_beer#Brewing_process - is a bit trickier. Essentially homebrewing is brewing, so a link to that article should be enough. However, there are differences, and there is material within that section that can be brought over as useful to a general article on homebrewing. SilkTork *^YES! 13:45, 14 July 2009 (UTC)

Home winemaking

This article claims to be about making wine at home in the same way as beer, although wine gets very little attention. An obvious remedy would be to write about home winemaking in this article, but I question whether the two topics belong in the same article. There is probably sufficient information for two articles (Homebrewing for beer and Home winemaking for wine). Does anyone feel strongly one way or the other?

For example, take the opening sentence: "Homebrewing is the brewing of beer, wine, cider and other beverages, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic...". In my view, homebrewing isn't necessarily the brewing of beer, as in most of the kits no actual brewing is involved (they come pre-brewed). Further, wine and cider are never brewed. In this sense, homebrewing is a misnomer when applied to beer kits and any beverages that aren't brewed like wine or cider. Rename? Split? Better opening paragraph explaining (with references) the term? Eb.eric (talk) 06:55, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

The fact that the "beer homebrewer" and the "home winemaker" use much of the same equipment, retailers, and processes tells me that these should definitely be in an article together. Clifsportland (talk) 22:16, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

As someone who has been engaged in home winemaking, I question why Home Winemaking is redirected to Homebrewing. While they are similar, they are not the same. WeeCub (talk) 20:05, 17 July 2021 (UTC)

Tone

I've added a tone tag to the homebrew kit section, as it uses a lot of opinion language relating to quality, and is also very UK centric. - superβεεcat  01:38, 1 February 2010 (UTC)

That section was bothering me too. I've rewritten it with more organization, removed sources that were businesses and added clarity. Unfortunately, now it is poorly sourced. Help by adding sources please. Cliff (talk) 20:09, 15 March 2011 (UTC)

Credible references

The article cites sources from self-published webpages of commercial suppliers who sell equipment who's contents are not research based. Neutrality is also questionable. Cantaloupe2 (talk) 10:41, 21 March 2010 (UTC)

Fixing a Pervasive Myth

A pervasive myth/falsehood exists on the Internet that somehow in 1933 something was done that caused beer to be treated differently than wine. The pervasive myth goes something like:

"The 18th Amendment to the US Constitution, enacting prohibition in 1919, made homebrewing in the USA illegal. When the 21st Amendment repealed prohibition in 1933, language legalizing home beer making was mistakenly left out (home wine making was legalized at that time)."

Something very similar was in this article and may very well be the source of the myth. This article attributed it to a "clerical error".

First of all, the 21st amendment simply states that the 18th amendment is repealed. There is no language legalizing home wine making or home beer making. In fact there was nothing for any cleric to make any error about.

Second, the different treatment of home wine making and home beer making appears to stem from a 1920 IRS ruling that allowed higher alcohol content for fuit juice and cider but not for beer. See the Wikipedia article on the Volstead Act.

We need to stomp down this myth because it is simply nonsensical and creates a lot of confusion around the history. I have edited the section in question.

The last paragraph in the history section still alludes to the illegality of homebrewing until 1978. This doesn't fit with what you have written and corrected. Any ideas about how to correct that paragraph? Clifsportland (talk) 16:16, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Percentages.

Anyone with time should begin to check this article for percentages. All percentages should be marked as "percent by weight" or "percent by volume". For instance, a beer that is 3.2% alcohol by weight (ABW) has the same alcoholic content as a 4% alcohol by volume (ABV) beer. These are equivalent amounts of alcohol, and cause some confusion. I have appended the correct measure to the percentage in the section referring to the legality of homebrewing in Japan. Other percentages should be marked as well. Clifsportland (talk) 21:58, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Brew on premises

I was just reviewing the Australian links and sources. They have a provision for what they call "brew on premises" sites. see here. I have seen sites like these in the US too. We should make a section that discusses the process and availability of such facilities for "homebrewing". Cliff (talk) 19:46, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

This reference discusses brew on premise shops in Japan. already a reference on the article. Cliff (talk) 20:00, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

British v. American spelling

WP states that there is no general rule, but that each page should be consistent within itself. This page is certainly not. We need to decide which spellings this article will use. Since I'm from the States, I'm biased in that direction. The page seems evenly split at this point. If no dissenters, I will change it all in a few months. Cliff (talk) 20:45, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

The WP:ENGVAR guideline (specifically the MOS:RETAIN part) states that the variant of English to be used should be whatever was established early on in the article's history. If that's British English, then we should modify the article accordingly.

So let's examine the history.

This article was created in 2002 by an IP address geolocated to Willamette, Oregon in the United States. From there the article grew and its content stayed rather US-centric for years, until an external link appeared in July 2006 with a description using British spelling. Even so, the article remained US-centric, and was even tagged as such until 10 October 2006, when a bunch of UK content and British spelling was introduced to the article body for the first time. Since then, there has been a mixture.

Therefore, one can safely say that this article was established and existed for years using US spelling, and it should be made consistent with that spelling. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:57, 17 March 2011 (UTC)

OK then. I'll start changing what I see to the American variants. Cliff (talk) 23:35, 18 March 2011 (UTC)

Bad Reference

<ref name="USHomebrewinglaw">http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d095:H.R.1337:</ref>

This externally linked reference does not point to the place it's supposed to. I tried to find the indicated bill on the Library of Congress website, but was unable to. (H.R. 1337 points to something about greece). Anybody know which bill was signed by Jimmy Carter? Cliff (talk) 19:28, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Eponymous-Archon (talk) 00:53, 24 August 2011 (UTC) No, it points exactly to where it's supposed to: the Thomas citation of the 1978 bill signed by Pres. Carter. There's nothing on Greece in there. Does anyone else not have this link work? Maybe some other Congress has an HR 1337 that refers to Greece.

Eponymous-Archon (talk) 01:04, 24 August 2011 (UTC) OK, upon further examination the problem is that wikipedia doesn't like links that end with a colon. So I've changed the URL to that of the bill's summary instead of the bill's main page. (Surely there's a way to encode the colon, but I don't know what that is and haven't found it in a quick google search.)

You encode a colon as %3A as in http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d095%3AH.R.1337%3A — hope that helps. ~Amatulić (talk) 01:38, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Brewing isn't distilation

There is a lot of various information regarding the legality of distillation in this article. I'm planning on removing all of it, because this is an article about homebrewing, not distillation. Also, I take issue with some of the Citation Needed tags regarding homebrew kits... does this article really need to source the fact that some homebrew kits come with yeast, while others don't? It is extraordinarily difficult to find quality 3rd party sources (other than linking to an actual homebrew kit for sale's contents) - superβεεcat  01:09, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

I would keep the distillation stuff, and trim that material a bit. Distillation is a natural final step in the homebrewing process. It is a closely related subject since many homebrewers use their fermented products to produce rakia or brandy. Homebrewing isn't all about beer, after all. The topic probably isn't yet large enough for a separate legality of home distilling article, so it would be a shame to lose adequately sourced material provided here.

Regarding homebrew kits, I'd remove any citations that merely link to places that exist for the purpose of selling products. There's no need to mention that some kits contain yeast. It's irrelevant. ~Amatulić (talk) 17:28, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

There is moonshine. — goethean ॐ 18:54, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

But that's specific to illegal distillation. The point of discussion here is more about the legality of homebrewing, and whether the article should say when that legality extends to home distillation. It's an interesting point that I think should be retained. ~Amatulić (talk) 18:59, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree that it's an interesting point, and at least tangentially related. Perhaps there is a bit much of it? I think other than to say it is or isn't is sufficient; the more details, the less focused on, well, homeBREWing the article becomes. I'll leave it be for now, but perhaps a wikipedian interested in the home distillation of spirits could start a new article? Or, perhaps a larger article called something like home alcohol production that homebrewing and home distilling link to? - superβεεcat  23:32, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Maybe the section could be converted to a table, with columns for country, legality of homebrewing, and legality of distillation. Some cells, of course, would be blank. Cells could contain a short description of the legal issue. That format may be less unwieldy than it is now. ~Amatulić (talk) 23:47, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

I just reformatted it as a table without removing any content or paying attention to alphabetization. See how that looks, revert if you don't like it. ~Amatulić (talk) 01:19, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I like it MUCH better. Great work! - superβεεcat  02:14, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Homebrewing Process

This section is a mess. I propose lifting summaries from the relevant parts of the main Brewing article, and linking for an in-depth discussion. While the equipment is (somewhat) different, the chemical changes are identical- there's no reason to retread the same ground. The section should be divided into something like: Milling, Mashing, Lauter (and sparge), Boil, Cooling, Fermentation, and Serving. These sections should include examples of the most common equipment used to accomplish each step. - superβεεcat  02:41, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

In addition, a graphic would be useful- with the aforementioned categories, and where the extract brewer starts in the process, to visually show the differences in the major types of homebrewing; extract, partial mash, and all-grain. - superβεεcat  02:45, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Legality.

The recently added citation for Ireland's brewing laws made me think. There seems to be some conflated ideas about legality and taxation on the page. Should we rewrite to discern between when brewing requires taxation and when brewing is outright illegal? Cliff (talk) 18:43, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure. Generally taxation applies only to homebrew products that are sold, not brewed for personal use. The citation regarding Ireland seems pretty clear that homebrewing beer with ABV of 0.5% or less is legal for personal use, but it is illegal to sell the product. There may be more to the laws of Irland that impose a tax on homebrewing for higher alcohol content, but I don't see it from that citation (and it would be tough to enforce anyway if it's all made for personal use, so I doubt it). ~Amatulić (talk) 22:51, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

My understanding was that it is not illegal to sell the beer, but that any beer sold must be subject to taxes and tax laws (which may require obtaining a license or something). It may be a minor distinction between illegal to sell, and illegal to sell without paying taxes, but I think it may be worth exploring. Am I reading the source incorrectly? Cliff (talk) 05:03, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I think you're correct... but, as in most(?) countries, selling it within the licensing and tax laws moves it from a 'homebrew' to a 'microbrew'. 66.87.0.82 (talk) 18:28, 8 November 2011 (UTC)

Citation tag

At this point can we remove the tag citing a lack of citations? It would seem that this article has been cited fairly well. Fallbrews (talk) 03:00, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Chinese Prohibition

The bit about the 41 periods of homebrew prohibitions in China comes from history of alcoholic beverages where it was unsourced. Seemed worth mentioning in the history section here, though. If you find a cite for the claim, kindly add it over there as well. — LlywelynII 11:15, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Request For Comment

I've been working on the article BeerXML and have been faced with two users who have tried a variety of different approaches to getting it deleted. I would appreciate any help with the charge that the article is not on a notable topic at the deletion page Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/BeerXML. I have been forced into a request for comment at the BeerXML talk page and would very much appreciate any comments there so that the case for retaining and improving the article can be made Talk:BeerXML#RfC:_Has_the_article_demonstrated_notability.3F

I am also interested in whether a section on the variety of different recipe formulation applications available on computers/tablets/phones etc and the emergence of recipe sharing web sites would merit inclusion here. Thanks -- Devils In Skirts! (talk) 21:32, 16 February 2014 (UTC)

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"Health concerns" section removed

"reverted WP:SYNTH section. Sources cited are either not about homebrewing, or mention homebrewing in something other than a health context." - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Homebrewing&diff=prev&oldid=1252535528

I am the original contributor of the text and would like to express my disagreement with Anachronist's perspective, while still respecting his opinion.

I invite others to weigh in on this matter. Additionally, I believe there should be sufficient citations that include references to homebrewing practices and their negative impact on health in some parts of the world, and I encourage checking the Phase Change Materials (PCMs) as well. I am open to a complete reworking of the section; my primary goal is to ensure that it is well-established and thoroughly documented. Feel free to modify it further if needed! --94.255.152.53 (talk) 22:59, 21 October 2024 (UTC)