A word of caution before you begin reading this article: Any regular drinkers of Milwaukee’s Best, Pabst Blue Ribbon, or any other barely-quaffable brew drunk simply because it is cheap may find their lives changed by this article.
Choosing a beer to drink on a Friday night is a tough choice. Sure, a six-pack of Rogue or Deschutes tastes great, but buying it can be a serious financial setback. On the contrary, a 40 ouncer of Coors Light might cost less than a Happy Meal, but drinkers might not be able to look themselves in the mirror after downing it. What is the cost-conscious beer connoisseur to do?
Thankfully, there is a third option: brewing beer at home. It’s fun. It’s easy, and best of all — it’s cheap. Just ask Steve Mathys, owner and operator of Willamette Street Homebrew.
“If you go down to the pub, you’re going to pay three bucks for a pint,” Mathys said. “If you brew it at home, you’re going to pay 50 cents for a pint.”
Willamette Street Homebrew is located at the corner of Willamette Street and 17th Avenue in Eugene, and has been there for about six years now. Mathys can be found at the shop from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.
Mathys got into homebrewing back in 1992 for practical reasons.
“I was 19, and I couldn’t buy beer,” he said.
There are no laws against buying brewing supplies or ingredients — so Mathys bought a kit. He was quickly hooked.
“I started making beer and realized that even once I was legally able to buy beer, it was so much cheaper to make it, and so much better, that I kept doing it.”
That love of brewing led Mathys to work at Willamette Street Homebrew, which he eventually bought last February.
So, what does a beginner need to start homebrewing?
Well, there’s an initial investment. Mathys sells a kit for $99.95 that contains all the brewing equipment, plus the ingredients for an initial batch of beer.
“One-hundred bucks gets you going,” Mathys said. “But once you’ve got the equipment, batches of five gallons are pretty cheap. You’re usually looking at about $20.”
Five gallons equals roughly two cases of beer. That’s about 40 cents per beer. Not too shabby.
Brewing a batch of beer is a relatively simple endeavor. The main ingredients of beer are as follows:
A lot of water.
Malt extract, which is a thick, sweet syrup distilled from barley.
Hops, which are dried flowers used to provide bitterness.
Yeast, which gobbles up the sugars in the malt extract and converts them into alcohol during fermentation.
And that’s about it. Of course, there are many optional components that are available in pursuing the perfect brew, but the essence of beer lies in the above ingredients.
The process of brewing a beer is almost as simple. First, boil the malt extract and hops in about one and a half gallons of water for an hour. Let the hot mixture, or “wort,” cool off to room temperature. Pour the wort into a five gallon bucket or glass “carboy.” Fill the container with water and toss in the yeast. Fermentation will take a week or two.

When it’s done fermenting, add a bit of corn sugar for carbonation purposes, and bottle it up. A week later it’s ready to drink!
Sound easy? It is.
“It’s no harder than cooking a meal, really,” Mathys said.
Easiness aside, there are a few things that any homebrewer must know. At the top of that list is sanitation.
“The only thing that is ever going to mess up your beer is foreign bacteria getting into your beer,” Mathys said. “The one thing that makes (brewing beer) different from cooking at home is that you really have to make sure that everything that touches the beer after you’ve boiled it is sterile. It’s really not that hard to do. It’s just a matter of getting into the habit of it. Other than that, brewing beer is pretty darn easy to do.”
Harvey Rogers, a senior environmental science major, is known by his friends as the “brewmaster.” He has brewed dozens of fine beers — including his personal favorite — brown ale.
His brewing career started when he randomly walked into Willamette Street Homebrew one day out of curiosity. However, his adventures in brewing would have to wait for a bit.
“I couldn’t really (brew beer) because I was in the dorms,” Rogers said.
Undaunted, Rogers read up on homebrewing, so by the time he moved into an apartment the next summer he was ready to begin brewing immediately.
Rogers said the low cost of the process of brewing is a definite attraction.
“If you have the time and money to start, you’ll make your money back for sure,” he said. “It’s not hard to make good beer.”
Even if brewing beer wasn’t financially viable, Rogers said he would be doing it for another reason.
“This sounds cliché, but you can take a tour of the world’s beers in your own kitchen,” he said. “You can make any kind of beer you want. If there’s a beer you like in the store, you can tailor it to your liking.”
Some people in Eugene brew beer for even more creative reasons. Take Nick Mellum, a senior general science major: He lives with three other homebrewers, and said that they are “able to brew 50 gallons at a time.”
Mellum and his roommates brew a batch of beer for every University football game. For them, the best part of the process is naming the result.
“The name is always related to the death of the other team’s mascot,” Mellum said.
The Wisconsin game yielded “Dead Badger Ale,” USC featured the “Trojan Tranquilizer Stout,” and Utah was celebrated with “Uliquited Ute.” Whatever that means.
Hopefully, this article has made you consider the fact that brewing your own beer needn’t be some distant goal. It’s relatively easy. It’s cheap and gives you nearly infinite freedom. In the words of Steve Mathys: “It lets you play God with your beer.”
So, instead of bemoaning the cost versus quality dilemma on a lazy weekend, consider popping into Willamette Street Homebrew and asking Steve how to get started. Life may never be the same.