Home brewing Beer throughout American History | Brewing Beer at Home | Brew Beer Your own Beer

At first, of course, brewing like baking-a kindred art, since beer is merely liquid bread-was a part of domestic industry, and nearly every head of a household was his own brewer. While the exact date of the beginning of brewing as a distinct calling cannot be ascertained, there is an abundance of historical evidence that among the very earliest acts of the colonial governments, those tending to encourage the establishment of public breweries were deemed of the greatest importance. It is no less certain that whenever such encouragement did not sufficiently stimulate private enterprise to bring about the desired end, or when other reasons (hereafter to be explained) made it desirable, the rulers of some of the colonial settlements seized upon this source of income themselves or granted monopolies to those private persons who intended to establish breweries.